You probably already know this but as I always like to get a little bit of ‘knowledge’ into my blog …..the ‘Fens’ – or ‘Fenland’ – is a term for marshland (or former marshland), which is a little harsh when it takes in most of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and a bit of Suffolk – but it is pretty flat (and low.. which I think is more to the point) up here in comparison to some of the areas of the UK,  it is however still very pretty.

Having spent quite a bit of time with friends and family over the last few weeks, we planned in a bit of exploring on our own and have headed to Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to see a bit more of our beautiful countryside.

First stop was Bury St Edmunds, where oddly my dad has held his Bank Account for longer than I can remember, so we did come here occasionally when I was younger, but apart from it being a market town, I remember very little about it. The CL (Lark Valley £14 per night) is just over 5 miles outside Bury St Edmunds in a little village called Flempton which has a church, a pub, several farms and is very tranquil.

After a good nights sleep we set off on foot into Bury for a look around the market, the Abbey (ruins), the Cathedral and the Abbey gardens….all rather pleasant, although as several people pointed out we do appear to have missed britains’ smallest pub which is a little careless of us 😦

Thursday was forecast to be a bit grim, so rather than venturing out on the bikes (I still don’t have any mudguards and a wet bum is not very pleasant), we set off on foot again and headed towards the Saxon village and nature park whilst also trying to find somewhere with wifi as the coverage is appalling round here…. who would have thought that we would struggle more in the UK to get decent coverage than we did abroad?

With ducks in tow (or maybe that should be toe…. as they seemed to quite fancy one of mine for breakfast on Friday) we moved on to Cambridge, stopping at Birds Farm (£10 per night) which is about 4 miles out of Cambridge on a cycle path.

Keith hadn’t ever been to Cambridge and my last visit was when I was 17, so we were looking forward to exploring and managed to arrange for my parents and brother and family to come and join us which worked out really well.

Despite the weather forecast we actually only had drizzle on Friday with the rest of the weekend being dry and mostly sunny enabling us to enjoy the college gardens and parks

as well as managing to get some shopping done, taking in several coffee shops and a couple of good restaurants…. all in all a lovely weekend.

Thanks to Farah, we even managed to get into Kings College to have a look round the chapel and gardens which were pretty incredible……

I am sure that we will be back to explore a bit further a field on the bikes at some point.