Peterborough; Sunday, 22 August, 2021

I had another early start to the day, and once gain back over to the bus station, though this time it was to catch a local bus just a handful of stops into the suburb of Longthorpe. Today this is a very nice looking suburb with large thatched houses. It was also a sought-after address in the 14th century when the Thorpe family expanded their house by adding a fortified tower to it.

Over three generations the family went from being peasant farmers to being knighted for services to the Bishop of Peterborough and being able to afford the finest things in life. This extended to the decoration of their tower. However, during the reformation the walls were painted over to cover up the mostly religious imagery. Following damage during the second world war the walls were cleaned, and the paintings rediscovered. Unfortunately, a botched restoration project by the British Museum led to most of the colour being lost from them, but the images can still be clearly seen and the tour of the tower includes a detailed description of what the paintings show, or are believed to show.

From the town I walked down through the local park land towards the River Nene and my second steam railway of the day – the Nene Valley railway, picking it up at Orton Mere station. Another victim of Richard Beeching the line originally ran from the East Coast mainline at Peterborough following the river Nene through Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire until it met a line off of the West Coast mainline at Northampton. As with so many other lines it was preserved soon after services were killed off and today has been expanded back to run from a station just on the opposite side or the River Nene from the centre of Peterborough to a station about 8 miles away at Yarwell. The Nene Valley Railway has been one of the most successful of the preserved railways, carving a niche out for itself in films – with large portions of the 1980s Bond film Octopussy filmed on the line.

By pure fluke I was in Peterborough on a weekend where they had a special festival on, and consequently they were running relatively frequent services, which meant I didn’t have to wait long for a train to turn up to take me up the line from Orton Mere to the railways headquarters at Wansford where the train had a 20 minute stop to allow people to look around the site (and no doubt visit the gift shop), before it continued on the short distance to the end of the line at Yarwell.

From Yarwell I caught the train back to Peterborough and then walked the 15 minutes or so back into the centre of town and over to the cathedral to have a look around. Whilst it’s not the most impressive cathedral, it does have some serious history to it – being the burial place of Katharine of Aragon, the first wife of King Henry VIII, as well as – for a while – being the burial place of Mary, Queen of Scots, before her body was moved down to London.

From the cathedral I had a bit of a wander through the town centre and stopped off for lunch before heading over to the city museum and gallery.

The museum is located in a former hospital building, which isn’t obvious at first, until you climb further up to the top and come across the operating theatre rooms with their massive glass skylights that illuminate the rooms. The museum has an interesting collection of artefacts on the history of the area from prehistoric through, inevitably, the Romans up to the modern day.

I headed back over to the Nene valley station and caught the train back up the line to Wansford, before back tracking one stop to Overton where the railway has a small exhibition dedicated to the connection between the post office and the railways, including some examples of the Travelling Post Office cars – older versions of which were immortalised in the Night Mail.

After a quick stop for coffee in the very pleasant café on the station I caught the last train of the day back to Peterborough and wandered back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out later for a quick dinner and an early night.