Suffolk and See - Part 1

A couple of weekends ago SBB and I headed up to Suffolk. I'd like to say we were just taking a short break but actually we were heading up there for SBB's great aunt's funeral - so it was a weekend of mixed emotions. The funeral was on the Monday but, having recently been to two other funerals just north of London and only just making it by the skin of our teeth - we decided that to drive up on the Monday to get there for 11am would have been a nightmare travel-wise. Instead we decided to head up on the Saturday to spend a couple of days seeing the area. Also, SBB's brother lives up near Cambridge so it also gave us an opportunity to visit them and their baby daughter (our first niece!).
I checked the route on Google. It threw up some interesting results:

Image taken from Google maps

 Five flights and two continents later...
 
We caught a ferry Saturday morning at a very respectable 9am - given that we're usually on a ferry at 7am or earlier when visiting the mainland it felt very luxurious indeed!
The journey wasn't very eventful - M27, M25, M11 - whilst singing along (loudly) to our Les Miserables CD. We eventually stopped at junction 8 of the M11 to get some lunch and I discovered something that made me squeak elegantly gasp in excitement. They had a Krispy Kreme doughnuts self-service cabinet.

A complimentary doughnut? Where do I sign up?!

I'd like to say that they made it some way of the journey... but I can't. I think I was back in the car 30 seconds before I opened the box. We bought a caramel ring doughnut for SBB and we shared the strawberry love bug (in the middle) and the Lotus caramelised biscoff limited edition- which was the best one. Oh my god... just thinking about it is making my mouth water - it was heaven!
We also had our customary Burger King but instead of my usual Whopper I had a Double Rodeo burger. Sooo gooood.

We stayed at The Rutland Arms Hotel - a quirky old hotel in Newmarket.

Quirky staircases!

Random wooden struts - love it

 

More quirky staircases!

Yes the floor is sloping

The courtyard

Shoe shiner

Gorgeous stained glass window

 

The hallway

 

The car park! Love the trailing ivy

Entrance to the carpark - it's a bit tight!

Newmarket highstreet

Newmarket highstreet view two

Newmarket highstreet view 3

Quirky shop across the road

Quirky shop across the road (again)

Fake Hogwarts Express?

The room was a bit worn and the bathroom was an ever-so-attractive avocado green but it was clean and in the new section of the hotel far away from the mainroad - i.e. pitch black and silent at night. Well, it wasn't so silent on the Saturday night. We were unfortunate enough to have irritatingly inconsiderate guests staying next to and opposite us. The ones next to us came in at 1:38 (I looked at my phone) and spent about twenty minutes having a loud conversation in their bathroom (which backed directly onto our bedroom). About an hour later the woman returned to the bathroom to throw up (lovely!). Then at about twenty to four in the morning the guests opposite and down the hall (who had been playing loud music BEFORE they went out) came back, rather worse for wear, had a loud drunken conversation outside our door and then proceeded to wish each other 'GOOODNIIGHTTT' before going into their rooms and slamming their respective doors. Great. Thanks for that.

Breakfast was included in the price so I opted for a full English (MINUS the black pudding!) but SBB just had a bacon sandwich and pastries. Needing caffeine we both had tea. Lots of it. I was a bit worried about having another night's sleep disturbed - particularly with the funeral the next day - so I asked at the desk whether the guests around us would be staying another night. Turns out they weren't but after I explained the situation to the lady - who I assumed to be the weekend manager - she very kindly offered to leave the whole corridor empty that night and make sure that any new arrivals were placed elsewhere in the hotel. I'm so very grateful that they did and we had a wonderful night's sleep.

We popped over to see SBB's brother on Saturday evening to make some sort of plan for the next day and stopped off at The Plough at Fen Ditton on the way back to the hotel for dinner. It was a lovely place but SO busy! We were lucky to get a table at the bar, which I didn't mind at all because the tables were metal topped. So SHINY!

 SBB had the fillet steak and I had battered halloumi - an enduring obsession love that I picked up in Cyprus.

Check back for part 2!