ON TO NORTHUMBERLAND!

After the disaster of our first night’s meal, we decided to play it safe after our Cambridge day with some Chinese food which, we figured, was much harder to screw up.  There was a place not too far from our B&B (curiously not mentioned by our Asian hosts; hmm), so we splashed our way there in the car.  It was a curious place.  Fixed-price meal, no a-la-carte ordering, but with several stations for getting the food.  The first was the main one, with steam trays holding an incredible variety of stuff.  The second was a cook-to-order station for a limited amount of items.  You picked what you wanted (with numerical limits for the more exotic items like king prawns) and placed them in a bowl;  the chef then pours your selections into a sieve-basket and plunges the whole into boiling water for 30 seconds.  He pulls it out and dumps it into a wok with your choice of sauce, and quick-saute’s it.  I had squid and shrimp, along with some mushrooms, with a mild black bean sauce.  Delicious!  The offerings from the regular steam line weren’t bad at all, but much more like your average all-you-can-eat place.  One thing I did like a lot was a crunchy seaweed, slightly sweet.  Here’s a photo of my first pass-through, including a mussel, pork rib, beef, fish, dumplings, veggies, mooshu pork, and other stuff.  The machine to the right was at our B&B, and made ridiculously delicious coffees, chocolates, and mixes of the two.  No Mr. Coffee this.  Really, they were good!  We all want one for our houses.  I’d love to know who makes the ingredients.  Quality stuff.

We left Cambridge in a light drizzle, which continued most of the day, and headed northwest to the cathedral at Ely.  Built on an island in the midst of swamps (for defense), it was founded as a monastery in 673 by Etheldreda, a Saxon princess from East Anglia.  Destroyed by the Danes in 870, it was re-founded as a Benedictine community in 970.  Work on the present edifice began in the early 1080’s, before the Norman invasion.  When they did invade, they couldn’t conquer this area, so to save face they sponsored the building of a monastic church that could be seen for miles around, thus displaying their power.  It became a cathedral—the seat of the Bishop—in 1109.  It’s been in continued use ever since, with modifications and repairs.
One of those modifications came after the central tower collapsed at the transepts in 1322.  It was replaced in 1340 by a “lantern,” which is the octagonal thing in the left picture below, and which is supported by the new octagonal pillars at the base, and at the top by eight 60-foot oak pillars that weigh ten tons each.  How did these medievals deal with hoisting such weights?  It boggles the mind.  The top of the lantern actually is suspended from above, another engineering marvel.  
The Ely cathedral has another rare feature, which are the hammer beam ceilings in the two transepts (which date from 1090 and are the oldest parts of the church),which are supported by these buttresses of carved angels (above right).
Our guide told us that the church is bitterly cold in the winter, and the locals enjoy watching what the unsuspecting outsiders wear to musical functions held in the church.  The citizenry bundle up as if going to the Pole.  The church does have an ancient “heating” system, consisting of these big coal/wood-burning structures (below right), that sent 95% of their output straight up the flue.  The portal through which Loni is passing (below left) is the Pryor’s Door, with its original carvings, which dates from 1135 and is the oldest continued-use entrance to the church.

The shrine dedicated to Etheldreda was destroyed when all the religious fanatics went crazy (sort of like ancient Talibands) in the “dissolution” of 1539 and demolished statues and icons as being idolatrous.  They have installed this plaque in her honor on the spot where her tomb once stood.  The choir seats in the picture have been in continuous use since 1340! Nearly 700 years of butts.

Stained glass?  Sure, Ely has them, but in one instance, unique.  The area around used to be used as airbases by the R.A.F. in WWII, so the locals decided to honor the aviators and ground crews by making stained glass windows identifying their squadrons and picturing their aircraft.

Finally, no tour is complete without a little medieval humor.  Most all tombs that have reclining figures on them are posed with legs straight, feet pointed up, and hands clasped in prayer.  Not this guy.  Death?  Ho, hum, the Devil may care!