awake to take in the view...

It turns out that Jan is enormously fond of candy floss, and was pleased that Jack and I brought some home yesterday.

I fell asleep the most easily last night that I have so far. I must finally be adjusting to being in a new place. I woke up at a few minutes past eight, and got up and ready for the day. Phyllis, the cleaning lady, was there, and after I had breakfast I chatted with her for a bit. She is a very sweet lady who is I think about sixty, and we took to each other immediately. We were talking in the kitchen when Jack came home from taking Jan to work.

Jack and I were to go to a Christian bookstore/coffee shop to hopefully meet a friend of his at eleven, and I had been thinking of going out for a short cycle before that, but it rained, so I didn’t.

The little bookshop was very sweet. We had coffee, and chatted with a couple who works there.

Here is me at the shop:

They were very kind – everyone who I have met in England is so nice and relaxed and themselves! We chatted about America and England and what the difference is between cookies and biscuits, and about brown sugar. You can get really truly brown sugar in England! What they call brown sugar is real unrefined sugar, not sugar with molasses in it! I would bring some home, but it’s rather heavy…

While we were there, Jack bought me a copy of Great Expectations from the secondhand part of their store for 50p.

His friend (it’s a – what do we call it? – a mission friend) didn’t show, so after we chatted with them for a while we continued on. We decided to go and see the Windmill in Denver.

It was a beautiful, beautiful drive. I took pictures, trying to capture the loveliness of the places I saw, but I don't think I succeeded.

The mill:

Some views around the mill:

The windmill is a real working mill that makes flour. We had soup and bread there – the soup made there from the flour they make with wheat that is grown only four miles from the mill.

After that we drove to see the Denver sluice gate.

Views around the sluice:

Then we continued on through the fens, me taking pictures all the way.

I could see a building in the distance with a long bridge stretching to it.

“Where is that?” I asked Jack.

“That’s where we’re going. The Welney Wetland Preserve.”

And so we did. There was a little exhibit with lots of things about the history of the fens, and then we went upstairs for something to eat. There was a little coffee shop kind of thing on the second floor, and we got tea and hot cross buns.

Jack said afterward that the hot cross buns weren’t very good, which was a relief to me because I hadn’t thought so, either. Jan says she’ll have to make me some sometime.

I wanted to go over the bridge, even though the worker said there wasn’t very much wildlife over there. So Jack said I could, but then he was talking about tickets, and I tried to object that I didn’t know it cost extra and I needn’t go, but Jack interrupted me with a good natured,

“Shut up.” And so I got to go over the bridge.

The fen was very flooded:

And there were lots of ducks:

And even more when it was feeding time:

A map - Denver Sluice is the one we saw:

I'd like to ride in this boat:

Or this one, the kind people used to use for hunting in the fens:

When I came back from the other side I went down the elevator, and Jack was nowhere to be found! I went to the downstairs part and he still wasn’t there, and then I came back up, and he still wasn’t there, but then there he was!

“Did you take the lift down?’ he asked me. It turned out that he had been going up the stairs to come find me just as I was going down the lift!

We drove on back to Wisbech...

The road was just barely not flooded!

...and went straight to Jan’s work, so as not be late, but then she was late getting out. After that we stopped for milk at the post office in Gorefield, and then went home. It’s very odd – their post office is like a little store at a gas station. Jack says otherwise they wouldn’t make enough money to stay running.

At home, we had beans on toasted muffins (English muffins) with Worcestershire sauce for tea. Jack and Jan don’t have teatime and then supper, but they do normally call supper “tea”. And they – and I – drink tea all day long. And then we had ice cream on tinned apricots for pudding.

Now Jack has gone out to a watercolor painting demonstration. Jan and I are staying in.

[An additional note - if you're reading and enjoying these posts, please do comment and let me know! It's much easier for me to devote the time to putting these up, and easier for me to write well, if I know that people are enjoying them.]