19th October 2025

 

           Dear All,

As a follow up to last week’s report of the Quiz for the Old Folks Day Centre we raised £1288.

 

 

Quiz underway

 

After our swim this week “10 Turning Points in European History” this week “The Age of European Exploration” all the boats setting out initially from Portugal and Spain searching for spices and spreading Christianity starting in the 1490s. Bartholomew Dias, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama etc. Access to Spices was very lucrative with the prices expanding exponentially:

Spice Island 1

Malacca 2

Calicut, Indian 4

Alexandria 80

Venice 250

The Pope Alexander divided the world between Portugal (Africa) and Spain (South America) to try and stop them fighting.

On Tuesday after a trip to the dentist I met up with a few ex NIAB folk for lunch at Girton Golf Club and we were briefly joined by Tom Webster’s close friend Jock Sneddon who reached 100 years last month. Kate meanwhile was studying the Stars in her new U3A course. Later the outside drain blocked and while Kate puggled it free I made a new cover to stop the leaves entering again.

 

 

Drain Cover

 

On Wednesday I finished digging at the allotment and caned the Brussels sprouts and broccoli. Norman Ingle came for lunch and after I tuned into a U3A talk about “Cricket in Cambridgeshire”. In the evening the Over Garden club speaker was a Mr Honey who spoke on “Wasps”. It was a very interesting talk with some excellent visuals. There are evidently 9,000 species of wasp in the UK including social, solitary, burrowing and parasitic ranging from 0.5mm to 3.5cm. His message was do not kill them they do an enormous amount of good killing huge numbers of pests in your garden.

 

 

Bees, Wasps & Hornets

 

Kate has been busy planting a new strawberry bed from runners of the new variety we planted last year Malling Centineray.

 

Kate Strawberry Planting

 

Our walk this week was a familiar route from Orwell round the Wimpole Estate. We had good conditions for walking cool, dry and no wind. Masses of fallen leaves. Our old leader Philip Shaw put in an appearance as it was his 86^th birthday so drinks all round!

 

 

Orwell Clunch Pit

 

Wimpole Charcoal Burner

 

 

Wimpole Church

 

 

Wimpole Hall

 

 

 View of the Lake & Folly

 

 

Autumn Leaves

 

“Biographies” on Friday featured “Marie Curie”

She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

 

 

Marie Curie

The garden is still producing despite to continued lack of rain. The fig tree has produced a second crop and there has been a few late strawberries and raspberries.

 

 

Today’s Harvest

Best wishes

 

Mike & Kate