Saturday 13th July 2024.
As the weather forecast was favourable we decided to spend the day in Cambridge, now not wishing to sound negative re Cambridge it didn’t turn out to be the best of moves. Firstly it was something like International Youth Language weekend and there were literally hundreds of youngsters being led in crocodile fashion around the streets of Cambridge, there couldn’t have been many left in Japan and China, Spain was well presented as well. It made walking anywhere very difficult and one older man, a local resident was nearly knocked off his bike by a teenager and he responded with “ why don’t you all bugger off to Middlesbrough” I don’t know what Middlesbrough had done to offend him.
These are just a few photos where the streets weren’t so crowded.It would have been enjoyable to wander into some of the quadrangles but no of course you could only do that if you were prepared to pay a hefty admittance fee plus dogs weren’t allowed so that put paid to that. It was decided to split up so that Alison and Peter could visit and we wandered off around the streets battling through the crowds to look at the exterior of buildings. We were here a few years ago at a quieter time so we already had a reasonable memory of what it could be like.
A little way away from the river is a market area where we bought a small snack for lunch, patatas bravos with aioli that went down well.
After exhausting our enjoyment of jostling streets we headed to Jesus Green a park area next to the river where we treated ourselves to a cuppa.
It would appear that Cambridge is popular with hen parties and there were two groups in the park having a good time plus others we saw in the city.
We travelled to Cambridge from St Ives on a travel system new to us, it’s a bus where the driver can speed up to at least 50 mph without his hands on the wheel.
When the concrete guides run out near the city and when the track crosses roads the driver takes over and drives the bus as a normal vehicle. I assume the track which is wide enough for buses to travel in each direction was originally a railway line.
A good factor was that 3 out of 4 us were able to use our bus passes.
taraabit 