Cambridge

 June 5th. Woke to a fine but cool day - a surprise after yesterday’s rain.

Continental breakfast is included with our hotel tariff here and was in the basement of the building where the top of the windows looks out at footpath level.  We watched the legs of people walking past and the wheels of the vehicles being driven on the busy road.

Ah yes, the streets here in the UK.   We’ve noticed that there are clusters of similar names and wonder how much of an obstacle this is to Royal Mail deliveries.  I mean, here in Cambridge, Chesterton Road, Chesterton Lane, Chesterton Street are all connected to each other and confusing to us.   In York, there was a Bootham, Bootham Terrace, Bootham Lane, Bootham Row, and a Bootham Crescent.   Strangely because of the excellent Postal Code system Lady Satnav has no problems with actual names.

At 9am, armed with our List, we set out walking to see The Mathematical Bridge, The Bridge of Sighs, and The Kings College Chapel.   Cambridge is a maze of intersecting streets and lanes mostly no parking but filled with bicycles!   So many of the railings have notices that are almost always disobeyed.  Like this one.   Students are not allowed a car within five miles of Cambridge and so mostly travel by bicycle.  With around 15,000 students in the city that’s a lot of bicycles!   In the summer months the population of the city swells by around 5000 students of Foreign Language.

The cup of tea at breakfast was Twinings and not up to our usual PG Tips standard so we looked for a tea shop to enjoy a Proper Pot of Tea.   While there we researched the Hop On Hop Off Bus and plotted our route to The Mathematical Bridge. 

To our pleasure the bridge was right by the No. 1 Bus Stop.  The bridge had a Rainbow Flag in the middle which created an unwanted visual distraction for me but in this shot to the left are the well tended gardens of the Pepys Library, part of Queens College.  The two areas of Queens College are linked by this bridge and it can only be accessed by members of the college.

Cambridge houses and buildings are intriguing.  Mostly in rows where each house looks the same, although to be fair the doors are sometimes a different colour

We had a good seat at the top front of the bus and settled in to enjoy the 1 hour 20 minute circuit.   Apart from a couple of  breath taking moments as the double decker bus manoeuvred around seemingly impossible narrow corners and between immovable concrete bollards, the roads were bumpy with cobbles and some pot holes but full of interest and the commentary was full of interesting facts.

The Pitt Building is now home to The Cambridge University Press but was named after Pitt the Younger who, the commentary told us, “is famous for having introduced Income Tax as a temporary measure in 1799.  Which tax we are still all paying today”.

King Street is most famous for The King Street Run which started in the 1950’s.  Legend has it that medical students and undergraduates from St John’s argued about the capacity of the human bladder.  So was born the race in which students ran down King Street drinking a pint of ale at each pub along the way and not stopping to relieve themselves.  By the time they reached the St Radegund at the end of the street they were mostly on hands and knees and this is said to be the beginning of the term ‘pub crawl’.   Nowadays the number of pubs has decreased and it is said to hardly be worthy of a race but this pub is on the street and bears a sign showing a cartoon of this infamy.

Of more interest to us on this street was Little Sister’s discovery to which we later walked and of course purchased.  The chatty lady owner was pleased to hear all about our trip and even more pleased when Little Sister left with two balls of yarn!

St John’s College was founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry  VIII’s grandmother and is quite central in the city.   To see the famous Bridge of Sighs one needs to go through this college, as we found out when asking the very pleasant porter at the lodge.   He regretfully told us that it was examinations and so the college was closed although”if you know a member they can bring two guests into college and you could view it that way”.   A pity but what a gentlemanly manner in which to be refused entry.  

The Round Church is one of only four in England.  These churches were built round, as opposed to the traditional cross shape, as an expression of Christ’s resurrection.

King’s College Chapel is perhaps the most well known building in Cambridge, famous not only for its magnificent architecture and stained glass, but for its choir and the annual performance of Nine Lessons and Carols at Christmas.   

This evening Little Sister and I went to Choral Evensong there.  

We queued outside along with quite a few others but as we were second in line we got excellent seats in the quire and enjoyed probably our last Evensong in England.   As an unexpected bonus both the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were sung in Latin by 14 choral scholars accompanied not by the main pipe organ but by a young man on a chamber organ.

Cambridge does not have a cathedral - it falls within the diocese of Ely, only 15 miles away and is therefore the only city in Britain to be given city status without having a cathedral.  King George VI granted city status in 1951 in recognition of its history, administrative importance and economic success.   

We saw a milestone marking 1 mile from the Cambridge City centre and the commentary said that it was also 60 miles in one direction to London and 60 miles in the other direction to the coast.   Indeed much of the land to the east is very flat; the narrator said that travelling due east the next mountains would be the Ural Mountains.   My geography isn’t good enough to know if that is true but it’s certainly a good story.   The fens were low lying swampy marsh and were first drained in 1640 by a Dutchman, Vermuyden, who used the power of windmills to do so.  Today the drainage is by pumps and it is said that if all the pumps stopped working simultaneously it would take only six months for the sea to encroach as far as Cambridge once more.

Just outside the city is the American Cemetery.    

In 1943, around 30 acres of land was given by the University for a temporary cemetery during WWII    In 1956 this land was officially consecrated as the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.   It  is recognised as US soil and the Stars and Stripes flys at all times.

Tonight following Evensong we went to dinner at SticksNSushi.   We’d gone to the Oxford restaurant on our last night there so it seemed fitting that Cambridge got the same treatment.  They were extremely busy but graciously sat us at the bar where we had the identical menu we’d had in Oxford and enjoyed it equally.  

What made this evening more special was the ‘show’ as we watched the barman, waiting and service people, front of house manager and even the man carrying clean dishes to replenish the bar stock all worked together in an almost perfectly choreographed ballet of exceptional teamwork.  It was truly amazing to see and overriding our natural Scottish frugality we left a generous tip.   

Tonight we have repacked our suitcases as tomorrow we drop the car at Stanstead and catch a train to London for the last few days.