“As I Was Going To St Ives…”

We had BIG plans for Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend since Robert gets three days off in a row without being charged leave. We planned a BIG road trip to Bath/Cotswolds/Stonehenge and the surrounding area. The trouble is—England got snow! Therefore, the base sort of shut down early on Friday, Wales was completely covered in snow, roads were closed, trains were delayed—it would be a big mess if we were going to travel. Until very late at night we were debating whether or not we should go and just stay at the “cabin” by Bath and see if we could brave the cold and explore that area. Anyway, in the morning, we looked at the roads and decided against it, mainly because Bath is near Wales, which was the area hit worse than us AND because we, of course, don’t have snow tires any more here—our van is mostly good for FL, apparently.

Instead, we decided to go to the movies for kids (they have special Saturday showings at 10 am for only $1.60 each), and then to St. Ives, a town just about twenty minutes drive from us.

A few interesting things about St. Ives.

1. The riddle “As I Was Going to St. Ives” does belong to this particular town of St Ives. It was known as far back as the 18th century-and different versions of it, not mentioning St. Ives but using the same idea of multiplying things by seven, go back to the Middle Ages.

2. In 1086 St. Ives, then still called Slepe, was valued at just 16 British pounds ($23). That was in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book, which also recorded the population at just 52 men—nobody bothered to count the women and children.

3. Oliver Cromwell lived in St. Ives as a young man before he became famous. Apparently, he was born in Huntingdon (a town nearby) but St Ives got the statue because when the idea of commemorating him was raised in 1899, his 300th birthday, Huntingdon was still such a Royalist town that they didn’t want the statue and it came to St. Ives instead. He name wasn’t really Oliver Cromwell anyway. His real name was Oliver Williams.

4. St. Ives Monday Market was started in AD 1200 when King John granted a charter for the market to be held in the streets of town.

5. The world’s first pocked calculator, the Sinclair Executive, was made in St. Ives in 1972 by Sir Clive Sinclair in his factory in the Old Mill.

6. The crest of St. Ives is four bulls’ heads, a reminder of the big cattle markets held in the town in the 18th and 19th centuries.

So amazing to live next to this much history!

On the way to St. Ives I read in a guide book about Norris Museum, so we thought maybe we’ll stop by there if we find it. It just so happened that the museum was a few steps from where we parked. And it was free.

Katya and Mark thought, “Why not?”. It’s small (you can see it behind them) it shouldn’t take too long to walk through it.

Robert and Alex were not sure if they were allowed to go in. But they did anyway.

And the first thing that greeted us at the door was this ancient creature.

The museum had a whole bunch of fossils found in the area of Huntingdon/Peterborough.

And I had never seen mammoth hair before.

Considering the fact we just watched “Ice Age-4” that morning, this museum stop was very appropriate.

Apparently, ice skating was a cool thing to do in the 19th century around here.

And we jumped way back to history to Katherine of Aragon’s lace.

As you can read on the description, Queen Katherine is buried right here, twenty minutes from us, in Peterborough. Katya asked me to take these pictures so she could show them to her school teacher because they are right now learning about the Tudors.

This creation was so exquisite! It was made out of bones, and if I remember it right, by prisoners who were in jail up in Peterborough. Not sure where they got the bones to build them.  The museum had a few examples of this kind.

Our visit was maybe thirty minutes long, but we enjoyed it very much. They had some hands on activities for kids and questions/trail to follow as you walk through the rooms (two rooms?).

This is the in courtyard of the museum. I bet it will be beautiful here in the warmer months.

As we walked out of the museum to find a place to eat lunch, we thought about how happy we were that we did not go to Bath. We would have been just frozen and miserable walking around in this moist cold weather. Although it was hovering around zero Celsius, it felt quite a bit colder. Robert felt the coldest.

After a stop at a candy shop, just to get warmed up and because it was on the way AND because we wanted to ask where we can find good food, we got lunch at the local pizza place. It was pretty good, except I thought it had too much cheese! Kids liked it.

On the way back to our car, we took a detour a bit to the Old Bridge, a famous place in St Ives.  The Bridge was built in the 1420s, it has a chapel in the middle. There are only three other bridge chapels in the whole country. And one of our friends told us yesterday, we can check out keys to the chapel from the Norris Museum and go look inside. So we’ll definitely have to come back.

 Swans everywhere.

Run, Mark, run!

The view from the bridge—a very wintery gray day, as you can tell. On the right, you can find a wonderful Tea Room with traditional décor and wonderful sandwiches.

So come visit us! We’ll take you to St. Ives, hopefully when it is warmer.

And in case you forgot the riddle:

As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives, 

Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats, 

Each cat had seven kits: kits, cats, sacks and wives, 

How many were going to St. Ives?

Lyana.