Orchard Park

Last week to Orchard Park in Cambridge. The roads were pretty clear and it took us about two hours to get to Birchanger services on the M11, as previously noticed at reference 1. A hot day, so it was nice to take a short break in cool of the service area.

There was a very small supply of newspapers in the large W H Smiths there, although, to be fair, they could manage a Guardian and a TLS. Sold to me by a cheerful young lady from somewhere in east central Europe. She even bothered to look up from her telephone to pass the time of day.

Not so nice to find that when we came to try to get out, a lorry had got stuck and was blocking the exit. No movement at all. After about half an hour some people appeared in hi-vis vests and things started to move again. We wondered where the impromptu traffic marshals came from: were they people working the service station who had volunteered against such a contingency? Rather as people volunteer to be fire marshals in large office blocks?

Eventually we made it to Orchard Park, picked out with the red dashed line on the snap above, sandwiched between the A14 above and Kings Hedges Road below. My first impression was a cut price version of King Charles' speculation at Poundbury in Dorset. A mixture of low rise flats and town houses, given a bit of variety in shape and various shades of pastel and grey. Mostly without front gardens and with small back gardens, but the roads were mostly tree-lined. Some green space. A large Travelodge and a rather smaller Premier Inn. There was said to be a shop although we did not come across it.

Not altogether sure who the estate is targeted at, but a quick peek at the Internet suggests that one would get a lot more house for £500,000 than you would in Epsom. This despite Cambridge being something of a boom town. This despite the estate being next door to various science parks and handy to excellent communications. We wondered if some of this last was down to the need to link Felixstowe docks a bit to the south east with the far north; an accident of location.

In the top property, note the car port, a feature of some of the houses here at Kiln Lane, as most recently noticed at reference 2. A feature I rather like the look of, although I have never had one. At least not since we had a share of an open shed in a yard at Hambledon in Hampshire, many years ago now. The home of cricket for those that care about such things.

Our room in the Travelodge was perfectly clean and decent, if a little small. The only thing that irritated me slightly was that little spaces usually contrived both sides of the bed head, handy for keeping keys, wallets and such like, along with one's bedside reading, was too small to serve more than one of those purposes. But the plumbing worked and we worked out how to work the taps - with the result, it being hot, that I had my first shower for a while. Not something that happens very often at all.

Perusal of gmaps revealed a public house not far away, The Ship of Northfield Avenue, the orange pin bottom right in the snap above. So, declining the dinner offer at the hotel, more or less a cut down menu from Wetherspoons, we headed off to the Ship.

But before we got to the hostelry, we passed a large building called 'King's Hedges Educational Federation', which seems to be a fancy name for a large infant-primary school, as described at reference 2. The local education authority appear to handle at least some of the admissions, so they have not cut themselves adrift completely. At least four head teachers I should think: infant head, primary head, executive head and chieftain head - the school being quite near Chieftain Way. A focus on heads which might amuse those with a naval background.

The Ship turned out to be a newish build, mostly single storey affair, catering mainly to the Kings Hedges Estate, that is to say the next one down from where we were staying. Quite busy, inside and out, to the point where the barmaid did not get very much down time in the two hours or so that we were there. Just the odd fag out back. Talking of which, there was a fair amount of smoking outside and a fair amount of rolling inside, more than you would get in an Epsom pub, even TB, these days.

There were beer engines, but I doubt if they were connected to beer. Very much a lager house. Maybe a touch rowdy late on Friday, this being early on Thursday, so quite safe for the elderly.

Substantial table tops, possibly joined to their undercarriages in later life.

Not wanting a full-on meal at this point, a perfectly adequate lasagne, even if I failed to get the right focus. BH did not do as well with her fried fish which was a little tired, probably rather like that I had had in the Eagle the previous week, as noticed towards the end of reference 4.

Now run by Wells & Co of Bedford. And as can be just about seen in the snap above, someone thought that it would be as well to erect at six foot panel fence between the garden and the sidewalk. Perhaps there were just too many cracks from passing youth.

On the way back to the hotel, another building with a rather grand name. And an internal telephone box. Perhaps it serves coffee to the inmates.

Quite a lot of space is given to dedicated bus lanes. It would hardly do in London.

Even in the best run estates.

I liked the detailing at the corner of the building in the middle of the snap above. It provided a bit of visual interest.

A tree lined street, hotel right. I passed on a nightcap, I passed on a second shower (which would have been unprecedented) and proceeded directly to Kindle and Vanity Fair. Where I learned a new-to-me use of the word 'creditable'. That is to say, a soldier at the time of the Battle of Waterloo to whom a Brussels shopkeeper or tavernkeeper might reasonably extend credit.

And a little bit further on a bit of what-ifery, a mode of thought last mentioned at reference 6. Here described by Thackery as: 'a most puzzling, amusing, ingenious, and profitable kind of meditation'. The what-if being, what if Napoleon had delayed his descent from Elba by a few months, waiting until his conquerors had stood their armies down and had got down to serious squabbling about the spoils. Then he might have walked it and reigned for the rest of his natural. Although what might have happened after that is a bit more speculative.

A book that wears its getting on for 200 years pretty well. It remains an interesting and entertaining read - and rather more sophisticated that the various screen adaptations would suggest. Illustrated by the author in the edition snapped above.

PS 1: failed to work out this afternoon how to do print screen on a Zbook in Windows 11, despite the right hand shift key having the additional label 'prt sc'. As so often happens, the advice turned up by the likes of Bing does not quite work. Maybe I will get there in the end. But a plus was learning something new about the way that the snipping tool works, storing an image in the Screenshots folder which I had not known about - and have so far failed to bottom out. 

PS 2: at 19:52 this Sunday evening, the Google servers seem to be struggling for once. Rare for them to exhibit noticeable delays in anything much.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/piano-76.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/trolley-584.html.

Reference 3: https://www.kingshedgesprimary.org.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/premier-inn.html.

Reference 5: Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 1848.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/swampman.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/fake-167.html. More on the hotel.