A Stitch in Time

Window in the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral
showing the donation to its restoration by the
British Railway Board, among others 

Day Trip by Train to Ely Cathedral

Ely is a city we have visited many times, easy to reach by direct train from our home in Stamford and a very pleasant little city with much to enjoy. This particular day out in Ely was brought about by an exhibition at Ely Cathedral of ecclesiastical embroidery which my wife, a keen seamstress who have made a few items herself, was keen to see. It is several years since I have been inside Ely Cathedral which I used to know very well for the six years I was a parish priest in the Diocese of Ely, so it would be nice to visit it again.

We set off from Stamford on the 09:56 train bound for Stansted Airport which took us direct to Ely in well under an hour. This was the last train before the "missing" one in the timetable - the 10:56 which was taken out of the timetable during the Covid-19 lockdown and has never been restored - so it was quite busy, but there were enough seats. Once it arrived at Peterborough we had a better choice of seats while many passengers left and many others boarded. It was a lovely day for a ride across the fens and we were greeted at Ely by the magnificent view of the city centre and its cathedral across the river and marina.

We walked up to the city via the riverside to spy out possibilities for lunch by the river and to have our morning coffee, then we attended the exhibition and briefly looked around the cathedral itself, bringing back memories and also in some ways seeing its splendour for the first time now that I was not there on "business," so to speak. It really is (a) immense and (b) an amazing example of Norman architecture and medieval engineering - well worth a visit, and Ely has really good rail connections from all over England including direct trains from London, Birmingham and Liverpool among many other places.

Soon it was time to go and enjoy our pub lunch at The Cutter Inn on the riverside.- again, a place I have been before but the post-pandemic world seems very different from what I knew five or more years ago, and it was good to go there again. And a pint of real ale! So often lately I have been travelling by car and had to restrict myself to non-alcoholic beer which is OK but not as good as "proper" ale. Travelling by train meant I was free to drink beer, although just the one for health reasons.

The boat-shaped bar at The Cutter Inn

And so back to the station for the train home. This was the first one after the missing westbound train and again was very busy. We do need our full timetable back, for the trains are now as full as ever. Thankfully Cross Country did manage to acquire some more centre coaches for its Turbostar trains on this route so all our trains now have three coaches, but still run at or near (and sometimes over) capacity whenever I travel on them these days. The excuse about "changed travel patterns" wore very thin a good while ago, with most of the recovery in ridership being in leisure travel which must be most affected by the two remaining timetable gaps.

While travelling, and indeed while buying the tickets online for some other trips, we twigged that Cross Country no longer offer seat reservations on this route, even for Advance tickets, and neither do they sell First Class tickets for it (not that I was necessarily looking for those), so it seems that this service is no longer seen as part of Cross Country's inter-city network (it has never had that title but does, as a matter of fact, link a number of cities!) but as a local route, albeit a long one. That is fine, and a spin-off is that savvy travellers can, if lucky, travel in the more spacious former First Class section at the same price as everyone else - but it is very small and you have to be lucky to get in! It still has a refreshment trolley, whose schedule is a complete mystery so you may get a drink and a snack or you may not ... but for us on this sort of day out these are very minor matters and we had a great day out, arriving back in Stamford on time and enjoying our walk home across The Meadows as ever. And already looking forward to the next trip: watch this space!

Sunny Fenland!

A small group visit to the Isle of Ely by train

A recent group trip to Ely, suggested by one of the travellers on the Jewellery Quarter visit a few months ago, only took a small number of participants, a universally available date being hard to find at this time of year, but those who went had a really good day. No rain this time, and quite a lot of sunshine. We began a little later than we usually do, taking the 10:00 train direct from Stamford to Ely, a journey of well under an hour but to a completely different world. The train was on time and the ride smooth; although we did not have reserved seats we were able to find seats together easily enough, and once the train left Peterborough we enjoyed the view across the fens, looking out for Ely Cathedral in the distance. Soon we enjoyed the classic experience of curving around the city and watching the changing shape of the cathedral above the trees, with a final view across the marina as well prepared to leave the train.

We walked down to the riverside from the station and found mooring for the excursion boat. The service times were not posted but there was a note inviting a telephone call for information, so I rang and was told the next departure would be in about ten minutes. We went off for coffee, thinking the following departure might be better - for everyone wanted coffee! Boats operate every half-hour. I have taken the river trip before so after coffee and cake I left the others to enjoy their cruise and set off to do some things of my own, starting with a cycle, toy and model shop where I bought a couple of things for my next railway modelling project, a Swiss Alpine layout which would be quite different from anything I've ever built before. I then went to the Ely Museum in the former gaol building, well worth a visit, but it is to close for a while this autumn for improvement works, so bear this in mind if you want to copy this trip! I met one of the others for "lunch", which following the cake of the morning consisted of just a couple of pints of ale ... and then I had some work to do for my religious order while they went off and visited some of the other attractions that the city of Ely has to offer. If you want somewhere to go on a summer day, I can thoroughly recommend this little city with its history, charming streets, grand cathedral (with its unique lantern roof) and river. It is so easy to reach from anywhere by train, too.

The Riverside Inn:
More of a restaurant than a pub

Two of us met again by chance and went for afternoon tea at the cathedral tea shop - tea and cream scones are a very reasonable price here, and excellent quality. All of us then attended Choral Evensong at the cathedral: during the summer the cathedral's own choir is on holiday but the services that week were sung by a visiting choir from Tucson, Arizona and this was beautifully done. We then set off for dinner together by the riverside. Normally I have pre-booked the evening meal for group outings, but with such a small group I thought it was safe to chance finding a table as the fancy took us, and we decided to go for fish and chips at The Riverside Inn, with a bottle of house white wine between us. The others had ice-cream, too, but after a cream tea I did not feel the need to join them!

And so to the train home, and during this otherwise uneventful trip back it transpired that the postponed trip to Canterbury might happen this autumn - see the Come with me! page for rudimentary information. We happened for some reason to start talking about aircraft and fell into conversation with a young Portuguese resident of Peterborough sitting near us who is modeller of vintage aeroplanes. A great thing about train travel is the people you meet - and even on a short journey entirely in ones own country it is possible to meet some very diverse and interesting people. Travel broadens the horizons if not the mind, and nowhere more so than in the fens.

If you live near Stamford, Oakham or Peterborough and are interested in joining me on some of these day trips, please see the "Come with me!" Page.

Tales of the Riverbank

A swan on the Coronation Channel at Spalding

South Lincolnshire is mostly fenland and is probably the most productive agricultural land in the UK. The southwest corner of the county in which I live is rather different and its 19th and 20th century history has been more in engineering and heavy industry, although you'd never know it to look at Stamford now. Not far away is Spalding, centre of the regional food industry and until recently of the British flower industry.

A group of us took a day trip to explore Spalding, a very different town from our home in Stamford, although with some similarities. It is on the same river, the Welland,  but Spalding is a former port town, the river having been navigable by sailing ships as far as the the town centre where goods were transferred to and from barges. Spalding has not been used by commercial shipping for a very long time but in recent years a water "taxi" service has been operating on the river to take people to and from the Springfields Outlet Centre, an edge-of-town bargain shopping development on the site of the former bulb industry show ground.

Eight of us left Stamford on the 09:00 train to Peterborough and changed there for the 09:35 Lincoln train which took us on to Spalding. We had reserved seats together on the Cross Country train to Peterborough; East Midlands Trains do not reserve seats on their local services in Lincolnshire but we were among the first to board and were easily able to find eight seats together. From the train we could see many church spires on the flat fenland horizon, and of particular interest was Crowland Abbey in the east, a short, broad tower with a low spire, and beside it the vacant arch of the ruined part of the abbey. We passed the lakes at Deeping St James where the gravel was extracted for the building of the line and is now a wildlife sanctuary.

Boarding the Spalding Water Taxi

We soon arrived in Spalding and walked together to the Market Place where the Tuesday market was in full swing. We had an hour before our booked Water Taxi tour and most of us took a coffee break at one of the many cafés in the town centre. Some also made a start to their day's shopping!

We were met at the Water Taxi landing stage at the agreed time by our pilot Marcus who took us on an hour's tour of the river and the Coronation Channel, a flood relief channel dug after the 1952 east coast floods and opened the following year. The Coronation Channel has become a nature reserve and many waterfowl were spotted by the keen naturalists in our group.

The Water Taxi dropped us at the Springfields Outlet Centre and Festival Gardens. Here we all went our separate ways until our agreed rendezvous at 14:30. Everyone found their own lunch at one of the many venues and many also did some shopping. The gardens are also worth a visit and in retrospect perhaps I did not allow quite enough time here. Some people took a bus back to the town centre (route 505 runs roughly every 20 minutes through the day) and most of us walked along the riverside which provides a very pleasant stroll through Spalding's mercantile past (and my teenage years - I lived here between the ages of 10 and 26!).

Back in town we relaxed over a pint at the Lincolnshire Poacher inn - formerly The Crane, named after the dockside hoist, not the bird - and then used a town tour booklet to guide us through some historic sights on the east bank of the river, Ayscoughfee Gardens in particular, and then crossed over to take in Welland Terrace and the Grammar School. By now it was time to gather at Prezzo where our dinner table was booked; Prezzo is located in Elsom House in Broad Street, a wonderful art deco building which used to be the head office and retail outlet for Elsoms Seeds, for whom I use to work in my summer holidays when I was an undergraduate student over forty years ago. It was great to be back enjoying a pizza where I used to collect my P45 each September!

After dinner we strolled back to the station and arrived on the platform just as the train arrived from Peterborough which would form the service back to Stamford. This was the last train of the day and was a through service to Nottingham via Melton Mowbray and took us direct to Stamford without a change.  Everyone seemed to have had a thoroughly good time, and for me it was really odd to be visiting a place I knew so well and yet seeing it as a tourist!

A word about tickets!

Half of our party had Senior Railcards and received discounts on their tickets. Two had a Two Together Railcard which only allowed a discount off-peak and we left too early to use that, so I tried an experiment before booking and split the journey at Peterborough, looking at prices between Stamford and Peterborough and Peterborough and Spalding.  It worked: I could get a discount for the Two Together Railcard holders for the second half of the outward journey (the return timing, well into the evening, was never part of the problem); to my surprise the price for everyone else was a bit less, too, with the the two part returns being cheaper than returns for the whole trip. So that was what I booked! It meant everyone had four ticket coupons but it saved everyone some money. The moral is that it is always worth looking at splitting the journey, even for very short trips.

Spalding Water Taxi

Taxi awaiting next turn of duty!

We booked a charter tour on the Water Taxi, £60 for an hour's tour for up to 12 people. We only mustered eight, so it cost us £7.50 per head.

If you just turn up on the day and use the public service, then it costs just £3 per head for a half-hour trip direct to Springfields. It is also possible to book a self-drive hire boat but I did not look into that possibility for this trip and cannot say what that would cost. The company is really friendly and I can recommend using this service for a relaxing and interesting trip on the river.

If you live near Stamford, Oakham or Peterborough and are interested in joining me on some of these day trips, please see the "Come with me!" Page.

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