GRANTCHESTER

On The Rooftop

"But Grantchester! Ah, Grantchester!

There's peace and holy quiet there."

So wrote Rupert Brooke in 1912, in his poem "The Old Vicarage". With hordes of tourists these days, and the men trimming the tree, peace and quiet are no longer the first words that spring to mind. But the reasons for Grantchester's popularity remain the same - a beautiful, easy walk from Cambridge, a village of thatched cottages, and one of the most charming places anywhere to have tea.What a breath of fresh air! I'm just not a city girl, I've said it before, getting out into the countryside and a small village like Grantchester, so close to Cambridge but miles away, was a tease. I wanted to walk there and back, but driving was called for. 

Grantchester is known for a couple things - the TV series filmed there with the handsome troubled Vicar Sydney Chambers, and a get away for the literati such as Rupert Brooke, Virginia Wolff. Life was simpler for sure. 

Lovely Verse

......he died in 1915 en route to Gallipoli, aged 27 

"Stands the church clock at ten to three?

 And is there honey still for tea?"

The tea gardens opened here in 1897 when a group of students asked the owner to serve them tea beneath the apple trees; before long it had caught on and is now a Cambridge tradition. Brooke lodged at Orchard House in 1909 and the Orchard became the meeting-place for his Bohemian circle of friends - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, John Maynard Keynes - who came to be known as the Grantchester Group.

Being without internet and phone the last four days has been relaxing. On one hand I felt pressure to answer people who kept sending me things, to look into the weather for Hurricane Irma. But I couldn't so I was taken back in time to postcards, short calls and waiting patiently. It wasn't bad! 

We ate outside, ham, cheese, lemonade, bread, creamy butter.... you could almost hear their laughter. 

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” 

 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own