I mentioned before that we live out in the country, specifically in a village called Bury. After saying “Bury” with a thick American accent for a couple of days, we learned that British actually pronounce it “Berry”.
Bury is a village that is connected with Ramsey, a town. Ramsey is very-very old. The town of Ramsey was built up around the gate of Ramsey Abbey during the 9th century!
From what I am seeing, each village governs itself quite a bit. Of course, all towns and villages belong to a specific shire, so we are also in Cambridgeshire, sort of like a county in the states.
Bury village has a church, a small convenience store, called Bury Store, a pie and cake place, called Bury Cakes, a restaurant called White Lion, a school, a village hall and that's about it. If it weren’t for Ramsey that is so nearby, we wouldn’t have many places to go to.
Here is the White Lion place. To the right of it is the street that leads directly to where Robert works at the moment.
Ramsey has pretty much everything you need for every day life—more than a dozen places to eat, lots of small shops and second-hand shops, banks, Tesco (which is sort of like Target/Walmart), library, Leisure Centre (remember to pronounce it as “Lesure” and not “Leesure”), clinic, post office and a couple of primary schools and even Abbey College, which I think is a secondary school.
The village is beautiful. In fact, every time I drive through any villages around here I keep thinking to myself that is it is truly unbelievable I am here and that all those pictures you see on TV and in books about what English villages look like are a reality to me.
Driving around, looking for houses, we also noticed that many villages have the same street names. There seem to be a Church Street and School Lane in every village. You can find a High Street everywhere too—that’s the main road that goes through a village. Pathfinder Way and Owl’s End seem to be popular street names too. We live on a close. A close is a street that ends with a dead end—as the sign always shows. Many street names are “Something close”.
This is a picture I took turning into our street.
Almost there…
And here we are—Greenwood House (some houses actually have names here).
Speed limits on most rural and main roads are 60 miles per hour—that seems like flying on some of those back roads. When we drove on a rural street for the first time, I thought that we were going to die because British drive so fast even on narrow roads with sharp turns. A few times I had to close my eyes and just have faith that both cars are small enough to pass each other. I am getting used to that as well as I am getting better at fitting my car on those roads. The speed limit drops to 30 mph when you enter a village or a town. Sometimes they have so called Calming Traffic Devices in place—either bumps or an actual island in the middle of your lane to make sure you slow down and let oncoming traffic pass. I have not seen a policeman giving out tickets yet—hidden cameras are installed on most main roads though so you don’t even ever know if you are being caught for speeding or not. You will get a ticket in the mail if your car went too fast between two cameras.
This is a picture I took on the way back from a berry farm nearby. These clouds are gorgeous! It’s also quite windy in our area.
This is what a mini-round-about looks like. There are many of those in towns, serving a purpose of US stop signs. This one is in Ramsey.
British apparently love their double-decker buses. They use them for public transportation and even as school buses in many areas!
Last Sunday we went for a walk after dinner to the church down the street. It seems to be ancient (and it probably is) but people still meet inside the church on Sundays.
Alex said this was a goblin.
Beautiful colors of the evening sky.
Behind the church, lies a small cemetery. The kids were amazed at how old some of the grave stones were. You couldn’t read any writing on those tomb stones, but they were clearly at least a couple centuries old.
Part of the cemetery was dedicated to military people who died near Bury. Since RAF Upwood (used to be a big air force base) is technically located in Bury, many pilots from WWII are buried here.
Most were British military officers and some were from Canada and New Zealand.
On the way back from the church, we took one of those public footpaths that seem to connect villages all over. Our footpath is not a paved trail, it’s just a path through the woods and fields that goes behind village houses and passes our backyard. The village organizes public walks for people who want to stay active and walk together. I think people around here cherish every moment that is not rainy and go walking all the time.
All right, what else would you like to know? Anything specific that you would like to hear about?
Good night for now,
Lyana
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