Houghton Mill and Peterborough

We don’t normally go away in July and August, but we had been invited to a 50th wedding anniversary in Rutland so we used this opportunity to visit friends and to see Peterborough, a town we didn’t know.

The first stop was Houghton Mill Caravan Club Site. This photo is of the mill from the site.

Houghton Mill is the only working watermill left on the Great Ouse. The present building probably dates from the 18th century and was substantially altered and extended in the 19th century.

In its mid-19th century heyday, the mill ran 10 pairs of stones, powered by three separate waterwheels. Much of the internal machinery remains intact although the wheels were removed in the 1930s when the mill stopped production. Today, corn is ground by a pair of millstones powered by the north waterwheel which was re-instated in 1999.

This information is courtesy of the National Trust web site.

Carol and David live just across the river so we spent a lot of time with them in the three days we were there.

Next we moved to Peterborough. We stayed at the Ferry Meadows Caravan Club Site which is a large site split into two sections. We chose the section without the play park which, we realised later, was a very good move.

We had heard that Peterborough wasn’t very nice, but we were pleasantly surprised that a lot of money had been spent on modernising the centre and it will look very good when finished, which could be soon.

The origins of Peterborough Cathedral can be traced back to King Peada of the Middle Angles who founded the first monastery on the site in 655AD. The monastic settlement was almost entirely destroyed by the Vikings in 870 and rebuilt as a Benedictine Abbey between 960 and 970. The Abbey church then survived Hereward the Wake’s attack on the Abbey in 1069, and remained intact until an accidental fire destroyed the second Abbey here in 1116. It was rebuilt in its present form between 1118 and 1238. It became the Cathedral of the new Diocese of Peterborough in 1541 and it is now known as the Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew.

 Information courtesy of the Cathedral website.

Old style camper             Ferry Meadows

Ferry Meadows on the outskirts of Peterborough is a large recreational area with plenty of grass and lakes. On the two weekends we were there, there was a vintage car show the first weekend and a kids’ concert the second weekend. We visited the vintage car show – unsurprisingly we recognised many of the cars because our parents drove them all those years ago! 

Does that make us vintage? Answers on the back of a very small stamp please.

Maps were cheap in the olden days!

The Nene Valley Railway (NVR) passed within 50 yards of our caravan so we had a day out travelling on the train.

A lady driver! For the main services a diesel train was used so that the dry vegetation at the side of the track wasn’t set alight.

  Thomas the Tank Engine did special runs for the children on a small part of the track.

Me on a static engine  

This is the newish sport of ‘hydrosphere’. You get zipped into the plastic sphere which then gets pumped up – it’s fairly quick. Then……

…..you can walk on water. I think there are weight and size limits which disqualify me from having a go.

David and Carol joined us on site for 3 nights. Here they are at the Sheepwash geocache.

We did lots of other things in and around the area, like cycling (loads of cycle tracks) and plenty of geocaches.

So that’s it from Peterborough.