Our Travels in a Nutshell: Stratford-upon-Avon to Cambridge, England

Wednesday, June 25

We left Stratford-upon-Avon in brilliant sunshine again. We have been so blessed with the weather but unfortunately the forecast is becoming bleaker as we get closer to London. Today's drive was only 100 miles so again we chose Sat Nav's fastest route and arrived just after midday. We felt like naughty children when Lucia, the Italian lady who owns the B&B, grumbled because we had not let her know our ETA and our room was not ready. Our paperwork told us that check-in was between 1200-1900 but apparently we still should have notified her. Fortunately, we were able to leave our luggage and Lucia armed us with a map and bus timetable but we decided to walk the half hour or so into Cambridge's city centre.

Noelle waiting for a punt on the River Cam

On our punt

The sun was lovely and warm and we were happy to check out the sights along the way. Cambridge is obviously a student town but is steeped in history and it's buildings are magnificent. When we were planning our trip last year, we had considerable difficulty finding accommodation in Cambridge and today we found out why. It was Graduation Day at all the colleges so the town was crawling with graduates in their gowns, proud parents, grandparents and families, deans, professors and the like all robed up, and frenzied caterers carrying in huge quantities of food and drinks to marquees set up on all the college lawns. Sadly, it also meant that all the colleges were closed to tourists today. This being the case, we chose to take a punt ride on the River Cam that took us past many of the colleges. There were lots of champagne picnics taking place on the various college lawns and a lot of relieved looking students - and parents! The punts were manned by well-spoken young men who all looked as though they were from well to do families and spoke accordingly. Our punter was very good and pointed out all the different colleges along the way - Trinity, Kings, St Johns, Queens College, etc. as well as telling us interesting little tid-bits about each and who their most famous sons were - the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Milton, A.A. Milne, Oliver Cromwell, Peter Cook, Eric Idle & Graham Chapman (Monty Python) and Bill Oddie & Tim Brooke-Taylor (The Goodies) - what a mixed bag! We were quite amused by the story about Prince Charles attending Trinity College and having to be accompanied by a bodyguard at all times, including lectures. Apparently at the end of Charles' course, the bodyguard asked permission to sit the exams too and attained higher grades than Charles - oops!

We were glad we did not have to punt ourselves because the river was very crowded and a lot of the young punters who had hired a punt privately appeared to have had one too many shandies so punt "bumping" was the order of the day. We thoroughly enjoyed it despite punt whiplash and it seemed quite the thing to do whilst in Cambridge.

Punt "bumping" on the river

After punting we headed back into town to soak up the atmosphere of such an important day in the life of Cambridge and wondered what famous people of the future were graduating today.

The Tour de France is commencing in Yorkshire this year and Stage 3 goes through Cambridge on July 7 so many of the shops have themed their windows accordingly and there are Tour banners everywhere. So many Cambridge residents use bikes - it could almost give Copenhagen a run for its money so the Tour will no doubt be a highlight in the town.

Glimpses of Cambridge today