Pembroke College Mill Lane Redevelopment

Pembroke College's redevelopment of Mill Lane is nearly complete and I was able to wander round the area yesterday. The hoarding in the second photo with the demolition of the old buildings in the background is from June 2022 and these are taken with the same phone!!

Ann Miles Blog: Mill Lane 2022

The last three images show the 'modernisation' works in progress for the University buildings and Millers' Yard  further down Mill Lane.

Icy River Walk

As I missed one bus home after an eye appointment in Cambridge today, I walked across Coe Fen to pick up the next in Newnham. Although it was pretty chilly and lots of frozen areas, nothing to compare with my first winter in Cambridge - a picture here from the press in January 1963 of people skating in the river outside the Garden House Garden.

Happy New Year to 'Old Friends' in Toft

These two Hawthorn trees in Toft's Great Meadow (yes there are two!) are old friends that I have known and watched grow together in perfect harmony for the nearly 60 years. Their branches make a perfect shape as if they are one. I do not know if they started as one very small sapling that split or two that germinated together. In the Churchyard the Snowdrops and Aconites are showing quite a few blooms. A bit sombre in monochrome but it has been very grey recently!!

Life on Toft Logs

Though more or less confined to home by the aftermath of a Christmas Bug, I did manage a walk to the old railway track in Toft to gather a log or two for slime moulds etc which I photographed back at base. I think the first three are all stages of Hemitrichia spp but was excited by the very small black shiny balls thinking a new species of mould but turns out they are a ?mite species. There was also one very active Ichneumon which I am sure is Ophion obscuratus,the Cream-striped Darwin Wasp which does not hibernate in the winter, instead, it disappears for a few months in the late spring and early summer. The female lays her eggs inside the caterpillars of different species of nocturnal moths. The green coloration of the oak log is a funal infection and I collected a piece of coal from the track to see if it had any moulds - negative so far (Oxford Cambridge line ran steam trains from 1860s to 1940s through Toft)

Elisabeth Line Stations London

I think this is my final set of images taken in London in 2024 - a journey from Woolwich exploring the Elisabeth Line Stations  - lots of shiny steel, white surfaces, polished wood and perforations.