Thursday 11th July 2024.
We are participating in an Auto Sleeper Owners Club meet here in St Ives organised by the wardens Barbara and Alan, although we have owned an Auto Sleeper for 18 months now and been a member of the association for almost as long this is the first meet we have attended. We are spending a long weekend here with motorhome buddies Alison and Peter.
Where we are staying isn’t a camp site as such but a field that is set up for meets such as the one we’re on, water and waste disposal is provided but otherwise you have to be self sufficient. The site is only 200 yards from the edge of town.
I had a minor problem with the waste water pipe so I googled DIY stores and discovered there was one about 400m away so after lunch we walked into town.
There are meadows alongside The Great Ouse river which is metres from the site and this low bridge carries the road over one of the meadows.
Before the bridge was built there was a ford across the river, the first record of a bridge dates back to about AD 1100 and was built of wood, a stone replacement was built in the 1420’s. The building on the bridge was a chapel built to take tolls from travellers and was also used for church services and is almost unique. Built for use of horses and carts it took the weight of lorries and buses until a bypass bridge was built in 1980, it is now pedestrianised.
The quay has been in existence for nearly a 1,000 years , merchants came to the town from many parts of Europe crossing the North Sea and travelling up the Great Ouse to moor here. Later barges or lighters went back and forth to the port of Kings Lynne transporting goods such as coal upstream and corn downstream.
taraabit 