Hello everyone, and welcome to this post-bootcamp report outlining my trip to the west Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds on Tuesday, 5th of September 2023. This post talks about my exploration of the town in general, as well as my experiences at the Bury Writers' Club that took place in the town's library.
It is my first post-bootcamp adventure post that is not about an event at the University of Suffolk, and in fact it is also my first post in this series about anything going on outside of Ipswich, and so I hope you will come along for the ride. Trust me, that day was full of fun!
Why is this trip categorised as a "post-bootcamp adventure", you may ask?
Before the 7th of July 2023, I was never interested in visiting Bury St Edmunds (the last time I had been prior to that was in 2012 to stay with some of my dad's friends) - I had brief memories of wanting to go there in November 2021, before calling off the trip when my mum described the town as being quite dreary.
Then, the Grand Finale of the Make A Difference Boot Camp came, and amongst all the carnage that happened that day, Amy Volkert and Karen Cannard, who happen to be Bury locals, came to offer a insightful opinion about the town - they told me that there is so much potential for the town to have a flourishing creative writing and arts scene. After hearing their opinions, I thought to myself that there must be some positive things about the town, and so I felt that it was definitely worth going there and seeing for myself what Bury was all about. Had it not been for them, I still would have never come to this day.
Since then, I've been to the town on three occasions before this trip - once on the 9th of July to explore the town's southern reaches around Hardwick Heath and Nowton Park, and then again on the 31st of July to check out the Rougham control tower out in the eastern extremities, and on both of those trips, I had a really good time exploring the town.
Then, on my third trip into the town since the Grand Finale on the 15th of August 2023, I was sitting in the upstairs study room of the library browsing the internet, and one thing that I noticed whilst sitting there was a poster about a writers' club event that takes place every two weeks on a Tuesday.
But before I decided to start exploring the event in Bury, I thought to myself - "why do I want to make a 50 mile round trip to go to a writers event?"
So I was exploring the Suffolk Libraries website to see if there was anything closer to home, but I couldn't find any suitable writing events in Ipswich - there was a poetry writing session in the library in Ipswich that was scheduled to take place at the start of September, but that was targeted at 7 to 11 year old children and wasn't suitable for adults.
And so I decided that going to Bury was my best choice if I wanted to showcase my writing to the general public. The next writers' club event took place on the 22nd of August, but as that day happened to be my birthday, and I wanted it to be as relaxing as possible, I chose not to bother with going to Bury on that day and I instead came to the event that followed two weeks later, on the 5th of September.
Trip report
The start of my journey to Bury was very intense - I left the house at 11:45am to empty the rubbish, and then took a leisurely walk along Portman Road towards the train station. Having left home this early, I was thinking to myself that I will make that train to Bury very easily - but as the next two paragraphs describe, I would be fooled in a spectacular way.
As I was walking along Princes Street towards the train station, I looked up at the screens showing the next bus departures, and I felt a bit stunned when the clock said that the time was "12:13". With the next train being eight minutes away from departing, I had to think quickly about my predicament if I wanted to get to Bury - at one point I was legging it to the station entrance.
My plan to catch the train was nearly foiled when one of the ticket machines failed and I was in a race against time to try another ticket machine and buy a ticket - which eventually succeeded. With the ticket acquired, I made it out onto the platforms, over the bridge as quickly as possible, and then managed to victoriously hop on board the train with just one minute to spare! Had I not thought quickly about my situation, I would have been waiting another hour for the next train (and possibly not make it to the writers' club on-time).
After a 35 minute train journey, I arrived in Bury St Edmunds just short of 1:00pm, and I thought to myself, I was not going to go straight to the library and sit there until the event was about to start. And so I decided to go for a stroll down Northgate Street with its beautiful houses - but you don't start to see the more serious side of Bury's history until you come to the end of the road just outside the Abbey Gardens, when the Cathedral suddenly springs into view.
I even managed to randomly run into a member of the United States Air Force wearing military uniform (their base is not too far down the road in Lakenheath).
After spending some time having a lunch break outside the Moyse's Hall Museum (and listening to the bells that would ring every 15 minutes), it was time to head to the library along St John's Street, which happens to be the home of vintage in Bury St Edmunds (I was standing in front of a vintage clothes shop when I took the next picture) and a very quaint street to wander down as well.
The library is located along Sergeant's Walk, which can be hard to find if you are coming from St John's Street (the first time I went to the library, I didn't know where the alleyway was and ended up taking the long way round via St John's Place).
When I walked into the library, I was wandering around aimlessly trying to find where the writers' club was taking place, and it was getting to the point that I was asking the receptionist where it was - turns out it was in the coffee bar downstairs. As I walked in to the cafeteria area, I was introduced to Jennifer, and I would spend some time chatting with her about what bought me to Bury for the event, before she went off to get the drinks (mine was just a good old-fashioned glass of water). All while playing the waiting game to see if anybody else would turn up.
At one point, I had an informal conversation with one of the guests about my blog, what it was about and my plan to turn my newly-found passion for writing into an income stream in the future - as we were sitting a long way apart, communication was difficult, but I managed to eventually get my message through. I was also talking about my hopes of wanting to travel in the future and writing a few fairytale stories in relation to that idea, and the other guests happened to know someone who I could take inspiration from - W.H. Davies, a historic poet who wrote a couple of his poems about a few different places around the world that he had been to.
Then it was time to do the proper introductions and catch-ups. As I was new to the club, I was given the opportunity to talk about who I was, and at one point I was discussing the fantasy map business idea with Jennifer, where she offered a really interesting insight into the market - book publishing houses are constantly on the lookout for map designers and there is a constant demand for fantasy maps to be put out in books. Then the other two participants, came to talk about their creative writing projects - one of the participants was inspired by the idea of one having an argument with a bird and things went whoosh from there - and so they decided to write a poem on that subject knowing that it is best expressed in a birdy voice.
On the other hand, another guest decided to talk about a poem about a Scottish whisky distillery, before going on to talk about the endless possibilities that one can have writing a novel - an unusual mix of a dark environment surrounding a purgatory with more traditional labour activities such as cotton production and corn grinding, followed by a transformation into a hell story (did you know that a Jack Russell dog can be a guard between heaven and hell? Me neither.)
Once each person discussed their introductions and progress, we were given a creative writing task, in which the participants had 20 minutes to complete. The writers' club participants were given a choice of two routes - one could spend their time doing one of the four adventure-related tasks, or one of the 10 regular writing tasks. There were at least two tasks of note that particularly interested me - one was about writing a letter to my 16 year old self, and another was about describing the city or town your fictional character will be based in.
Since I wanted to express my feelings about the choices that I have taken in my life out loud to the rest of the group, and I had recently made a post about the Kingdom of Lorentia and Ventura on my blog, I decided to try something different and go with the letter writing task - although if the city/town task ever came up again in the future, I would be happy to try that out for a change. After all, fantasy mapping always starts with describing what your town will look like!
As I found out to be typically the case with on-the-spot creative writing, I was initially finding it tricky to figure out what I wanted to write about, but after about five minutes of thinking it through, I began to quickly find the pieces that went with the letter and you start writing about it very freely. In my case, the end of the letter is what allowed me to fill in the missing blanks towards the beginning.
The following picture shows what I have managed to achieve in terms of writing the letter:
Once the 20 minutes were up, it was time for each person to share their work, and I was the second person to present my work. It was the first time that I got to share my creative writing style outside of the University - and guess what, I have managed to independently confirm Amy's hunch about my writing style being very engaging, as Jennifer praised my writing style and the overall flow of the letter. One of the guests also responded to my letter with plenty of encouragement to keep pursuing the path that I am on now - just because you have gone down a specific route in the past doesn't mean that you should be forced to stick to it for the rest of your life.
Some of the other examples that the participants gave included writing a letter to a 16 year old called Esmerelda - not to be confused with any other Esme or Esmerelda living in Bury or the surrounding areas, as well as a more interesting story about an 8,000 year old weight stone that got into the hands of a king, and that he would go on to keep the stone close to him and subsequently use it to make more friends. The weight stone in question is now hosted at the St Katherine's Chapel in the Suffolk coastal village of Dunwich.
It was quite interesting to see the guest talking about his plans to include the story as part of a fully-fledged novel - I am looking forward to seeing further chapters come along on that journey, and eventually see it come out and published when it's ready!
The writing time went by so quickly that we decided to have some very funny random chats - one of those discussions was about Brian Bilston, whose poems and poetry books constantly end up going viral on social media. I was also given some really interesting guidance in relation to my plans to become a freelance writer - make sure to pitch your blog material to the right audience in a short amount of time! (Although having done the University Bootcamp, I can imagine that I am already on my way to doing just that.)
And after being told about the Anne of Cleaves House in the town of Haverhill (a place that I would like to go and see if transport logistics allow), the writers' club portion of the trip came to an end, and it was back to exploring the town again!
So I decided to wander back across the town centre to check out the St Edmundsbury Cathedral, which was converted from a church to a cathedral in 1914 and is home to the bishop for the Ipswich and St Edmundsbury Diocese. It has also become an increasingly special place for many locals for non-religious reasons, as it has hosted University of Suffolk graduation ceremonies (the University previously having partnered with West Suffolk College to provide degree qualifications in the town).
The Cathedral is one of the most peaceful places I've been to in Suffolk - I could just come inside for a couple of minutes and look at the impressive architecture, take some time to forget about the pressures of daily life and then move on.
Once I got my few minutes of peace in the main cathedral area, I decided to go downstairs into the hallway, where I had planned to go and explore the Treasury - turned out that was closed, and so I carried on past the Pilgrims' Kitchen out into the courtyard, and then around to the Abbey Gardens, named after the Bury St Edmunds Abbey complex that now stands in ruins.
The last time I was there, I was able to doze off to the sound of the fountains in the water gardens for a few hours, and so I was hoping to see them again in action on this trip - except the water gardens were closed, the pond was full of green algae, and (one fact that I was unaware of) the fountains were switched off!
However, one of the strangers was sitting in the nearby gardens, blasting some music from their speaker system. I happened to enjoy listening to what he had going on, and so I decided to doze off for an hour or two on one of the benches outside the water gardens, taking in the greenery and the music that was lying around me.
Eventually, I had been dozing off for long enough to the point that I was beginning to realise that the gardens were about to close, and so I decided to start making my way along Northgate Street, back to the train station, and I eventually left Bury on a train that was headed back to Ipswich, arriving at 7:30pm. The next day, and the day after, I would have a few meetings with the University's Enterprise Manager, where I would happen to "leak" the details of this trip to her, and she too seemed to be blown away by what I had uncovered in Bury while I was staying under her radar.
And as this picture depicts, this is where the trip to Bury ends...
Conclusions after the writing event
I have to say that the Bury Writers' Club was a really good experience and well worth the 50 mile round trip from Ipswich. Jennifer's drive and motivation to run the event is quite strong, and although the communication at times was difficult due to the seating arrangements, the guests that I had spoken to were really nice and wanted to share some useful ideas as to where I could take my own idea further.
The 20 minute creative writing time provided a fair challenge for all, and more importantly, it has allowed me to discover a passion for writing about other things and expand my capabilities as a freelance writer. I am definitely looking forward to coming back again to the Bury Writers' Club in a couple of weeks time and trying out what Jennifer has to offer in terms of new writing challenges.
This trip has also allowed me to test Amy and Karen's theory from the Bootcamp Grand Finale about the town being an up and coming place for culture, and from my own point of view, I can happily confirm that with events like these taking place in the town, Bury has lots of great potential for becoming a major arts and cultural centre in Suffolk. The road signs into Bury say that it is "the jewel in the crown of Suffolk", and so I really hope that local businesses, residents and the West Suffolk Council can all play a big part in keeping things that way.
Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed this interesting journey through this quaint town, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing where Bury goes in the months and years ahead. Next up on this blog is the Careers Zone launch at the University on the 13th of September - I am definitely looking forward to bringing to you the blogpost on that experience soon. Trust me, there will be lots of shine to be spread there!
Signing off now,
Jakub
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