One of the old buildings in Saffron Walden

Gardens - a great example of beautiful trimmed bushes

The hedge maze from the little platform in the center

The library - with beautiful live piano.

Tons of mostly bird taxidermy in the estate - this case is just owls

The phone booths are mostly just for picture taking

An interesting clock that was unveiled by Stephen Hawkins

An apple tree that has grafts form the apple tree where Newton grew up (and had 🍎 fall on his head)

Cambridge with the famous clock in beautiful sunset light

Saffron Walden and an evening in Cambridge

August 10 in England ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

We started the day with walk around Saffron Walden (no VoiceMap here!) and saw some ChatGPT recommended old buildings. We also stopped by at the unexpected beautiful manicured free gardens. It even had a hedge maze that was not trivial and had us wander around for a bit! We then went to a nearby Audley End House and Estate. It was a massive and beautiful 3 story estate house - we learned about its complicated history of its ownership - it was gifted and moved several times between esteemed titular families, and there were a lot of royal intrigues and love stories involved. The house still is owned and maintained by the last family and operates as a museum and event venue.

We then drove to Cambridge and in ten afternoon I did a VoiceMap tour about physics in Cambridge. It was indeed a fascinating place with many discoveries - electricity by Maxwell, Alan Turing worked there, DNA structure was discovered there, and splitting of the atom. It was amazing to walk around the same buildings and labs where these critical discoveries were (and still are!) being made.Read more