Cambridge

I’m excited… we pick up our hire car today and set off on our driving holiday.  We’ll have to drive out of London and find our way to the highway to Cambridge.  Thank you Dr Google for providing us with Google Maps.

The last few days taught us about the metropolitan train service, which is pretty useful indeed, and so we found our way to Victoria Station to the Avis office carrying our luggage without incident.

We picked up a SEAT Arona – a Spanish manual mini-SUV, and it's perfect for what we need.

It's not very big, so great for navigating tight spots and roads. And being able to put the back seats down means we have ample space for all of Ruth's luggage.

And mine.

I brought a dashcam with me and installed it before starting the car!  I might share some interesting video depending on what transpires.

Over the next 4 weeks, our plan is to drive from London to Cambridge to York to the Lake District to Wales to Devon to Bath and back to London.  We'll spend a few nights at each stop - we don't want to overdo the packing and unpacking.   

My priority is to enjoy our time at each location, take some good pics, and every now and then share them via this blog.  So please don't expect a post every day.  I'll let everyone know via email, facebook, Instagram when I put the post up.

So driving to Cambridge - we stopped for lunch at St Albans.

OMG... They have a cathedral:


Not quite as big as Westminster Abbey, but not bad.

We arrived at Cambridge incident free.  This university town was established because a group of Oxford University residents became fed up with the way things were happening in Oxford and so decided to establish their own thing.


This is a pic of Kings College in Cambridge.  There are quite a number of colleges here- the kids leave home and live in their particular college while studying at the university - two very separate tasks: the colleges are designed to support the kids while the university does the curriculum teaching.

Very nice looking environment and grounds.  And quite a large number of tourists taking advantage of the "punting" down the river. These buildings are part of Queens college:

Ruth and I took a punt too.  I was pleased not to get sea sick.


There were a lot of people being punted along the river.  It was quite relaxing except for the guy pushing the boat along trying to be funny about his past life as a student in Cambridge.  He completed a history degree and so he was telling tourists about university life in order to earn an income.

I think this guy was on a similar pay scale:


I'm not sure which college in case you were wondering.

I suppose the thing that started getting to me was how old everything was. 

Cambridge University started up in 1209.  Kings College was built 1441.  The first college, Peterhouse was established 1284.

Melbourne University started teaching in 1855 BTW.

More history graduates hard at work I presume:

From Cambridge we're driving to York. See you there!

Bye for now.

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