Saturday August 1st – It’s been a few quiet days of reading, walking and singing. During the days I mostly stayed close to home walking out for lunch and enjoying the quietness of the B&B to read and catch up on some sleep. On Thursday I walked over to the Botanical Gardens and enjoyed strolling through the flower beds. There’s a whole host of new (to me) plants that I’d like to try in our garden. Lunch at their cafe was a nice experience…especially since it was my favourite English lunch – often called Ploughman’s Lunch it was called the Gardener’s Lunch at the Botanical Gardens.

Tree that grew around a wall

Unique Orchid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hymn Festival on Wednesday night was at a United Reformed (Presbyterian) church in downtown Cambridge. The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland was in charge of the evening and our friend Gillian Warson was the song leader. We’ll be seeing her later when we go to Bicester. On Thursday night we went to the lovely Selwyn College Chapel to hear an organ recital by a young 20 year-old. He has evidently won a number of international competitions and is considered to be a phenom. Our favourites were a piece by a Norwegian composer that had some very interesting vibrato work in it and an arrangement on the tune Hyfrydol.

 

Friday was get-away day so I walked into town in the morning to pick up some lunch fixings and then picked George up after the morning session. It was quite a long trip north to Harrogate. Google suggests about three hours but it was closer to five. Traffic on the A1 was quite slow in many spots but there weren’t any accidents. It seems that volume just creates bottlenecks in some places. We arrived just after 5pm and met Jenn in the lobby. She was happy to have company for dinner and the rest of the evening. We went to Betty’s Tea Room and Cafe just across from the Yorkshire Hotel, where we are staying. We celebrated with Brown Bread Ice Cream Sundae! Soooo good!!

We’re looking forward to a walk through town this morning and then the wedding this afternoon. Harrogate is quite a small town and the church is just steps away from our hotel. Fortunately it looks like a lovely sunny warm day – for a change!