Day Eleven - Ely to Cambridge - 21 May

We had a leisurely breakfast and then drove thirty minutes west to Cambridge arriving at our accommodation, Caroline Guesthouse about ten thirty. We were able to park our car at the front of the house and immediately caught a bus into the city. The bus stop is across the road from our accommodation and one comes along every ten minutes so Henk has found a good location. The bus took about ten minutes to get to the city and we found a tea room to fortify ourselves for a bus tour of the city. The bus was a hop-on, hop-off one giving a commentary as we motored around the city for one and a half hours.

Henk and I like doing these tours as they give a good background to the city and plenty ideas of where we would like to visit. Cambridge is a lovely university town with beautiful stone carved buildings comprising thirty-one colleges and thirty-one thousand bicycles. Apparently the students aren’t allowed to have a car and consequently there are bicycles everywhere and very few cars in the city centre.

After lunch we visited the magnificent King’s College Chapel. It was built in the late fourteen hundreds and early fifteen hundreds. The carved wooden screen between the nave and the chancel has the carved initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

The chapel has the world’s largest fan vault which looks so fine it’s difficult to believe that the vaults can hold up the building. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to tour the remainder of the King’s College buildings as it is exam time.

We moved onto the unusual and small Round Church building which goes back to 1130AD and makes it one of the oldest buildings in Cambridge. It was built following the First Crusade and is one of only four remaining round churches in England. At four thirty we called it quits and caught the bus back to our accommodation. Our host was waiting for us and he was very efficient with the paperwork and breakfast orders. He recommended the pub called The Rock about a twenty minute walk away and it was very good and obviously popular with the locals. We watched the second episode of the Seven Up series which I have been watching since I was twenty-four years old. The participants are now fifty-six and it’s fascinating to see what they are doing with their lives. Tomorrow we do more exploring of Cambridge before moving onto London the following day. It was another cold and overcast day but tomorrow’s temperature might be a bit warmer.