Sunday, March 30, 2008

Peterborough

First, a scene of decadence and restraint. Guess which one I was having...


John and I went to Peterborough yesterday to see the wonderful Kate Rusby play. She was not in as good voice as the concert we saw in December, but the band was completely on form and it was a great concert.

Having lived in Peterborough, there were a few places that I wanted to see again. The cathedral was as stunning as ever, even in the rain:

The ceilings are incredibly ornate - they have mirrors around so that you can look at them without craning your neck. I love all the angles in this shot:

Katherine of Aragon (wife #1 of Henry VIII) is buried there, and Mary, Queen of Scots was, for a time. Here's M,QoS' blurb:


And here's the cathedral in the evening, all lit up. No, we didn't have the tripod.
However, despite my emotional attachment, the rest of Peterborough (with the exception of John Lewis, the Lakeland branch, and Pizza Express) is...a dump. It was filled with people who looked like they were either coming from or going to a drug deal, and every other store was a "Cash for your jewelery!" or similar. It was never Bury St Edmunds, even in the early 90s, but we were glad to leave. Sketchy.

Obviously, there are some great places nearby, and the outlying villages within the city are much nicer, but the city centre was dismal. We ended up moving our car from the initial place we'd parked it because we didn't want to walk through the neighborhood at night. And I've lived in New York.

2 comments:

kat | Taylor Made designs said...

yum. that is seriously decadent :)
Your photos are wonderful. I'm glad you moved your car. Good to follow your gut :)

Anonymous said...

Great shot of the Cathedral ceiling, Kate. Do you remember the King's Singers concert there?

Downtown Peterborough was always kind of dodgy in the evenings, too quiet and no life after the shops closed.

I remember attending a business meeting in Scotland shortly after we arrived in England in April 1990.

When asked where we were living, and replied, I was very nicely corrected on my pronunciation of the town, and informed the Brits called it Pita-burra. There's a town in New Hampshire with the same spelling. One wonders if the first settlers there came from western Cambridgeshire...

Dad.