100 Days, 100 Things: Days 61-80

Oh my. The start of my round-the-world Grand Tour is getting close, isn't it? Here's the next 20 of my record of silly, somewhat mundane things in my last 100 days before departure.

61. Wednesday 4th May - Staff Quiz
Which I won with my usual team. Hurrah.

62. Thursday 5th May - closed? Why are you closed?
Apparently my local pharmacy closes early on a Thursday. So having walked all the way down there, I had to walk all the way back without my anti-malarials. Did pick up some biscuits on the way though...

63. Friday 6th May - Doxy-whatnow?
Said pharmacy opens till a sensible time on Fridays so now I have enough Doxycycline to keep my protected from malaria for nearly 2 months in a malarial area. So that's South East Asia and Southern Africa covered.

64. Saturday 7th May - Fotherby & Utterby walking
Took an afternoon stroll around the pretty villages of Fotherby and Utterby with my dad. Shame it was so hazy because I imagine the view from this hill is amazing when it's clear.

65. Sunday 8th May - Cambridge
Spent the afternoon exploring museums in Cambridge. More on that here: Swords, fans & pounamu.

66. Monday 9th May - lookup lessons
Successfully got a colleague using lookups in Excel. Hurrah!

67. Tuesday 10th May - fish pie again
I'm getting good at fish pie. Can't imagine I'll be making much of it while I'm away though...

68. Wednesday 11th May - umm...
Apparently nothing happened on this day. At all. Not even something boring. Oh well.

69. Thursday 12th May - hair
First haircut in nearly 3 years. Got almost 6 inches taken off. Already missing the length, but it's so much easier to manage now!

70. Friday 13th May - Cook Islands daydreaming
I made the mistake of reading THIS ARTICLE on Never Ending Footsteps. And now I really want to go to the Cook Islands and I think I could probably afford to do it. Umm... do I need to add any more destinations to my plans?

71. Saturday 14th May - ballooning. Also, bún.
My mum finally got to take a balloon flight having missed out in India and the UK in recent months. We also paid another visit to Pho in Manchester and I tried bún. It was delicious.

72. Sunday 15th May - Wembley
Down to Wembley with my dad to see Grimsby Town win their playoff final and get promoted back into the Football League. Much fun.

73. Monday 16th May - frequent flyer ahoy!
Joined a frequent flyer scheme. I figure I'll be taking enough flights over the next year that I might as well see if I can get anything back from them.

74. Tuesday 17th May - pre-audit success
As ever, there is an audit going on at work. The pre-audit check went OK. Woo. That is all.

75. Wednesday 18th May - Mail Merge success!
Somehow I managed to get a Mail Merge to walk on a huge amount of data at work. Haven't used it in about 5 years, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

76. Thursday 19th May - budget spreadsheet
In addition to my pre-trip itinerary/budget spreadsheet, I now have a sheet to use during my trip to keep track of expenses. Happy times.

77. Friday 20th May - clickety clack
My mum has very kindly donated her old Nexus 7 tablet to me for my travels. Unfortunately, I hate the onscreen keyboard and I need to be able to type at a reasonable pace to keep up with the blogging and whatnot. So I've bought myself a Bluetooth keyboard and it is wonderful. Clickety keys are much better than that swiping crap.

78. Saturday 21st May - radars & railways
Took a walk on the Lincolnshire Wolds Walking Festival to see the old radar station at RAF Stenigot, coupled with a short walk down the old Bardney-Louth railway. More on that here: Radar & Railways.

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79. Sunday 22nd May - Wembley take 2
A return to Wembley with my dad. Unfortunately there was to be no repeat of the previous visit's success and we went down 1-0 to Halifax in the FA Trophy final. Ah well. We're still going up!

80. Monday 23rd May - tablet tapping
Having got my keyboard to make blogging via the tablet easier, I decided to see how easy it would be to compose, format and post from said tablet. Turns out I can do it and it only takes a little bit longer than it does on my laptop. Bodes well for keeping up the blog while I'm on the road!

Less than 3 weeks to go now. How much more can I cram in before I leave?

Cambridge: Swords, fans and pounamu

Last game of the footy season. Dad went to watch Grimsby Town play Braintree (and win, I might add). That meant a whole day to myself and without anything important to do, I asked Dad to drop me off in Cambridge on the way so I could spend the day exploring.

Cambridge is a lovely little city - big parks, a pretty town centre and packed full of museums courtesy of Cambridge University. I began the day (or rather, afternoon, by the time I got there) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the arts and antiquities museum. First stop this wonderful piece from the palaces at Nimrud.

Especially interesting given the pounding that Nimrud has taken from the twats calling themselves ISIS. I doubt there's a whole lot left of the palace this particular chap came from.

The Fitzwilliam, unlike some of the big museums in London, is pretty easy to navigate, although I'd recommend picking up a floor plan on your way in. There's a couple of little galleries stuck out of the way that I would have missed without it. The first of these is the Rothschild Gallery, with its collection of beautiful medieval and Renaissance art. Among my favourite pieces were this piece of Anglo-Saxon metalwork. I love this style.

Also, this amazing book of music - it's huge so that all the members of a choir could read from it at once.

The second of the Fitzwilliam's little hidden galleries is the Sasakawa Fan Gallery. I've been meaning to visit the Fan Museum in Greenwich for a while, just because it seems like such a strange thing to have a museum of, so this gallery will have to do for now. Some really beautiful old fans from the Far East, plus some rather more flouncy ones from later European courts and high society.

I'm torn on my favourite items though. I fell rather in love with the Korean pottery gallery, having not seen this style in any museum I've visited before. The colour is beautiful and the little pots shaped like squashes are lovely.

The tomboy-ish part of my brain though loved the miniature Royal Armouries they've got going on near the cafe. Who doesn't love a good sword?

The aforementioned cafe does some good lunch options, although a bit expensive. That said, I wasn't going to turn down a falafel scotch egg. Two of my favourite things combined. Yum. From the Fitzwilliam, I headed back towards the town centre to check out the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.

There's a wonderful selection of local artefacts on the ground floor, plus a small display of Inuit items, including this beautiful little bear's head carving.

The upper two floors follow a more traditional museum pattern - big cases with relatively little information about the objects within. There's an amazing totem pole, although I neglected to take note of where it came from. Oops. There's also some great displays about the people of the South Pacific, at which point I went on my now traditional hunt for something made of pounamu. This is the super tough jade found on New Zealand's South Island that's used to make both jewellery and weapons that are a match for iron. I succeeded. I present to you a beautiful pounamu club.

Bit more substantial than my little pounamu manaia pendant!

The museum closed at 4:30pm, so I had a while to kill before Dad came back to get me. Took myself off for a wander around the city. Kings College.

St Botolph's Church. Lovely building and its churchyard looked so quiet and tranquil.

That led me into one of the city's winding back streets with these beautiful old buildings, presumably part of the University.

 

And then I spent a while sitting on a bench near Darwin College, watching the world go by. A lovely day. I need to go back - there's a whole bunch of other museums still to check out.

Been to Cambridge? Got a favourite museum? Do share!