Back to the UK after 50 years

That evening we had a more formal meal. Cambridge is a vey walkable city. Most of the venues were only 4 or 5 km away so we walked there.

Kings College Chapel from another angle at dusk. Looking across the Cam River.

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St John's College Gate

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Clare College

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Kings College Gate

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The meal was held at an old mill

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The pond in front

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There was still an operative water wheel inside

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Again not really an occasion for photos to put on here.

My wife had bought a lot of packets of Caramello Koalas from Australia so everyone got a taste of an Oz treat. One of the attendees was about 9 and he spent a bit of time finding any that had not been claimed.

The meal was just ok

Choice of soup or salad nicoise

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Then choice of various roasts with Yorkshire pudding or Steak & Ale Pie. We both chose Beef thinking it was the traditional English one to go with. The meat was tender but with absolutely no taste. It was a bit like if 'roast beef' from the Coles deli counter had been warmed up.

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Nice sticky toffee pudding to finish

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For the final morning we had a mass punting expedition with four punts chartered. I had been disinclined to do this anyway because of my suspect knees. But after I had injured my back early on there was no way I could sit down in one or more importantly get up without much screaming. Even getting out of bed was a big effort. Once I was on my feet I was able to walk all day but lowering to or rising from a low place was incredibly painful.

On the way there we came across a 'fun run'. we were starting from Silver St bridge but pedestrian traffic was allowed.

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The starting point

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Not exactly raised seating

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Some of our travellers. Luckily the weather was pretty much perfect that day

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My wife took plenty of photos from her punt. It looked to have been a really nice trip.

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Not much headroom under some of the bridges

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The Bridge of Sighs. Linking parts of St Johns College. It is so named because of its perceived resemblance to the one in Venice.


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With a traffic jam

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The Mathematical Bridge Queens College. Originally built in 1749. But is a type of Ship of Theseus as - "It has subsequently been repaired in 1866 and rebuilt to the same design in 1905."

Although it appears to be an arch, it is composed entirely of straight timbers built to an unusually sophisticated engineering design, hence the name.

  • The design is a minor triumph of mid-18th century engineering, for which credit must go to James King (d. 1744);
  • The bridge spans a 50-foot river using multiple shorter lengths of timber: for instance, the horizontal element which appears to span the entire river is made of six shorter timbers jointed end-to-end;
  • The design is an implementation in timber of a voussoir arch bridge, in which the individual elements are held in a state of compression by the action of gravity on the whole structure: a voussoir bridge requires strong abutments to balance the compressive forces at the springing of the arch;
Ship of Theseus - Wikipedia




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The back of Kings College with runners

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Some with unusual garb

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New Court - St John's College

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Thanks Martine the reunions have usually been fun. With have made a number of friends there some of whom have visited us in Australia and the same for us in Europe..

The other reunions not shown earlier were :-

Perth 2007 - from the Fremantle Roundhouse

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Kempton Germany 2011

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Ottawa Victoria Island - 2016

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Berlin 2022 - from the top of the Humboldt Forum

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Thanks again for putting together your report. The photos remind me of the places we visited back in the 70s. Certainly, I think Cambridge is one of the most interesting places to visit in the UK, much better than Oxford.

The idea of a very-extended family get together is appealing. I have some German heritage on my mother's side - the Baums who emigrated from Clausthal-Zellerfeld in Hannover, in 1851. I should see where they all spread to.
 
Thanks again for putting together your report. The photos remind me of the places we visited back in the 70s. Certainly, I think Cambridge is one of the most interesting places to visit in the UK, much better than Oxford.

The idea of a very-extended family get together is appealing. I have some German heritage on my mother's side - the Baums who emigrated from Clausthal-Zellerfeld in Hannover, in 1851. I should see where they all spread to.
Thanks. I think I saw about a quarter, if that, of what I would have liked to see in Cambridge. I underestimated how interesting the place is. Three nights was too short a stay especially being built around the reunion.

At this reunion we had people from the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, Singapore and Australia. At other reunions there have been attendees from New Zealand and Malaysia - with a lot from Sabah,

This below might be a good place to start your search on-line. I know that the people looking at the Neubronner family got some information from it. To my disgrace we didn't visit it when we were in Bremerhaven. I accidentally went to the local museum instead - which was a nice small place. But we did get to the excellent German Maritime Museum.

 
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Thanks again for putting together your report. The photos remind me of the places we visited back in the 70s. Certainly, I think Cambridge is one of the most interesting places to visit in the UK, much better than Oxford.

The idea of a very-extended family get together is appealing. I have some German heritage on my mother's side - the Baums who emigrated from Clausthal-Zellerfeld in Hannover, in 1851. I should see where they all spread to.
and there are some in the Clare Valley in SA
 
and there are some in the Clare Valley in SA
They first settled in SA as they were miners, and some left for Victoria at the start of the 1900s where my line comes from. As a funny aside, on Shaun Micallef's series Origin Odyssey, Denise Scott's ancestors also came from the same area in what is now Germany. My mother called me to see if I had seen the episode as she got quite excited that someone else had a connection to that area.
 
Here are a couple of videos my wife took on her punt. We only got an action camera just before we left on this trip so we are still novices at using it



Some other photos from around Cambridge

Senate House Passage

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Old Court of Clare College

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Kings College Chapple

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New Court Christs College

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The cloisters beneath the Wren Library at Nevile's Court in Trinity College,

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Surfer Flyfrequently knows one from Geelong @kookaburra75
That might be from the two brothers who came across to the Wimmera in Victoria when it opened up for settlement in the 1890s around Horsham. They quite many children who would have moved around the place. While I have researched my father's surname line back into the UK (and a seafaring trigamist g-g-grandfather), there are other lines like the Baums that I need to follow up.
 

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