We thought that Peterborough wouldn’t be that much of a
sought-after destination in late October. But when we tried to book
accommodation, we realised we were wrong. Everything was booked up! And we are
quite specific: we want a self-catering cottage; not only because cooking
ourselves keeps the cost down, but also because we use the kitchen as an
improvised lab. We really want to be able to check our sediments in the
evening. And in a hotel room that can be a bit of a challenge.
When we were already despairing, Tasha found a place in
Nassington, just west of Peterborough. We just couldn’t book it for the full
period we had kept free in our diary. The day was saved!
The cottage turned out to be quite nice. Not too social on a
larger scale; there was hardly any phone signal, and the internet connection
was rather slow too. It was fast enough, though, to show each other geeky
Youtube videos on the first night; Tasha and I were quite impressed by the
scientific Lady Gaga parody. But the big hit of the night was a LMFAO spoof
(not the NASA one): the Fossil Rock anthem. It would turn out to be very
inspirational...
The kitchen of the cottage provided a stage for culinary
excellence; since we had brought Rob along on the last Isle of Wight fieldwork,
the standard of cooking hadn’t been the same. This trip the menu included
chicken and leek pie, stew, and risotto. Very good! But the kitchen had more
uses; it functioned well as an improvised lab. Plenty of space for two
microscopes, and an assortment of beakers and sieves.
Butternut squash, spinach and goat's cheese risotto: not bad at all!
The social aspect of a fieldwork does not only involve the
living and cooking together; the work itself also has a strong social
component. Coring is team work; it takes two to lift the heavy percussion unit
onto the core barrel, and it takes three (it can be done with two, but that’s
both hard and risky!) to jack the barrel out again. Sampling a core also takes
two. And the better we work together, the nicer it all is. We were used to
coring with four, but that does involve quite some standing around. With three,
we soon were a well-oiled war machine. And the well-oiled was evident in how
smoothly we worked, but it also was a bit more literal than it should have
been: the corer drooled oil wherever it went. And Tasha and Antony don’t tend
to wear gloves. And this time, our coring moves were spiced up by increasingly
skilful renditions of the “fossil rocks” dance. Every day I’m shovellin’...
The drill and its excretions
And where all that oil ends up
The coring is quite heavy work; all the material is heavy,
and this time the sediments were stiff, and really hard to get out of the
barrel. And on top of that, it was late October. That can be quite cold. So
after a day spent coring in a windy field one has deserved a snifter. The first
evening we just enjoyed a drink in the cottage, but the following days we tried
two pubs. On the first day of coring Harry, the local expert, visited us in the
field, and suggested going for a pint when the work was done. He suggested some
barge-turned-pub; we were quite obliging. It turned out to be a good
suggestion! It was a nice pub, with nice beers. The next day we wanted to visit
a pub in Nassington itself; it boasted a history going back to 1674, and that
caught our attention. It turned out that quite many of the visitors’ history
didn’t even go back a decade. Quite a noisy pub! But we didn’t want to stay
long anyway; Tasha had prepared a stew in the morning, and it was waiting for
us in the oven. We wanted to get back before it would boil dry and start
billowing smoke!
The barge annex pub in Peterborough
The barge on the inside
The ancient pub at the edge of Nassington
On Saturday we wanted to go for dinner; our kitchen crew
deserved a day off. The pub we had our eyes on, though, didn’t have space for
us, so we decided to postpone that event to the next day; on Sunday restaurants
would likely be less busy. So that day we got out of the field in time, had a
wash, and tried our luck. Our thought of absence of crowds in the restaurants
proved true; unfortunately, that also had something to do with the Nassington
pubs not serving food on a Sunday. We instead had a pint in the first pub. And
then one in the other one. One has to be sure, right? On departure, Antony and
I did the shovellin’ dance for Tasha, and then we were ready to head home, for
an improvised dinner of whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge. Somewhere along the
road, where we passed a church, Tasha shouted: “there’s a benchmark here!” So
we all ran like madmen to it. We didn’t find a benchmark. We did find a slug.
And a badger. Scientists always serious? Nah…
The pub where we would have liked to have a meal
Even though it wasn’t how we had envisaged it, it turned out
to be a worthy last night. We had beer, we had Spotify, and Antony turned out
to be the master of improvised food. His chicken and leek pie had not used up
all the puff pastry, and there was pesto, tomatoes and cheese: that means
pizza! He even managed to make a lovely dish out of rice, celery, and some more
tomato and cheese. His attempt at a dessert was somewhat less fortunate;
oatcakes and strawberry yoghurt may look fine together, but somehow the
flavours don’t blend very well. But who cares! In good spirits we started
packing the microscopes and what came with it after dinner. The fieldwork was
over…
Unexpected pizza
If you ask people if they want to spend their time handling
a smelly, noisy, heavy percussive drill in a neglected Peterborough field in
late October, the response may not be all too positive. But if done with such
company, it is so much fun it makes one look back in nostalgia! Where shall we
go next? I’ll practice my dance moves…
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