Today was our Cambridge day as we wanted to
see how it compares to Oxford.
No sooner had we arrived in the city centre
after our Park and Ride, than the touts for the punt tours accosted and
persuaded us to take the plunge with them. As before, there is a difference in
the types of people that you deal with in the process. The tout is a
well-presented and well-spoken person meeting our expectation of a typical Cambridge
man (tall, male, slim). The next chap, who guided us through the streets to the
punt, was short and from the sub-continent, but an energetic people manager and
very personable. He handed us over to the younger and athletic “puntsman” who
had been drilled in the tour commentary but was probably not a student at the
Cambridge colleges, judging by his speech.. We were very pleased to have had
this quintessential Cambridge experience floating along the “backs” on a sunny June
day being followed by swans and ducks..
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| Bridge of Sighs |
After this, while trying to sneak into one
of the closed colleges, we overheard a porter on the river side telling other
tourists that if they hurried around to the front they could get in. We took
off like a shot, with Joan streaking away (a first). We just got into the
quadrangle of Trinity before the doors closed were closed behind us. We found
about 1500 people there milling about. Almost immediately we noticed choristers
on the top of towers on two sides of the quad. They began to sing like angels,
in alternating parts accompanied by trumpeters on a tower on the other side of
the quad. The performance lasted about 15 minutes. It was magical to be there
in the quadrangle with so many people in hushed silence. We later found out it
was an annual tradition “Singining from the Towers”, so we were very lucky to
catch it.
We then toured St John’s college which had a wonderful chapel and
crossed its Bridge of Sighs (much more impressive than Oxford’s). The puntsman
told us it got its name from the students who sighed crossing over the river to
exam hall on one other side.
Our next stop was King’s College Chapel,
which managed to blow our socks off (even after all our cathedral visits) with
its walls of superb stained glass and amazing vaulted ceiling.
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| Entrance |
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| the quadgrangle |
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| from St Mary's tower |
Back in the city
I climbed the tower of St Mary’s church before we visited the pleasant outlying
village of Grantchester, for a quick half pint in a lovely old pub.
We had dinner in a neighbouring village pub
(where I was constantly shooing flies away from our food) and Joan got to drive back due to my two-pints consumption. She found driving a
six-speed manual an interesting experience, but managed quite well. She even
got to do it twice, because we had forgotten an umbrella at the pub.
Back in our home village we made the short
stroll to the village church and saw some strange sayings on the wall of the
ex-alms-house across the road from it.
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