Day 33.. .Cambridge without the Duke and Duchess

It's 6:30 this morning... a light rain is persisting but Penny and I are determined; drawn back to Newmarket and the morning gallops. We have been promised the full treatment of the training stables exercising their charges up and over the tracks, the grass and the hills. For our efforts and willingness to stand in the rain at 7:30 am we are greeted warmly by trainers and riders. The horses are a bit disdainful..... Such beautiful animals, watching them gallop across the ridge... two and three year old as well as seasoned racers. It's just an aside that there are millions... millions of dollars worth of horses running around in front of us.

Back in Burwell by 9am and Peter has created a 'fry-up' version of an full English breakfast. Plump lovely sausages, fat thick bacon (American bacon is so wimpy) sliced pan fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, homemade wheat toast, chunky dark orange marmalade, real butter .... (beans and fried tomatoes not included). George is wistfully insulted at not being included.

Walk and eat...walk and eat.

And we are off to Cambridge. We are out of time. This has been left too late! Cambridge needs days not hours to explore. We pop into the Cambridge visitor's information center www.visitcambridge.org for maps and to buy 'discounted' punting tour tickets (11 pds per). We choose to see Cambridge from the water side... Winding our way past The Eagle (we'll come back to this) to Mill Street to the boat landing... we find it full of flat bottom punts www.scudamores.com that hold 12 or 6 people. Polled up and down the river by a punter (and guide) the punt slips through the crowded waterway. We have stern seats and settle in for what is the perfect way to grasp the essence of Cambridge University. 

The Celts wandered here in 1 AD and the Romans in 43 AD, as did William the Conquer. In 1209 Oxford (now Univ.) forced out a group of scholars who found their way northeast to Cambridge and attracted others until in 1284 the first of the Colleges, Peterhouse, was founded. Henry VIII founded Trinity College in 1546. Cambridge's unique feature is the River Cam that winds its way from the Fens through the City and University.

            Cambridge's famous Trinity College, King's College and St John's College are just some of the imposing and often elegant structures that line the River Cam's banks. Stunning gardens, flowering rose arbors... A maze of bridges lace across the river as there are NO footpaths leaving the bridges as the only way to cross the river and only by things that walk, roll (or slither).

 We are brilliantly lucky: the sky clears, the sun shines and ducklings scurry in the wake of a passing punt. Its lucky that we did not all end up in the river....

And of course we head for lunch at the famed Eagle Pub where Issac Newton, Winston Churchill and others since 1745 have 'lifted a few pints'. We settle for grilled salmon cakes, salad and sparkling elderflower juice...... to bring a short 3 hour visit to a halt as we take a double decker bus back to the parking lot, retrieve my bags and cases and load me into the airport coach bus for the 3 hour trip southeast to Heathrow Airport.

Out of the bus, into the terminal and then out again to find the hotel shuttle bus line and a ride to the Marriott. My flight leaves at noon tomorrow with a 9:30 airport call. That's far to early to start out from Cambridge and allow for traffic so I have come down tonight to finish up, for this trip, a last full day in England. Woops, it's tomorrow how did that happen!