Ely

Today's Navigation : River Great Ouse

Our aim today was quite short - to get to Ely early enough to bag a good mooring spot! We also were in dire need of accessing an elsan disposal facility. The weather was forecast to be overcast until lunch time - although we found the forecast kept pushing back the arrival of the sunshine as readily as if it were an entitled pop star!

We left our mooring at Littleport, just beyond Sandhill Bridge. This might at one time have been a busy route into the small town but all the traffic on the A10 is now routed away to the north. This bridge carries just local traffic - it is about a kilometre to the small collection of shops.

This imposing house dominates the entrance into the River Lark, yet another tributary that is navigable for about 10 miles to Jude's Ferry. We went that way in 2018.

After about half an hour we caught our first glimpse of Ely Cathedral, appearing much smaller on the horizon  than this highly zoomed photo suggests! As the land is flat except for the small rise (well. not so small when walking up it!) on which the cathedral stands, it is a highly visible landmark for a large area.

This bridge is named Queen Adelaide Bridge - the eponymous hamlet is alongside the river at this point. According to Wikipedia, Queen Adelaide is a hamlet on the River Great Ouse in the Fens about 1+1⁄2 miles northeast of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. The hamlet is named after a pub, which in turn was named after the British queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

A bridge carrying a railway line from Thetford to Ely follows immediately. This line is not electrified unlike that to King's Lynn. 

The EA Queen Adelaide Moorings are yet another casualty of the easy way in which the maintenance responsibility of the Environment Agency is being eroded. Our record from 2018 shows them then being in good condition.

A narrow entrance belies a large country park - Boswell Pits - that is just beyond, a 20 acre nature reserve, predominantly water.

The wide and straight section of river that we had just cruised along is excellent. So it is no surprise that there are two substantial rowing clubs just before our arrival at Ely: Isle of Ely and Cambridge University Boat Clubs.

We then arrived at the waterside in Ely with a service facility at the first end. With some relief we found that the elsan is still(?) operational albeit needing the user to lift a full cassette quite high up. It seems surprising that there are not better standards for the construction of such facilities that take into account users' physical needs.

Whilst there were a good number of boats on the 2 day visitor moorings opposite the marina, we could see several spaces. Christine did a reconnaissance and selected what seemed to be the best, still on the edge of a green open space, rather than outside one of the several pubs a little further on.

During the afternoon we did a good bit more cleaning especially after the harvest mist from Sandhill! Christine continued to collect the dust inside whilst Mike tackled the bow and stern decks. Both tasks took us up to 4 o'clock and time for a mug of tea before changing clothes for our next target.

Having failed miserably to find church services the last three Sundays we thought we would walk up to the cathedral for Sung Evensong. Here, it is somewhat later than in many cathedrals : 5.30.

We left in good time and although the climb seemed to take for ever, we were more than early. This gave us a chance to look around the inside and the huge space that it provides.

This statue by David Wynne is called Mary Magdalene Recognises Jesus "captures the moment then a distraught Mary recognises Jesus on the morning of the resurrection. The figures are so thin it is though everything has been stripped from them except the core of their being."

The service was being sung by a visiting choir, we think predominantly from Buckinghamshire but some members had travelled quite some way to be here. When we arrived they were still having their final rehearsal and it was not until they had finished that we were admitted to the choir section of the cathedral - with its view of the high altar beyond.

Two more views taken from where we were sitting in the back row of the Choir Stalls (the ones not being used by the choir - theirs were the ones with lit candles!)

The Magnificat was a special setting by Stanford using the words in Latin. It was an expansive approach to capturing the sense of the original words. It was longer than most settings so the congregation were allowed to sit through it (cathedrals normally expect the whole congregation to stand during the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis) Stanford was also the composer of the Nunc Dimittis setting, this time in English. The main section - which are the words said to have been said by the aging priest Simeon, used only the tenor and bass voices but the whole choir then came together for the Gloria. Overall, even if the role of the congregation is to sit or stand and to absorb the experience, it was an uplifting one and well worth the effort of the uphill climb

By the time we had walked back down to the river the promised sun had arrived, giving us a glorious end to the day.

4.9 Miles - 0 Locks