Again the rain greeted us on waking, but fortunately it had abated
by the time we came to pack up camp. We popped out into the busy rush hour
traffic to shop at the local Sainsbury Superstore before attending to the main
project of the day, but were still finally away from camp by 9.40am.
Some quake in their shoes at the prospect of travelling the M25,
especially when a good half of the ring road is to be travelled on a week day,
however, again, as most of our London city driving these last few days proved, any
concerns were unfounded. We eventually left the M25 to travel northward on the
M11, stopping off for our regular time filler at the service centre outside
Bishop Stortford.
Before arriving here we had passed by the city of Harlow, a place
Chris remembered being stranded in during his youthful hitchhiking days and
mentioned it was a relatively modern city. That suggested to me that it was
probably less than five hundred years old, given how very ancient everything is
here. But a little research confirmed his response; new does actually mean
“new”.
After World War II several new towns were built to ease the
overcrowding in London and the surrounding areas due to the mass devastation
caused by the bombing during the blitz. Harlow was part of Phase I along with
other new towns such as Basildon, Stevenage, Crawley, Newton Aycliffe, Peterlee,
Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield, Bracknell, Corby and Hemel Hempstead. Now I know
for a fact that the last of these existed long before World War II because it
was here that my great great grandfather Ambrose Samuel Scammell was born in
1824.
Arriving at our camp on the southern edge of Cambridge, we lined
up with other campers who had obviously been marking time as we had, all
waiting for the welcome carpet to be rolled out at 1pm.
This Camping &
Caravan Club site has 120 pitches and promotes itself as being “sheltered from
the fenland winds”. Well, all I can say, is thank goodness the row of trees is
here to do that, because even with that, there has been a fair old wind blowing
across the camp this afternoon. Any real rain has remained down over the
Wimbledon Courts in London this afternoon however we have spent the rest of the
day deciding our itinerary for our few days here and catching up with John,
Chris’s brother, who has thankfully been discharged from hospital and who is
looking positively toward his birthday dinner in a week’s time. And any spare
moments apart from that have been spent watching the rain fall on the tennis
courts in London via the television.
As matters stand at the moment, we have no intention of actually
going into Cambridge, since we spent a very full day there soon after we
arrived here in May of this year. There are however a score of estates and stately
homes, and other historical places that warrant a visit and I have already
realised that we have not booked long enough here either!
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