A trip to Cambridge

The first impression a visitor may have upon arriving at Cambridge is it is one of those towns that have it all.

Numerous restaurants, interesting museums, cinemas, churches, mosques and cafés will remind even the hardest-to-impress visitor that not all towns are created equal, and that some outshine others.

Located in the fairly flat but picturesque county of Cambridgeshire, less than an hour north of London by train, Cambridge is a famous university-town with a long past.

There is evidence of pre-Roman history in this part of the country, with human habitation dating back to the late Bronze Age, about 3,000 years ago.

Famous institute

Right in the heart of this town is the Cambridge University, which will celebrate its 800th birthday in 2009. This world-famous school owes its creation to conflict.

As the story goes, there was tension at the Oxford University between the townspeople (“town'') and the students (“gown'').
In 1209, that tension erupted into a riot and a group of Oxford students splintered off to form the Cambridge University. Ironically, although Cambridge is the offspring of Oxford, there is a distinct rivalry between the two universities.

One cannot help but notice the many colleges scattered throughout the town. There are 31 colleges that come under Cambridge University alone.

The collegiate system is unique to Oxford and Cambridge. Each has its own student members and designated colour, and can be loosely compared to a fraternity or sorority — club-like places where the students eat, sleep and socialise.

One of Cambridge's most famous and frequently visited college is the King's College.

Walk of discovery

For those visiting Cambridge, a two-hour walking tour — starting both in the morning and the afternoon — is highly recommended. This is both a good way to get one's bearings and to pick up some odd and interesting facts about the university.

For instance, only the “master and the fellows'' of a given college are allowed on the grass of the college grounds. All others — including the college's students — are not allowed to stray from the sidewalks and on to the carpet of greenery.

A visit to the chapel at King's College is part of the walking tour. This chapel, founded by King Henry VI in 1441, is an amazing structure that took 70 years to complete.

Every stone used in its construction was hand-cut and brought from Yorkshire, some 320km away. As there were no railways then, all the stone was brought by waterway, making its way to the River Cam, which runs close to where the chapel was built.

Priceless glass

Upon entering, one is immediately struck by the huge stained-glass windows that run along both sides of the building.

With time, these windows have become more valuable and, as a guide explained, in 1939, many people were concerned that German bombardments could destroy this priceless glass.

Hence, thousands of panels were painstakingly disassembled, numbered and then buried in the ground to protect them from German raids.

As it turned out, this elaborate precaution was not necessary as Hitler showed no interest in bombing a university town, focusing instead on the more industrial regions of the country.

The glass sections were dug up 11 years later and put back in place where they can still be seen today.

Apart from this, the Fitzwilliam Museum (“the Fitz'') is also worth a visit and the ornate entrance area — which includes a display of numerous marble statues — is a sight to behold.

For the more athletic, the town offers numerous walking paths, bikes on hire and punting. This last activity involves renting a wooden boat and long wooden pole to move the craft, much like the gondoliers of Venice.

Tale of a station

For those who want to broaden their horizons, the town has a very good public transportation system — bus and railway and even bicycles on rent — to visit nearby areas.

The train station is a good 30-minute walk from the town. It is said that back in the mid-1800s, when planning its construction, a site far from the town was chosen to discourage restless students from neglecting their studies and catching a train to London in search of some urban excitement.

A good place to start when exploring places near Cambridge is Grantchester. Walking southeast from Cambridge, there are two walking paths — one running through meadows and the second along the River Cam — that lead to Grantchester.

This makes for a pleasant hour-long bucolic stroll which takes one to the Orchard, a tea garden where Virginia Woolf and other well-known British writers and philosophers would take tea after long summer walks in the country.

Another attractive English town, Bury Saint Edmunds, is about 64km east of Cambridge. The train ride from Cambridge takes about 40 minutes, then it's a 15-minute walk to the centre of town.

The Dickens connection

There's an afternoon walking tour which begins just outside the tourist office, near the Angel Hotel, where the well-known writer Charles Dickens sometimes stayed and which he used as a setting for one of his books, The Pickwick Papers.

In fact, the walking-tour booklet includes a quote from that novel: “The coach rattled through the well-paved streets of a handsome little town of thriving and cleanly appearance and stopped before a large inn situated in a wide, open street nearly facing the old abbey. ‘And this,' said Mr Pickwick, looking up, ‘is the Angel.''' The walk continues to the famous ruins of Saint Edmunds's Abbey.

Some steps further, one arrives at the Chapel of the Charnel. There's a burial ground with an odd sort of memorial to Mary Haselton, a 9-year-old girl who died in 1785 after she was struck by lightning while she was saying her prayers.

Those planning a week-long visit to the Cambridge area will find plenty to keep them occupied. For those with more time and ambition, there is the big city to the south.

A 45-minute train ride from Cambridge takes one to London's King's Cross Station. Here, the curious and the intrepid can spend weeks exploring the vast urban landscape by foot, on a double-decker bus or by the city's vast underground web.

Cityscape How Ely got its name

Further from Cambridge, but still within walking distance, is the small city of Ely (pronounced “ee-lee'').

If the 24-km walk feels too daunting, one can take a train ride which takes only about 10 minutes. One of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, Ely used to be an island out in the fens (low-lying areas that sometimes sink below sea level).

The fens were eventually drained and thus Ely was no longer an island. Another interesting fact about this city is its name, derived from a popular delicacy of that region — eels.

It is said that during the 11th century, monks from Ely would use eels as a kind of currency for paying their taxes. Ely's train station is not far from the city centre and it's well worth a visit to walk around and have a look at some of the sights in this pleasant little city, such as the Ely Cathedral and Oliver Cromwell's House.

Varsity of variety

Source: Britain Express. http://www.britainexpress.com

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