Wednesday 5th October 2022.
We left the Holiday Inn at 8:15am got onto the M1 again and headed south towards London. After half an hour, we branched off onto the A14 headed into East Anglia region of eastern England. There we hit a bit of stop – go delay at the start but the traffic kept moving and after about 20 minutes it all started going again.
We were heading for a little place called Framingham in Suffolk (county) where Betty’s mother was born and raised until she left the UK for the USA to marry Betty’s dad just after the Second World War had ended. Her mother had left England via Liverpool on the Queen Mary – now an attraction in Long Beach, California. She was one of those that came into Ellis Island and was processed there before moving up to Jaffrey in New Hampshire to marry Betty’s dad. They went on to have three daughters and did a good job in raising them.
We finally drove into Framingham and found a place to park. The roads were quite narrow in the town, too. There was a busy little cafe on the corner so we jumped in there and a bit of lunch. Feeling refreshed, we headed for Framingham Castle which is still standing and fully intact. We didn’t go in and do a tour as Betty only wanted to see it again and refresh her memory of it from several years ago. Naturally, it filled her full of nostalgia. She would have liked to have found out where her Mom had lived. It was out in the country just outside of Framingham, but she had no idea where it was otherwise I would have made sure we drove out there and possibly met a few of her older relatives that might be still alive.
After our visit to Framingham we got out the iPad and booked a night at the Holiday Inn, Ipswich – a busy little city about 30 miles away. We were still a little out of the way, so used the sat-nav to get us onto the main road south for Ipswich. That silly lady talking to us from inside the dashboard insisted on sending us down a road that was closed for construction repair that she hadn’t been told about yet. We followed her directions and no matter which way we went, we ended up back at the road closed sign. So we switched her off for a while and went our own way. We finally brought the sat-nav back as we entered Ipswich and got directions to our hotel. When we first entered Ipswich, we had entered in London Road where the hotel was situated. However, without a number, the sat-nav didn’t know where to take us and initially took us to the inner city and some really narrow streets – that were actually London Road but not the end that we wanted. It was not too difficult to follow London Road till we got to the hotel. We checked in late afternoon and had a nice room as usual and an evening meal washed down with the proverbial couple of pints of lager.
This has been part 16 of a series of posts highlighting the trip of a British ex-pat in the US when he returns to the UK for a vacation. He shares the experiences with us here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the next few weeks. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I have, and seeing the areas he (and his lovely wife) visit, through my friend David’s eyes. ~ Sherry
David invites you to visit his eBay store while you’re in the neighborhood!
Need to catch up on David’s story? Day 1 ~ Day 2 ~ Day 3 ~ Day 4 ~ Day 5 ~ Day 6 ~ Day 7 ~ Day 8 ~ Day 9 ~ Day 10 ~ Day 11 ~ Day 12 ~ Day 14 ~ Day 15
Comments