London’s damn Tube strike was still on. So for our trip to Cambridge we caught a double-decker bus to Waterloo. As luck would have it, the northern line was still operational so we could tube it quickly to King’s Cross Station.
I grabbed our tickets and within minutes we were on the Cambridge Express, and almost as quickly, getting off the train at Cambridge less than an hour later. Too easy!
We walked downhill into town and after a quick wander around, grabbed a pretty decent burger at Ta Bouche for lunch. Now, I wouldn’t normally share any toilet experiences, but the loos downstairs at Ta Bouche were certainly a little novel, at least in my experiences to date. You see, the urinals all had screens above them, and little sensors in the urinal to allow you to control a game with, well…
Read about it here on Wikipedia
We just missed the next walking tour, so decided to wander about aimlessly instead. Somehow we wound up near Kings College, where a charming young student started giving me the hard sell on a river punt. I declined politely, and he was persistent, and I declined again, and the priced dropped. Eventually it dropped from 18 pounds to 12 so I thought why not; and we were very glad we did.
The punt along the river was a highlight of our day in Cambridge.
The scenery is very beautiful, with the gardens and spectacular architecture of the colleges and bridges made all the more enjoyable with swans and ducks following our punt as we pushed up and down the college backs.
But our guide and puntsman made an amazing trip even more so with his humorous stories of the pranks and antics of the students at Cambridge. Such as the rivalry between Trinity College and St. John’s College resulting in them racing as to who would complete their clock tower first to win the right for a clock on their tower. And since St’ John’s clock tower is sans clock, well they lost. Our guide qualified a lot of his stories with they are definitely true.
Another tale was the story about Prince Charlie wanting to be treated just like all of the other students. When he arrived in his helicopter and took over the entire floor of the college, nobody said a thing. And how his bodyguard attended all his lectures with him and at the end of the course was allowed by the college to sit the exams, and did better than Charles; and that the fondness between Charles and his bodyguard ended in devoted love when the bodyguard had a sex change and changed his name to Camilla. True story.
Or of the doors at the back of one of the colleges, which were originally used when horses brought supplies up the river (the river has a central raised gravel bed for horse and cart about a metre below the surface). The older students would play a bit of a nasty initiation trick on the first year students.
They’d unlock these doors over the river, and then lock the normal exits. They would then place emergency exit signs on the inside of the doors, and then late at night when all were in bed, set off the fire alarms. So cruel.
And then there was the story of the students that climbed to the top of one of the towers of King’s Chapel and placed a witch’s hat there.
This was something that the dean of the chapel found very improper and had to arrange its removal. A complex manner, for safety reasons requiring the contracting of a company to build a scaffold up to the tower to reach and remove it. But this was quite a job, and the scaffolding wasn’t able to be completed fully in one day, so the workman went home only to find the next day the students had climbed to the top of the tower, removed the witch’s hat, and deftly placed it on top of the other tower. Somebody’s scaffolding business was making a bit of money out of that one.
And there were many more great stories, certainly worth 12 pound sterling.
After the punt we visited St Mary’s church in the town square, and I paid a couple of pounds to climb up a very narrow and steep spiral staircase to get some pretty good views across all of Cambridge.
I was privileged enough to be on the top of the tower when the bells started ringing, which actually made the tower vibrate. Lucky it wasn’t midday!
We explored some more: sitting in some college gardens, enjoyed cream tea in a café and visited the round church, aka The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Unfortunately the church was covered in scaffolding having some restoration work being done, which I guess was fair enough given it was built in 1130AD.
We wandered a little more, and I can't believe I missed the Time Eater clock! I suppose that's a good excuse to return one day.
Back in London, we met Shanny and Ken at the Anchor for a pint, and they had the cutest little sausage dog there who didn’t like having his picture taken. He also kept wandering down the hallway and staring at the wall for a bit, before turning around and running back to the main bar. A little spooky.
Dinner and cocktails tonight were at De Pont De le Tour, right on the Thames with gorgeous views to Tower Bridge. A huge bowl of very fresh mussels, maybe straight from the Thames was served up for entrée, and main was a very tasty cod fishettes and chips. Our waiter was Spanish and quite funny and friendly, keeping us all entertained with his quips and recommendations on cocktails, wines and his mother’s restaurant in Barcelona.
Another
awesome day, and some more photos are over here...
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