The Ship of the Fens - by boat

This morning we said goodbye to Tony and Pat (Paws 4 Thought) and headed upstream again, destination Ely.

The Ship of the Fens is visible for miles from the river. There are several seats in the photo, the cathedral being just one of them.

Under the railway bridge the moorings start. We nabbed the first place we came to: just before the services block. Until the boat behind moved off our bow rope was slightly naughtily round a water point bollard. There was space for boats to use the facilities though.

We had a visitor just after lunch; I'll write more about that in a subsequent post. I'll just say that he was very helpful. When he had gone we walked in to the city. Our first point of call was the cathedral, where a Canadian choir was rehearsing for choral evensong. We stayed for the service. After that we were both hungry so, rather than heat the boat up any more by cooking on board, we ate at the Hereward pub, a fake Wetherspoon. (Stonehouse pubco? Something like that.) We both had fish and chips. As I'm comparing with Wetherspoon I'd have to say that the chips weren't as good, and the first beer I was served was cloudy. And most of the ales were off. But it was a nice big piece of fish and the tartar sauce was tasty.

There didn't seem to be a lot of shops in the High Street, which is fine. Plenty of old buildings make the small-scale city an interesting place. We'll explore more tomorrow.