I is for Isleham

Sunset near our house.

First off, sorry for the weird formatting with Blogger in this entry...I can't get the pictures in and the text without it being weird, so you guys just have to suffer. Grrr...

Isleham is a village which is part of Ely, in Cambridgeshire in East Anglia, and where we called home for 3+ years.  It's peaceful and quiet and kind of out in the middle of nowhere, as we discovered people are more apt to drive through the bigger towns around it, and not through it.

The front of St. Andrew's Church

The town has a few churches, including St. Andrews (a lovely old building), two pubs (The Rising Sun and The Griffin) as well as a fantastic restaurant (The Merry Monk) which was literally down the street from our house.  There's also a Co-Operative grocery store (very handy for a quick bite or a forgotten ingredient) and a Post Office.

Roses outside a house in our part of the neighborhood.

If you're into history and old things, there's even the Isleham Priory Church.  For a while, I'd drive by this old building every day and wonder what it was...turns out it's old as dirt (or nearly so...it was built around 1090, and no, that's not a typo). It was amazing to have something like that just a stone's throw away from where you lived, and no, I didn't throw stones at it. I'd probably be arrested.

Me, enjoying a pint of cider at The Griffin.

Isleham is out in the Fens, which are rich farmland.  And yes, that's pretty much all that surrounds it in every direction.  Isleham even used to be an island until the locals drained it (as we were told by, well, locals), back in its early days.

Wheat fields on the outskirts of town.

Isleham is about 25ish minutes from Cambridge, so it was super-convenient for when we wanted to shop or take the train to London.  The whole town was very walkable, though; both my husband and I enjoyed running around the town and always felt safe.




So if you think the only things to see in England involve cities, I'll just take the rest of this post and show you with my awesome pictures why you must explore the countryside.

The view over the farmland on my way back into town.
I'd often stop to take a picture or two of the sunsets. 

Come on by for J tomorrow!



*note* All pictures in this post are mine.



xoxo Sarah