The splendour of Ely

From where I’m sitting I can see a good part of Ely’s Octagon. The Octagon is a lantern, like Sheffield’s only about 500 years older. It is also tower. It sits atop the crossing, and makes a splendid statement.

In their Norman beginnings, Ely and Lincoln cathedrals were in a battle royal: which could build faster, grander, reflecting more divine (or bishoply) glory. For hundreds of years the competition waxed and waned, but was never quite resolved. Hence, perhaps, the extravagance.

I’m attending a solemn eucharist. Personally I might prefer it slightly less solemn, but solemnity suits the place. Then while the congregation is dispersing, via its well-earned coffee off to one side, I’m setting up in front of the high altar.

The view from here is awesome. Christine, from Australia, comes to ask me if there are any dragons here. All sorts of answers are possible, but I plead ignorance as a visitor myself. Oh, she said; she’d seen me move a chair with the kind of authority that could only denote belonging and knowledge.

A nice settled audience is gathering, including a couple who said they missed me in Southwell, and have therefore followed me here, and a young research scientist from China stationed in Cambridge for a few months. She loves Bach, she says, and listens to nothing else when she’s working…

By the time I meet Christine for the third time, outside afterwards, I find out why she’s looking for dragons. Did she find any in the cathedral, I ask? More than you might think, she says.

On these flat, flat, lands, wind speed and direction are of utmost importance. I’m bowling along at 18 or 20mph on long straight stretches, and then turn at right angles and slow to not much more than half that.

I can see for miles. If I turn and look over my shoulder – unwise though that is, even on a straight and empty road – I can still see Ely’s tower after ten miles.

The view is disconcertingly wide. It feels as though there would be no protection from any kind of alien invasion, which the three giant white puffballs of an observatory suggest might be a concern in these parts.

After twenty miles though it becomes a tiny bit less flat. The tall but useless poplar tree windbreaks have grown into more roadside substance, and minor undulations restrict the views to a human scale in most directions. I think I’m cycling with less urgency. Or perhaps I’m just tired.

There’s a village with a house called Fire Wood, next to one called No Turning. Further on there are big properties that I’m sure I recognise from Kevin McCloud’s Grand Designs, and wind-stressed banners pleading STOP the Family Farm Inheritance Tax.

Then Thetford Forest, which really does look like a proper forest. And then Thetford itself, and a modest hotel where the manager is horrified by the size of my bike, and insists it be removed from her reception immediately.