Early Days in Cambridge

After a trip that lasted 33 hours door to door, we have now settled well into life at Cambridge. We have a flat with two bedrooms (but the second one, with a single bed, is tiny) and there is a study off the main lounge/dining area. This came about because the planned occupants of this flat did not come to Cambridge, so we were offered it in place of the one-bedroom flat we were originally planned to have. We have been here just over 2 weeks now.

The flat was a bit deficient in some areas (like the kitchen) and we have been busy setting up our little flat with what we need for the next few months. Our friends here, Laurel and Philip (Philip is Principal of Wesley House) have lent us stuff like glasses, mugs, placemats and also some plants and other homely decorative touches as the place was pretty sparse looking.

Elizabeth also attacked the dead window boxes and now have two geraniums (coaxed back from the brink of death) and some yellow pansies and fresh basil growing in them. Much better than looking at spiky dead things. These two photos show the 'before' and 'after' shots.













A day or two after our arrival, Laurel took us to an organic, gluten-free, fair-trade co-operative where we bought up lots of supplies. We then went to a giant Tescos megastore where every grocery item ever made was available for purchase (except stock powder, much to Elizabeth's disgust). The store was almost the size of a village. We got sore feet by the end of it!

The weather is a typical English summer. Throughout the first week, we saw clouds (a lot), rain (quite a bit) but no snow. The sun has mostly been out for the second week, though the wind is quite brisk. We have walked every day into the centre of Cambridge - a 5 minute walk - and have wandered around some of the colleges and on the banks of the River Cam, which seemed to be highly polluted, perhaps from the runoff from the heavy rains of the previous weeks. But other parts of the river are quite delightful, as the photo above shows.

Cambridge is as we remember it from our visit in 2004; a small medieval city with lots of interesting architecture-churches, colleges, and shopfronts reflecting many hundreds of years ago. It also has lots of greens, parks and gardens in the central area, making it a very pleasant place to inhabit. Except for Saturday when, as we discovered, a thousand tourist buses from the Continent and Asia empty their passengers into the tiny streets of the city. We tried to have a leisurely walk past Kings College but were buffeted by hordes of camera-snapping tourists and bike-riding locals. No more venturing into the city on Saturdays from now on! (You can see the Marketplace on a Saturday, below.)