Denis Lipman's Blog, page 12

A truly golden hill in Dorset

Our thanks to Jonathan at Anglotopia for sending on this gorgeous photo of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
If you have a great photo of England, email us — we'll link back to you if we post it!

A toasted Sandwich

We asked Cousin Kevin to take some piccies in Sandwich, that wonderful medieval town we discovered on our travels, almost by accident. He came up trumps with this weird and wonderful structure we vaguely recalled seeing near the river's edge, but we could not quite remember its purpose. It looked like one of those cages naughty villeins were put in to rot! So Kevin put us to rights: It was a pole beacon.
The structure was filled with wood, rags, and kindling, all to be set ablaze as an ancient fi

It's all relative, even in Cambridge

For hundreds of years young men had been gaining a higher education just a few yards from where Lew sat. He left school at fourteen, a working class lad, not lacking intelligence, just lacking the encouragement and confidence such places of learning seem to bestow. I don't think he looked around him and saw a missed opportunity for himself. It was a world in which he felt he could never belong. This, he imagined, was the world of Milton, Tennyson, Hawking, a world beyond his horizons, his class.

A bastion of faith set in stone for all time

And speaking of great English architectural feats... John and Kathy of casa dolce sent us this fabulous photo of the gothic Lincoln Cathedral in Lincolnshire. Built some 900 years ago, the massive structure can be seen from miles away, as the surrounding countryside is, conversely, quite flat. Read Kathy's post about their "daytripping" experience here.
Have a great photo of England? Email it to us and we'll link back to you!

No punt intended

We walked towards the river Cam and crossed a small, hump-backed bridge. Beneath it were several young men in straw boaters with neckties swung around their waists to hold up their white flannel trousers. These would-be tour guides, local students, playfully accosted us as we passed by, extolling the virtues of viewing the River Cam from the inside of a punt. Clutching and jerking poles around, especially in public, was not my cup of tea. Punting was not for the uncoordinated, the inexperienced,

In the path of famous footfalls

The streets surrounding the colleges gave way to warren-like passageways filled with cobblestone, bottle glass, and wrought iron work. We spotted the occasional gas lamp and flower baskets that dripped with pansies and geraniums. Dark and mysterious, the pedestrian byways of Cambridge were inviting, but where did they lead? Cambridge was indeed a town to wander. These were the same streets and turnings that Isaac Newton, Lord Byron, and Charles Darwin ambled down. Where would they lead?

Free advice is worth...

"Don't go to Cambridge in the winter! Or even early spring. Ghastly." A friend who had gone to Cambridge tried to put me wise. "The wind comes howling down across the fens, the land is completely flat. No protection. Bitterly cold. Winter. Even early spring. As I said, ghastly." He had shaken his head, looking every inch like a wet bulldog, and offered no further explanation. We went there anyway, hoping the early May weather would turn favorably warm. My friend had been right, the approach to C