Adventures along the A1(M) (UK trip 7/9)

London, Saturday 1 July 2006
We left Hawes bright and early this morning, bound for London by way of Cambridge.
Our first stop was at Pontefract Castle, the ruins of a Norman motte-and-bailey. There's not much left, but there was a lovely little herb garden set along some stairs. I could only identify about half of the herbs, but it looked quite nice and smelled wonderful. The caretaker gave me a diagram of the garden indicating the various herbs and what their medieval uses were.

Our next stop was Fotheringhay, once the site of a royal castle that has since been practically obliterated. The parish church is still there, a beautiful but small gothic edifice, and this was our intended destination for the stop. Buried within are Richard, Duke of York, and his wife Cecily Neville, the parents of Edward IV and Richard III.

Then on to Cambridge, where we met up with my friends P + J L. We had a lovely picnic in the park under a very old chestnut tree, then wandered around for a while. We saw the outside of the college chapel, but since a degree ceremony was taking place, we didn't go in. We did, however, stop for pints at The Eagle. Across the street from the Eagle was a very old church, St. Benet, which dates to the early 11th century - before the Norman Conquest.
After pints at The Eagle, we went over to the L's house, which was quite nice and had a lovely garden. We had a good visit before heading to London.
That was when an otherwise pleasant day took a downturn. After arriving in London, we ended up driving around for half an hour trying to reach the street with the hotel - the front desk was rather unhelpful with directions. When we did arrive, we found that the hotel had overbooked us, and there were no rooms available. After much hassle, we were given rooms at another hotel. Honestly, I don't even know where in London I am, but at 11pm all we wanted was food and bed. So far London has not been a pleasant leg of the journey.