A day out

This week has been really unusual for me - it's been very long and it's not over yet.

The major event for this week was spending the day in Ely yesterday, with St John's school. A delightful bunch of year 8 students piled onto a coach and headed up north (yes I know it's not that far away...) with the Head of RE, the Deputy Head, a parent helper and me.

Ely is in Cambridgeshire and has a rather large cathedral off to one side. It's a very quiet village for a place that has such an amazing building... I can imagine that it's heaving in the summer... but on a mild spring day, there was only one other school there and we had the privilege of being shown the cathedral by the educational officer.

So here's a photo or two to whet your appetite and maybe get you to go to Ely...

Here's the sight that you're greeted with - to the left is the Lady Chapel (big clear windows) and the tall tower is the lantern. The rest is the main body of the church.


This is underneath the lantern - the Octagon, named because it has 8 sides (shocker). The higher structure is iron-clad wood and it rests on stone pillars. The head of RE said that I would get dizzy looking down, but when you're looking up 100 feet, it's not difficult to topple over backwards! This was built in the 1300's - it's impressive from the ground, but when you get to climb to see the angels, it becomes even more impressive.

It's hard to get the scale, but these angels were huge! I'm just over 5 foot tall - so these beautiful paintings must be 10 maybe 12 feet in height!


This is right at the very top of the Octagon and a picture of the West Tower and the countryside beyond... We were 100 foot up at this point, very cold and trying to imagine what it would be like to be 200 foot up at the top of the tower we were looking at.

If you want to visit Ely, have a look at their website for all the information. It is well worth the climb to get up to the top and have a look, especially if you've got a clear day!

Ely has an incredible history, not just at the cathedral, but in Oliver Cromwell's house too - which is a minutes walk from the front door of the cathedral and worth doing the tour.

I really enjoyed myself, getting to know the year 8 students, learning about a parish I hadn't been to before and acting like a tourist for a bit.

The week goes on though, I'm heading to Great Baddow tomorrow for some training and then to Chris' for a birthday celebration.

Time and space to gather myself together to head to youth group later on.