Firstly, a thank you to the hotel for fitting us in at all. Age concerns meant that instead of booking two nights, I had only booked one night and we did not notice the mistake until the day before the off. The hotel was pretty much full by then but after some huffing and puffing they managed to change the booking and we had a very nice room,overlooking the river, which we did not need to change half way through. And Chesterton Road, contrary to what we had thought, was not at all busy at night and not even particularly busy during the day.
Hotel something more than a hundred years old, originally a speculative build of eight or so town houses, now knocked into one. Along the way they also managed to get all the back land, which might have been gardens but which might also have been workshops or sheds. Not the sort of hotel we usually use, more usually going for purpose build, either a new build like Mercure or an old build like they advertise on ITV3 (see reference 2). We were allocated a large room on the first floor - that is to say the floor you arrived at from the road after climbing a short flight of steps. A handsome room, roughly a twelve foot cube, not counting the bay. Entire, which is unusual, with the large bathroom adjacent, rather than carved out of a corner. Ceiling entire, with all its plaster and with enough height to hang the sort of faux-fancy chandelier which you can buy in Homebase, but which would look silly in our sort of house. Very good picture on the television, much better than ours, but rather unforgiving in respect of older ladies.
Restaurants and bar on the ground floor. Posh restaurant at the front and brasserie in a large and handsome conservatory, opening onto the garden, at the back. Staff very pleasant. Bread poor for a hotel of this size and class. Starters nicely presented and good. Beefburger substantial but otherwise rather ordinary; one would expect better of pub grub. Wine good, particularly the very reasonably priced Riddle Creek 2012 Chardonney from Australia with its tropical fruits on the palate, that is to say ripe melon and fig with tangy notes balanced by minimal oak. At least, that is what it said on the wine list.
What was the driving centre from which BH passed her driving test is visible above the label top right for Carlyle Road. Now a job centre and wifi hot spot. But this did not seem to help with wifi at the hotel, with the hotel wifi being a bit patchy and with the BT FON service not being visible at all, despite it having been nicely visible in our holiday cottage in the wilds of the Isle of Wight. I had expected a place like Cambridge to be awash with the stuff. See reference 1.
There was a dispute about the yellow trees. BH offered gleditsia which I disputed and I, confusing colour of leaf with colour of flower, offered laburnum, which she disputed. To be resumed.
On a technical note, I took the picture from 'Bing', to make a slanting view change from the gmaps which I usually use for this sort of thing. The only catch was that I did not seem to be able to use the snipping tool on Bing, but ALT+PRINT seemed to capture the screen OK which could then be snipped from inside paint. As our course tutors used to say time and again, there is always more than one way to crack a nut in windows, a property of redundancy which gives the product plenty of resilience.
PS: as well as being reminded of the cows of the last post, we were also reminded of what a well parked city Cambridge is, perhaps mainly a consequence of the colleges of the university owning so much of the land. Ownership which dated from the days before landowners felt the need to sweat every last penny out of every last parcel of land. But even here, buildings are sprouting up all over the once spacious college grounds; got to have somewhere to put all those summer school students - which last were much in evidence during our visit. Including a lot of Chinese, presumably here in part to make sure that we were looking after what looks to become their patrimony... That is, if the Arabs don't get there first.
Reference 1: https://btfonpurchases.com/en_GB/products.
Reference 2: https://www.oldenglishinns.co.uk/.
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