Of all the romantically named Cambridge haunts, Byron’s Pool may be near the top of the list. I don’t particularly enjoy what I’ve read of Lord Byron’s high-flown poetry (except for the satire), and I don’t find the Romantic hero-personality of extremes and debauchery and drama particularly appealing—but I was as beguiled as anyone by the idea of a grove along the River Cam where the famous poet was supposed to have swum while an undergraduate at Trinity (this is what all the guidebooks and interpretive signs say, and not much more). It’s so very Cambridge. Most significantly for my interests, it’s farther up the River Cam than I’ve ever visited.
I was taking a retrospective look at my blog recently, and was stunned by how much I wrote last autumn. I kept a treasure trove of field notes on everything the season was giving me during a time of quiet and isolation. This season, the hustle of community is back, along with the haze of attempting to write up my thesis, and I’ve found it hard to get into the headspace of word-crafting my surroundings. Despite this, the season has given richly and I’ve been fed by warm earthy palettes, frosty mornings, flame and lemon leaves, full moons, mushrooms and chestnuts, sunbeams and sunsets. In lieu of words I’ve captured as much as I can on my often inadequate camera. I’m going to attempt to decorate the images with some remembered notes, because this autumn deserves all the attention I can give it, even in memory.
Edinburgh is like the cool cousin of London. I wouldn’t be surprised if its popularity as a quick holiday destination has only increased during the pandemic, domestic travel being a hot commodity. I’d only ever heard good things about it but hadn’t managed to get there, despite it being only a 5-hr train ride the length of England from Cambridge. I was determined to squeeze it in before the term got into full swing or any unforeseen disruptions *cough* Covid *cough* got in the way, so my friend Marie and I made a long weekend of the Edinburgh bucket list. Hills, castles, kilts, neogothic grandeur, bagpipes, haggis, hipster art—we fit all of it in.
London is less than an hour’s express train ride from Cambridge. This has probably given me a bit of a case of “close enough to go anytime so I don’t.” Before the pandemic, I went occasionally to concerts and museums in London, always accompanied by a little wandering. But nothing like proper exploration (let alone top tourist attractions), which I could always do another time. Since the pandemic, repeated national lockdowns and Covid caution have kept me away until the last few months. It’s a shame, because London is like Cambridge on steroids for a place collector like me—nearly infinite nooks and crannies. The clock is ticking and I’m learning not to take London for granted.
The theatre district of the West End of London, comparable to Broadway in New York City, is one place I hadn’t managed to visit. So, recently, when TodayTix alerted me about a sale for West End tickets, I went for it, choosing the musical Come from Away on the next weekend. It also happened to be a weekend I was moving house, but like I said, London is so close you can do an evening or half-day and still get your money’s worth. So, another little wandering glimpse. Without any real plans other than wandering, I took an early afternoon train the day of the play. I had to go to London Liverpool Street Station because the slightly quicker route to Kings Cross Station was disrupted. This was a serendipity, because although it was several miles from the West End, it placed me close enough to the River Thames to do my wandering along the river. I’ve always been drawn to the Thames and its thoroughfares and bridges and waterfront skyline when I visit London—never mind its slight stench. So while the musical and West End were great, my walk along the Thames to get there ended up being an equally vivid highlight.
The day before the August Bank Holiday, my friend was restless to go somewhere and he threw out an invitation to a couple of us to go to the Peak District the next day. Having wheels to the Peak District, an England bucket-list item for me, was more than enough to outbalance any ideas I had about working on the holiday, and soon I was looking up walking routes.
It was supposed to be a three-hour drive, which we felt was reasonable for a day trip if we left early enough. As it turned out, a miscommunication with Apple Maps led us on a 1.5 hour detour (ending up, instead of in the heart of the Peak District, in the middle of a nothing town near Newark-on-Trent, which we should have been suspicious of before checking the map on arrival because there were no real hills to speak of). We grinned and bore it, took a detour back through Sheffield (an interesting glimpse of the industrial North) and got to the Peak District just before lunchtime.
Last week I volunteered as a “Science Explainer” for the 175th Anniversary celebration of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. I wore a bright (bright) orange T-shirt and lanyard and smiled at people as they walked by the chalk grassland and fen displays, trying to judge if they would be open to a chat about native Cambridgeshire ecology. I pointed out the pale brown newts wriggling between lily pads in the fen pond to children scampering over the fen boardwalk, explained how alkaline chalk determines what can grow in chalk soil and chalk-drained fens, apologized for not knowing where to get the next stamp on the Mystery History trail, and chatted about pasqueflowers and orchids. When there was no one around I watched bees on the meadowsweet and listened to the live music filtering through the trees and clashing with the one-man band (the “Pramdemonium”) wheeling around the Garden with bubbles coming out the horns. Festive, to say the least.
Whether or not passersby fully caught on to the reasons for the festivity, the celebration is justified—the Garden has been a dynamic center of botanical science, beauty, and public engagement for a good long while now, thanks to visionary and determined botanists and teachers. And how happy that people can gather here with music, food, kids, and curiosity again after last year’s hiatus!
The way to the secret garden is through a pale blue gate in the brick garden wall of an imposing Victorian house (dubbed the Pightle); through a passageway of forsythia and lilac and across the big back lawn (watch out for badger worm dig-holes) occupied only by a garden shed and some scattered lawn furniture and banks of tall, dark trees full of birdsong; through a stand of brush and hedge under which badgers have dug their elaborate sett and are sleeping somewhere underfoot[1]; and beyond this hedge are the plots of once-fallow ground claimed for now by enterprising, green-hearted Newnhamites, who have built and sprouted a community of gardens. First labor of love: the allotment beds for Fellows and students, and on the neighboring square, the subject of this post: the Newnham Garden Club’s new permaculture garden.
botanize (or botanise): v., to study plants in their natural habitat (akin to birdwatching)
When I heard that Ed Tanner, retired plant ecology professor from my department who still sits in on ecology group meetings, was taking a few other students out on Saturdays to nature reserves around Cambridge to botanize, I didn’t waste time in inviting myself along. I was delighted by the chance to explore new places and absorb some of the decades of plant and place knowledge that Ed has to offer (not to mention being one of the most Cambridge-y ways I could possibly spend an afternoon). The next trip planned was to Devil’s Dyke. All I really knew about Devil’s Dyke was that it was a very old landmark somewhere out in the countryside—near Newmarket, of horse racing fame—and, Ed told us via email, is habitat to rare orchids.
The focus of this blog is Cambridge, but Cambridge is of course embedded in a larger landscape. We’re in the county of Cambridgeshire, which is part of East Anglia, which is an area within the East of England, an official region of England, which is part of Great Britain, which is part of the United Kingdom (which is no longer part of the European Union). Learning these nested names reminds me of being a kid in the United States before I had a solid sense of what was higher in the geographical hierarchy, a state or a country. East Anglia is more of a historical geography than an administrative one. It’s the easternmost knob of England sticking out into the North Sea, including the counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and is known for its flatness. Let me take you across the flat fenland to the big open spaces of Suffolk, all the way to the seaside.
In the flatlands, hills draw history to them. Where the layers of chalk bulge up south of Cambridge, giving a green roll to the fields and beech groves and feeding flowers in chalk meadows, history crowns the 75-meter hilltops at Wandlebury and Magog Down. Legends call the Gog Magog hills a sleeping giant (see my post on Beechwoods), but there are plenty of other stories still observable on the chalk here: Iron Age ring hillfort, Roman road, 17th-century thoroughbred stables, country estate, and rescue from bulldozing as nature reserve. Portals, paths, layers.
