It is one of Mr CK's proudest boasts that an ancestor of his came to England from Normandy (1066 and all that) and was granted a manor in the hamlet of Gestingthorpe. Back in the days of said ancestor (whose name translates as "William the Sinner") Gestingthorpe was in Suffolk, but somewhere in the intervening centuries, it has ended up in Essex. (I hasten to point out that this is due to administrative boundary reorganisation rather than geological activity.)
Now, Gestingthorpe isn't really all that far from Cambridge, but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to get there by public transport. We first made it there in April this year, when we had a brief holiday in Lavenham. To celebrate Mr CK's birthday I spent hours plotting bus routes and timings and we made it (see picture above for proof). Gestingthorpe remains a small hamlet, but it has a beautiful late medieval/early Tudor church and a wonderful gastropub:
The Pheasant, where we had the yummiest of lunches.
That was 6 months ago, and we hadn't expected to get back there so soon. But a friend of ours, who lives on the Suffolk coast, suggested that we meet in Bury St Edmunds and that she would then drive us to Gestingthorpe. We'd planned to eat at the Pheasant again, but soon realised that it would make more sense to eat in Bury St Edmunds. Se we lunched at the
Fox, which just happens to be very close to Wibbling Wools. And I just happened to drop into
Wibbling Wools, where I accidentally purchased some
Rico Tasai and 5mm Lantern Moon rosewood circulars. So I spent a happy afternoon clicking my way through the Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire countryside, whilst Mr CK dreamed of his knightly forebear.
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