Summer Sun and Family Adventures

Hello and welcome to another adventure with the Findlaters. 

As we always say if you adventure with us we will put you in our blog, so in this blog it is Findlaters + Auntie + Cousin ( the Malax-Etxebarrias! )

As I am writing this blog from the other side of this adventure I can tell you that I am still tired and that I am still thirsty. 
The weather in England these days has been hot... I mean "hot" for these parts. The temperatures seem to sit around the high 20's / low 30's. I can't remember the last time that it rained and the grass is a golden colour of dead. What is even more uncharacteristic is that there is rarely a cloud in the sky.

This blog is going to be a quick overview of what we got up to mainly on the weekend while we had my auntie and little cousin over but also some of the thing from the afternoons after they go home from their adventures. 

So lets jump into it! 

So with only two days of weekend to spend with them we decided to hit up our old favourite spots. The only thing is that I haven't been to see them in summer before. Basically I haven't seen it with sun and good weather!

So on the first day we went to the:

Durdle door

If you are an avid follower of our blogs you will probably see one or two other adventures down to see the Durdle Door previously! (Orange dot below)

I like it as it can be a long walk if you're up for a challenge or you can park closer to it and make it a shorter walk if you just want to pop in to take a few photos or chill out on the beach. The area is also known for it's fossils and hence lies right beside Fossil Cove and the southern coastal region called the Jurassic Coast (for more info take a look at https://jurassiccoast.org/).

On previous occasions visiting this place (I would guess I have been 3 times) the weather is always cold and raining (typically English) but with a wind chill factor that will make you want to take photos from the car. 
The water has always been so rough that if you saw a ship wreck washed up you wouldn't be surprised. 
I tell you this as you need to know the shock that I received when we arrived there on a hot summers day!

Here is a before from one of our previous visits and an after from this visit!

Hard to believe it is the same place!

So back to what we actually got up to. 

My poor little cousin has something wrong with her. I would like to say that it was puberty but the poor bugger was tired and sleeping ALL the time. I mean I was buggered after our adventures so I guess if she has been adventuring for a few days before so shes allowed to be a little extra buggered from that. But the poor Chicky wouldn't sit for 2 mins before you look back and shes gone to sleep again. 

But I digress - the point was that we were off to a late start as everyone needed to be motivated from our peaceful weekend slumber. I, on the other hand, had been up since 5am running to the office where I work to open it up for decorators to enter then coming home and doing my 1 hour English lessons (I'm learning to speak like the Queen aka "RP" English) and then I made breakfast for the troops. 

It does turn out that a well chilled piece of Ice applied directly to the undies seems to wake a dormant teenager. 

When all was said and done we left the house at 11am and the plan was to get to the Durdle Door and have a picnic. The drive there is usually 2 hours so that was fine we would be there for a 1 pm lunch. Not too bad.

Well there was traffic the whole way there so a 2 hour trip turned into a 3 hour trip and Kyran saw his life flash before his eyes from hunger. He was so hungry that he started slowly eating the tick tacs that were in the car. 

Now I never heard the other end of how that turned out for him but it says on the box that eating too many may have a laxative effect....

So we got there! It was hot and we were hungry - very hungry! And we had the entire picnic ready to go down to the beach. 

If you have been to the Durdle Door you'd know it is accessible by part of a cliff face walk, and you can descend in a steep and zig-zagging dirt track that is covered in loose rocks. Either side of the gravel path are multiple goat tracks that have been formed as people tried to avoid the loose gravel and dust/mud if it is wet. 

So my silly 'Tia' (Auntie in Spanish) was wearing thongs (to clarify, "flip flops", depending on where you are reading this from). So it took so long to get down the track that I too started to see my life flash before my eyes from hunger. 

So we made it finally!

As you saw the beach looked like this!

It was 3:30 pm, so we had to find a cave to eat our lunch in because I don't know about the British (well I do now, I will tell that story in a minute) but us Australians are sort of conditioned to avoid the sun if possible. Mainly because the sun in Australia is out to kill you, but here the English sun is a little less 'hot'.  

So we had to find a shady spot and have our lunch!

Now I shall tell you that story - over the course of many days working on this blog the weather in England has just got hotter and hotter. The day that I am writing this part on they reckon is the hottest days in the history of the country!! That's over 800,000 years if you were wondering.  

See the following article if you want to read about it!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-weather-forecast-live-updates-heatwave-latest-rain-thunderstorms-traffic-sun-health-a8464131.html

So on with the story I think that because of the 'happy' 'friendly' sun that the English are used to have gone on holidays and the Australian sun is filling in the Government had to issue an "Amber" alert for the heat. 

Let me explain an amber alert: 
Amber means there is an increased likelihood of bad weather affecting the public.

This potentially means cancelling plans, having to deal with travel delays, road and rail closures, interruption to power and the potential risk to life and property.

Keeping in mind that this is the country of "keep calm and carry on". 



So this is the 3rd Amber alert that has been issued in England this year! the last two were for the snow and this one because the Brits needed to be told the sun is hot, get out of it!

***

OK back to the adventures. 

So we needed to have our lunch and a short relaxation time and then we had to get moving again we had only paid the parking till 5pm and we got to the parking at 3pm, AND there was another place along the beach I wanted to get to (Yellow dot on map above). 

If you have read our previous blogs the plan was to head to Old Harry's Rocks again. Kyran has never been there and so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to take him and the rest of the troops there. 

In retrospect it was a big day and I probably pushed it a little too much because by the time we got to the rocks it was 7ish at night which is fine as the sun doesn't go down till 10pm but it was going down and the air was starting to cool off. I have told my cousin that we could swim here but my Auntie was dying for a beer. So Kyran and my Auntie went to get their drugs of choice and little cousin and I went for a 'swim'! I didn't go all the way in but it was nice and refreshing. 

Here are some of the photos that I took while we were exploring the rock pools and with Old Harry's rocks in the background. 

OK well I think I should leave Saturday's adventures there and move on to Sunday where the plan was to head up to Cambridge. 

***

This is another to-do on my list of England. It is nice to see Cambridge from the punting boat with a knowledgeable young fellow pushing you down the river telling you all about the different colleges and the historical figures who once studied there. 
The map below show where we started and how we headed up the river and then turned around and back down to where we started. 

So we had another late start to the day for much the same reasons. We didn't leave quite so late but I had planned to make a stop at an old manor house or castle that we came across on our way. So we needed to see the house and then get to Cambridge before the punting boys finished for the day. 


AUDLEY END HOUSE AND GARDENS

So our detour ended up being to Audley End House and Gardens. It was once a prodigy house, a palace in all but name and renowned as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Audley End is now one-third of its original size.

For you reference a Prodigy house is a term for large and showy English country houses built by courtiers and other wealthy families, either "noble palaces of an awesome scale"  or "proud, ambitious heaps" according to taste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audley_End_House

I am just going to do a quick dump of information about the house here and then we will continue with out photos and our adventures.

• Audley End was the site of Walden Abbey, a Benedictine monastery that was granted to the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley in 1538 by Henry VIII. 
• The abbey was converted to a domestic house for him and was known as Audley Inn. 
• It was demolished by his grandson, Thomas Howard (first Earl of Suffolk, fourth creation, and Lord Treasurer), and a much grander mansion was built, primarily for entertaining the king, James I.
• The layout reflects the processional route of the king and queen, each having their own suite of rooms. It is reputed that Thomas Howard told King James he had spent some £200,000 creating this grand house
• In 1619, Suffolk and his wife were found guilty of embezzlement and sent to the Tower of London ( and this is where I start getting two different stories here

1. ...but a huge fine secured their release. Suffolk died in disgrace at Audley End in 1626, or (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audley_End_House)

2. he died while imprisoned in the Tower before his execution in 1572,(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Howard,_1st_Earl_of_Suffolk)

**** the references don't match up but I suppose that is what I get for using Wikipedia  ***

• At this time, the house was on the scale of a great royal palace, and became one when Charles II bought it in 1668 for £50,000 for use as a home when attending the races at Newmarket.

Photo stolen from Wikipedia (link)  




































We finally got on the road towards Cambridge. I don't remember what time we left or what time we got to Cambridge but I do remember that I had pretty nearly given up on the possibility that some poor university kid would still be out pushing punting boats up and down the river on a Sunday afternoon. It was probably 4 or 5pm while these thoughts were running through my head. 

Well we were tired and we hadn't had any lunch yet, and the troop essentially went on strike until I would let them stop to eat. So we looked around and...  well there were not as many places that catered to the Vegan diet in Cambridge as I would have thought! 

We found respite at a Wagamama's for a feed, and afterwards we decided that we were going to do what we came here to do and so we set out to see if we could find a punting place that was still open and would take us up and down the river. 

To my surprise there were a few companies that were all still contending for our business to take us down the river. It turned out that the company that usually has boys on every corner had been strong armed into closing down by the local council of commerce. So when I saw there were no boys on any corners I had thought they had all closed up for the day. 

The trip down the river was lovely as always but alas the poor guide didn't speak Spanish so I tried my darnedest at translating some of the stories about the different colleges as we went up and down the river to my aunty and cousin.

With the boat trip done it was already 7pm-ish so it was time to start our 1.5 -  2 hour journey home. 

That brings us to the end of yet another adventure. Thank you for coming with us and maybe one day you can come visit us and we can go on new adventures with you. 

Until next time I will leave you with a list of some of the famous people that you may have heard of that have attended Cambridge and some extra photos from the adventures.

***

The following Information comes from:
 http://uk.businessinsider.com/cambridges-most-successful-alumni-of-all-time-2016-11/#sir-david-attenborough-clare-college-1947-5

Oliver Cromwell — Sidney Sussex College, 1617

After dropping out of Cambridge, Cromwell went on to lead the Roundheads in the English Civil War, which they won. In 2002, Cromwell was ranked one of the best Britons of all time by a BBC poll.

John Milton — Christ's College, 1629

The "Paradise Lost" author ranked fourth in his year of graduates. Not a fan of his Cambridge peers though, Milton said of his fellow students: "They thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools."

Charles Darwin — Christ's College, 1831

Often coined the father of modern biology, Darwin was sent to Cambridge by his father to study the Arts, in the hope that he might one day become an Anglican country parson.

Alan Turing — King's College, 1934

"The Imitation Game" protagonist unsurprisingly read maths at Cambridge — he was elected a college fellow on the strength of his dissertation.

Sir David Attenborough — Clare College, 1947

The infamous broadcaster has collected 32 honourary degrees in addition to his bachelors in natural sciences from Clare College. 

Stephen Hawking — Trinity Hall College, 1965

Hawking returned to Cambridge post graduating to lecture, which he did for 30 years in the same post that had previously been occupied by the likes of Isaac Newton.

Sir Martin Sorrell — Christ's College, 1966

Sorrell studied economics at Cambridge, and the advertising mogul is now the highest paid CEO in the UK. In 2015, his annual income was estimated to be £42,978,000.

Charles, Prince of Wales — Trinity College, 1970

After graduating with a 2:2 in archaeology, anthropology and history, Charles became the first heir to gain a university degree.

***

If you do like reading our blog you should consider subscribing/following us, that way you know each time a new blogs gets posted.

If you want to contribute to keep the blog full of adventures I have set up a Paypal account that you can donate to: paypal.me/findlatertravels

Also if there is anything that is around where we are and you want us to see it/review it please do let us know! we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at:

findlatertravels at hotmail.com