Cambridge Day Trip

Well as promised I'd like to share our recent (well....a month ago) trip to Cambridge.

I'm sure you've all heard that there's a famous University there, but you might not know that the town is the University. Although there is also a newer University complex on the outskirts of town, all the original Colleges (i.e. +600 years old) are in the centre of the town. The shops, bars, restuaruants, bookshops and tourist gift shops are all intermingled with academic facilities. For example, you'll be walking along a street past a real estate office, and the next building is the Faculty of Engineering.

We did the trip in one day from London with our good friends Dan and Kirsty. If you were at our wedding, Dan was one of my beer wenches.....sorry I meant groomsmen! :-)

We caught a train from the magnificent Waterloo train station (in fact all overland train stations in London are amazing to see!) and chatted our way through the 1.5 hour journey.

We all had coffe because it was 8:30am on a Sunday morning, and although I can't remember exactly where we went or what we did, I'm sure we'd had a "good" Saturday night :-)

Once we got there it was a 15 minute walk into town from the train station, and almost immediately we reverted from cool and trendy Londonites to giggling tourists as we posed in front of what looked like a 400 year old house for photos.

The only one of us not acting like a star-struck American was Ingy - she's been to Cambridge before and knew that the "old" building we were insisting on photographing was nothing compared to what lay further into town! So we packed away our cameras and followed her into the town proper.

She wasn't wrong - Cambridge is FULL of amazing churches, buildings and, of, course, the historic University buildings. The first place we came across was Christs College - it had a massive old wooden door (probably original?) through which tourists were allowed to enter and wander around the grounds.

If you're not familiar with a traditional University College then allow me to butcher an explanation. As far as I understand, 95% of all University students at Cambridge live in the Colleges rather than share apartments etc. Each College has it's own speciality, so if you were studying Physics and Maths, then you'd more than likely live and study at Trinity College where Isaac Newton himself lived and studied over 400 years ago! Another bit of trivia - Trinity College has produced over 30 Nobel Prize winners!

Anyhoo, each student is assigned a personal tutor who you meet with regularly, and your learning with them is almost as important as the lectures you attend. Further, the Colleges are self-contained in that you don't "visit" other Colleges to use their facilities. Each College chooses, teaches and graduates it's own students, and never the twain shall meet.

So that's roughly my understanding of how Cambridge works - feel free to correct me if you've studied there and know better!

After walking around the amazingly manicured grounds of Christs College went in search of lunch. I know what you're thinking .......we're not hardened tourists..... we see one interesting thing and then we're off to eat and drink!

The pub we found was actually an old WWII bomber pilot hangout! The walls were adorned with signed pictures of magnificent old war birds, and believe it or not, the roof was covered in graffiti! But not the talentless graffiti that we see under train stations - this graffiti was old finger drawings, signatures and messages written into the layer of cigarette soot that had accumulated on the ceiling for god-knows how long. Apparantly the WWII bomber crews used to sit in that pub 60 years ago waiting to be called into action, and because they couldn't drink, they'd sit around smoking and doodling "Billy was here, US 31st Airborne 1946" on the roof!! Amazing.

To the left is a piccie of me enjoying my beef stew lunch and the obligitory pint of Guiness :-)

So after lunch we rounded the corner and were confronted with Kings College and it's magnificent chapel. Now I don't know much about churches, chapels and Cathedrals, but the Chapel at Kings College was one of the biggest old-skool (old-school...geddit?!?) buildings I've ever seen! Apparantly it took a few hundred years to build, and after going inside and seeing the ceiling I can understand. Unfortunatly there's no cameras allowed inside, but you can see it online by clicking here.

After Kings College we walked along the banks of the river Cam, and believe it or not we hired a punt! Now there's two ways you can do this....you can pay a nice man 12 pounds and he'll use his 12ft aluminium pole to propel you along the river....or if you're me and don't want to look like a woofter, you pay more and do it yourself!! :-)

So we payed the man, all four of us climbed aboard a long narrow punt, and I assumed the first role as the engine room :-) It' quite hard to do actually - the river bottom is muddy in some areas and if you're not quick to unstick it you'll get pulled off the back!

I got us up the river whilst staying dry, and Dan tool over for the return journey. He too managed to stay dry, and the whole punting expedition was fisnished succesfully an hour later where we started off from. Needless to say it was a highlight of the day, and no small amount of satisfaction was gained from watching a string of other "less coordinated" punters coming back dripping wet! hahaha

So after all the fun we slowly walked back to the train station, past the "old" building we first photographed....laughing at our niavety only that morning....and caught the train home.

Deano