East Cambridgeshire

Yesterday Oxford, today, Cambridge!! Yes we doubled down on our University sojourns and spent the day in Cambridge. It is about as far north east of London as Oxford is west of the Capital and just as easy to reach by train.

Given that we took the hop on, hop off bus yesterday and to keep the comparisons fair we decided to do the same in Cambridge. For my money Oxford is slightly the grander of the two cities and Cambridge seems to have more of a chip on its shoulder about Oxford than vice versa. Cambridge is where a number of the royal family have gone and Prince Charles is less than fondly remembered as probably the dimmest person to ever attend (there are strict academic criteria to meet for everyone else) and they created a course specifically to enable him to pass out with a degree (although even that took a year longer than usual).

The main tourist related activity that Cambridge does way better than Oxford is punting, so we waited till today to take a punt tour along the river Cam. You can do it yourself, but having watched people giving out a go yesterday we took the safe option and left it to the experts and took a trip with one the many firms offering guided punts. It’s only a about a kilometre each way and passes alongside three of the university’s most famous colleges (St Johns; Trinity and Kings). Whilst the colleges are a seperate entity from the university itself, every student must be a member of a college to study.

Thankfully no transportation issues to report today and apart from managing the unseasonable temperatures (it was another hot day here with temps again in the early 30’s) the day was drama free. Less people around today as the bank holiday long weekend is over and just as we are about to end our holiday the high temps are due to end. Should drop down to a more comfortable mid 20’s tomorrow which is our departure day. We are not due to fly out until late in the evening so we have a day that we will spend shopping in Oxford Street/Covent Garden before collecting our bags for a 7 pm check in time at Heathrow.

Photos attached show... The Cambridge version of the bridge of sighs from our punt... (sigh, I’m over the bloody bridge of sighs, I’ve seen Venice’s original and in the past two days, replicas of it in both Oxford and Cambridge); St Johns College Chapel; the mechanical bridge; our train to Cambridge; Trinity College; a Cambridge Street with random construction worker in the foreground...; the river Cam; Kings College; the punting station on the river Cam.Read more