Tuesday 3 April 2012

There and Back Again: To Ely by Train and Boat

On Saturday, we visited the chandlery in Ely and enjoyed a day out there. Visiting the antiques warehouse, we daydreamed about what we would buy for our next boat - in particular there is a beautiful brass bilge pump which has been for sale in their tools section for getting on for four years. In the chandlery we picked up some paint to touch up the roof of the Duck. Peacock's, the delightful tearoom by the river, was completely full so we headed into town instead, to Topping's bookshop. At Topping's they serve free tea to customers, and we spent an enjoyable few hours there. It's an extraordinarily well stocked bookshop - they focus on the breadth rather than depth of their stock, and not only that but the staff are so friendly and appear to really enjoy working there - the atmosphere is just lovely. But alas, their section on narrowboats didn't have anything about historic boats so we weren't tempted to buy anything to add to our collection.




Sunday saw James returning to Ely - coxing a IV who rowed the 51.6 km to Ely and back. Will has written about their adventure over on the Chesterton blog.



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