Day 4. This morning we woke quite early, after our long day yesterday. After a leisurely breakfast in the hotel, we went just across the road from the hotel to catch a bus back to Heathrow, where we caught a coach to Ipswich. The coach stopped at various terminals in the airport, before heading out on the M25 towards Stanstead Airport. As soon as we left Heathrow, we noticed a huge backlog of traffic coming in towards Heathrow, on the M25. A lot of it was at a standstill, or just crawling. We had a great run in our direction, thankfully. Rob calculated, based on the speed were going and the length of time it was before the traffic jam cleared, that those poor people were backed up for about 20 kilometres! How awful for anyone who had a plane to catch, or some other kind of deadline.
We walked to our Hotel and were a bit confused at first when we approached it, because there was a building that looked like a warehouse, where we were expecting to find our hotel. We had to walk around the back to find the front entrance! We suspect it was converted from a warehouse at some stage.
During the afternoon, we have made up for the lack of walking while we were stuck on planes and at airports, and have walked lots. We feel so much better already!
We haven't seen much of the town centre yet. We will do that tomorrow. Today has been more about mixing with the locals and exploring back streets. We love going off the beaten track.
Day 5. We had a lovely walk into the City Centre. Weather was warmish and not a cloud in the sky. The City Centre has lovely old streets that are free of cars. There are some quirky old timber framed buildings and old churches built out of dark grey stone.
One example is St Peter's Church which was built on the site of an original 7th century wooden church. The existing church was built between 1130 and 1200. Over the years, it has undergone many restorations and finally in 1973 it officially closed as a place of worship. In 1979 the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust took over the care of the church and in 2008 it was reopened as a concert and heritage centre. At the back of the church there were some amazing tapestry wall hangings depicting the history of Ipswich.
While wandering through the shopping streets we walked into he Edinburgh Woollen Mill and surprisingly, we found old classic DVDs and CDs. We bought a DVD of The Ghost Train (written by Arnold Ridley (who played Godfrey in Dad's Army). Rather topical because we are going to have a Dad's Army adventure in Norfolk, after the Aldeburgh festival. We also bought a CD of Tony Hancock, which includes a really funny episode called The Blood Donor.
We had lunch on a park bench in the most wonderful park (Christchurch Park) where Christchurch Mansion is situated. We went into the mansion, and saw all the various drawing rooms, chambers, servants quarters, kitchen and wash house, scullery etc. There was also a gallery of Constable and Gainsborough paintings. (Both born within 10 miles of each other and drew their inspiration from the Suffolk countryside).
We walked all along the waterfront. There has been significant redevelopment, with apartments and hotels overlooking the water. We looked at the prices of apartments in a real estate window and surprisingly, they didn't seem very expensive.
Tomorrow we are off to Aldeburgh on the bus.
