Back to boating on the Broads TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 6/5 - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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I can totally hear your Eeyore voice. ok. just the eggs and toast then.
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I think the approach to Ely Cathedral is one of the best. I love how you can see it across the fields.
I can't actually think off the top of my head of anywhere else you can do that in the UK. The only other place I can think of is in France - Reims Cathedral if I remember right.
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Now as we’d passed by the cathedral earlier on, I’d noticed there were ducks and ducklings. I figured we’d be out of luck, and they’d be gone by the time we got there, but they were still around. It was the weirdest thing, because we weren’t convinced the ducklings belonged to the ducks they were with, as they were different colours, and the ducklings within the same breed were completely different too. It was all very odd, but none of them seemed to mind. They were certainly adorable!
Look how close this one little guy got to Mark’s foot!
Mark also found this cannon outside the cathedral…
It’s certainly not your traditional looking cathedral. It was started in 1083, but it took nearly 300 years to complete it. It was closed by Oliver Cromwell, who we’ll come back to in due course, for 17 years.
Now I knew there was a charge to enter the cathedral, but we figured we’d head inside, and just pay up. Well, you could see a little bit of it without actually paying, so we were a bit naughty and did that. I normally would happily pay up, but as we had limited time, it really just wasn’t worth it. At least we got an idea of what it was like inside…
We then headed back outside, and got a few photos of the exterior of the cathedral.
I wanted to get a fridge magnet for the collection, but I couldn’t see a souvenir shop around. We had a look inside the cathedral, but they only seemed to have a café, and no shop. Instead, we started to make our way back the way we’d come, and we saw some beautiful houses, one of which had an amazing garden with everything in bloom. It looked absolutely stunning.
We found some more ducklings, although a lot fewer than earlier. Where they’d all gone, I don’t know…
These two guys were just standing there, although while I was photographing the ducklings, Mark headed over to see them, and later told me that they were completely in unison – whatever one did, the other would then do as well.
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Saturday 2 May – part three: that’s a very cool secret door!
We made our way over to Oliver Cromwell’s house. Now it was Oliver Cromwell who was responsible for making the UK a republic back in the mid 17th century, as a result of the English civil war (yes, we had one too ) and the Cromwell family lived in Ely from 1636 to 1646. Cromwell became the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
These days, the place is now a visitor information centre, and we were able to get the obligatory fridge magnet here, so all was good.
The church next door had some wonderful flowers in its yard. It’s so lovely to see beautiful spring flowers.
We made our way back to the car, and as we did, we heard a load of ducks, in what sounded like a heck of a fight. I just hope those cute little ducklings were Ok.
We headed out, and once again, we were seeing literally miles of rolling flat countryside, although in fairness, this is what this part of the country is known for – flatness.
Soon we were into Norfolk.
We made our way over to our next stop for the day, Oxburgh Hall, a National Trust property. This was built in 1482 by the Catholic Bedingfield family, and as one of the volunteers in there told us, this was really a statement of just how much money they had, as there were very few brick buildings at that time. Generally they were made of stone or wood, as brick back then was so expensive. It’s a stunning place, set in its own moat. It was a shame the sun was in the position it was, as getting photos wasn’t as simple as I’d hoped. The National Trust website and brochure have a stunning image of it, I guess taken near sunset, with the sun reflecting on the building, but there was no way I was going to get a shot like that.
We headed into the courtyard…
… where we found these:
I wasn’t quite clear what they were doing here. Whether they were directors’ chairs left over from some filming, who knows?
We headed into the house to explore it, and the first room you come to is the saloon. This was built in the 1770s, so that the fourth Baronet had somewhere to receive his guests and display his collection of paintings.
Then you got into the drawing room, which was created from the three smaller servants’ rooms in the late 1770s. The decoration in here was commissioned by the seventh Baronet in the 1870s to commemorate his marriage to Augusta Clavering. We heard the volunteer in here explain that these red chairs look new, as they needed to be re-upholstered a couple of years ago. Apparently they were sold, and the National Trust managed to track them down, but when they did, they were covered in blue, and the National Trust wanted to put it back the way it was originally.
The next room we went into was the library, as you can probably see from these photos. This was created by the sixth Baronet in the 1830s by combining two rooms together and most of the detail you see in here today is still original.
We got talking to the volunteer guide in here, as I commented on the white tiger and said “poor old thing” and he immediately told me he’s dead. What I actually meant, regardless of what I think of having a tiger skin on the floor of your library (honestly? Plain weird… ) is that the thing was looking very worn. He told us it was 100 years old, and the kids of the house had fun running around with the head over their heads.
Then he showed us this “secret” door. Honestly, when it was closed, you’d never know that there was a door here. He also explained how someone had married into the family, but he’d married for love, not for money, and the family filled this secret door with books referring to him in not very pleasant ways.
We headed into the dining room once, which in its history had also been a library, and a kitchen, before converting to its current use in the 1830s.
Wow, that is really a magnificent home. I'm with you though on not being too keen on animal skins on my floors!
Neat to see the home of Cromwell. I've been recording the BBC show Wolf Hall, although haven't started watching yet.
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Wow, that is really a magnificent home. I'm with you though on not being too keen on animal skins on my floors!
Neat to see the home of Cromwell. I've been recording the BBC show Wolf Hall, although haven't started watching yet.
Ah, now wasn't that the one that caused all the controversy over here, if I remember right? I'm sure it was that one - where they had literally hundreds of complaints that you couldn't hear the dialogue properly on the first episode, then they changed it for episode two. They've probably re-dubbed it now to avoid such problems....
Ah, now wasn't that the one that caused all the controversy over here, if I remember right? I'm sure it was that one - where they had literally hundreds of complaints that you couldn't hear the dialogue properly on the first episode, then they changed it for episode two. They've probably re-dubbed it now to avoid such problems....
Interesting. I'll take careful note when we start watching on whether I can hear them and whether the sound matches the moving mouths! Did you watch it?
Interesting. I'll take careful note when we start watching on whether I can hear them and whether the sound matches the moving mouths! Did you watch it?
I have to be honest, I'm not a great fan of historic dramas. I know loads of people love them, but they just don't much for me.
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they were still around. It was the weirdest thing, because we weren’t convinced the ducklings belonged to the ducks they were with, as they were different colours, and the ducklings within the same breed were completely different too. It was all very odd, but none of them seemed to mind. They were certainly adorable! 
and did that. I normally would happily pay up, but as we had limited time, it really just wasn’t worth it. At least we got an idea of what it was like inside… 
And the ducklings are so cute! 
Holly: 
) is that the thing was looking very worn. He told us it was 100 years old, and the kids of the house had fun running around with the head over their heads. 
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