I stayed two nights here. I think this may turn out to be a pattern for destination places (such as Cambridge) as opposed to stopovers which are just on the way to somewhere. Staying two nights gives me a solid day's work with sightseeing in the afternoon (I start early) without the time taken out for travel. A travel day of 100 miles seems to take a whole afternoon, allowing for time logging in to the Internet and dealing with whatever issues may have arisen.
So, I stayed for two nights at a CCC campsite which was very well run. Apart from the inevitable railway, it was also surrounded by trees, and reached from an inconspicuous lane in a residential area. I had spotted this place earlier on Google Earth and it stood out like a sore thumb, but in real life, it was extremely low-profile. I got to empty my cassette loo for the first time. Not nearly the traumatic experience I'd been expecting, but quite easy. It's amazing how many things you need that you don't have. I have a list a mile long - duct tape, ties, bucket, funnel, extension cords, adapters, as well as all the kitchen paraphernalia.
I now have my workstation set up the way I like it, with the big monitor
on a table. When I'm on the road, the monitor just sits in the seat with a
seatbelt on
Went into Cambridge on a nice local bus around school turnout time. British kids seem to get up to a lot of mischief involving illicit sex, excessive drinking and illegal substances (what a surprise) though I suspect a lot of it is baseless bragging as it was in my day. 14 pints, indeed! What a waste of good ale.
Cambridge is a lovely town, with bikes everywhere and extravagently lovely buildings, seemingly full of smart people thinking deep thoughts.
This is the central square at King's College. The signs used to say that only 'fellows'
could walk on the grass, but now everyone is warned off. Another fine tradition bites the dust!
Actually, most of the people seemed to be foreign students or tourists.
There were rumpled tweedy people with leather cases and bad hair, as one would expect, but they were few and far between. This was round one in what will probably be an ongoing saga called the Quest for Internet. The coffee houses had it, but only working part of the time, so you'd start doing something and it would drop. Those of us with laptops would look at each other and roll our eyes, just like we used to do long ago at BNR when the mainframe went down. The baristas only know one thing to do - power the router down and power it back up again. Sometimes works, other times you just have to move to another cafe.
Having bought a new Olympus camera with a 10x zoom, Cambridge was my first chance to try it out. I have now worked out the mysteries of getting the camera to work with my computer (apparently you have to be online the first time you do it - go figure). I will no longer be uploading the fullsize versions of pictures - they are just too big. Let me know if you'd like to see one, and I'll e-mail it to you.
Of course, having a new camera I got a bit trigger happy...
These are the gardens at Clare College
and the bridge leading from there into the College itself
In the college chapel, I discovered a lithograph of the bridge, with
almost the exact framing of the photo I had taken myself. Probably a million
other visitors have taken the same picture...
