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Paul Saffo, you wrote:
" I slapped myself upside the head in one of those oh, of course moments!  And having lived for two years in Cambridge..."

Get ready for another head slap. :) That's not really Cambridge! It's close, but those aren't city lights at all. It's interesting that the brightness of the North Sea and other bodies of water in this photo can cause confusion. Anyone who has ever taken a Sun sight with a sextant on the water has dealt with the brilliant glow of sunlight off the waves. But in this context, it seems mysterious! 

When you stop and realize that the bright glowing areas are water, everything changes. That's not Cambridge. That's fens. I don't know when the photo was taken, and there may have been unusual flooding in the fenlands at the time. Or maybe this was just "the season" for high water in the restored wetlands along the "Great Ouse" near St. Ives and Ely. 

Good call on Doggerland and all that, Paul. It is nicely centered in-frame in the photo.

And yes, "The Riddle of the Sands" has its stage in-frame, too. Coincidentally (and really completely unrelated to this discussion), I was talking about Jenny Agutter last night. Killing some time with ChatGPT, we were discussing England generally, and I casually tossed in "stay off the moors" for a joke, and ChatGPT immediately caught that movie reference, which then led to Jenny Agutter. We talked about other films starring Agutter including the 1979 film version of The Riddle of tha Sands, which sadly is rather mediocre. And by the way, if you look closely in the original photo that started this, you can clearly see the "Wadden" between the Frisian islands and the coast. Dangerous for boats and boots, too. To which we might say "stay off the wadden!"

Frank Reed

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