Around Cambridge: some curiosities

Some of the names of places in Cambridge are very strange to an outsider (at least to these particular outsiders, at any rate).

For example, we live near a park called Christ's Pieces. We couldn't work out what on earth this could be referring to, and the idea of Christ either having bits or pieces or being in pieces didn't make sense. When we finally discovered what it meant it was easy to understand, but one needs a knowledge of 'Cambridge speak'. Christ's Pieces is shorthand for 'the pieces of land that belong to Christ's College'. Here is Elizabeth on the very piece of land itself.

Cambridge also has some very fine Tudor buildings still in use, though perhaps not for purposes that their builders had originally envisaged. Though there are still some operating as pubs, a number have become restaurants, tourist shops or accountants.

As well, there are still some remnants of the Normans here as well, with the front of the imaginatively named Round Church dating from the time of the Normans.

Most of the buses here are run by companies with names, such as you would expect, like Stagecoach or National Express. When we arrived at Heathrow, we caught a National Express bus all the way to Cambridge and sat in the front seats, which enabled us to be mightily entertained by the driver as we sped along the M25 and then wended our way through towns and villages in the countryside. But soon after we arrived, we found these curiosities parked at the bus station and beside the road. Can you image a bus company called Whippet !?!




We are very blessed to have, in the street which runs at right angles to Jesus Lane, a magnificent display of ivy growing on the front of a row of houses. We often walk past it on our way to the bank. Enjoy the stunning autumn scenery...

Finally, to reinforce that we are living in Tardis territory, a picture from one of the streets of central Cambridge, showing the classic public telephone box, with a mobile phone being used right next to it!