I had decided to take a trip out of London while I was over here as I had ample time to do what I wanted in London itself (having been here before) so decided on a trip up to Cambridge. I contacted Simon who I had met at the Novell TTP meeting in Bergamo & Riga and had contacted him now and then via email since and also interacted with on the mailing list and he graciously offered to host me for the evening up there. Cool. So I looked at train tickets and found that if you booked off peak and in advance you could get a one-way ticket for P6 so that was really good, decided on my times and then started the planning.
I got into Waterloo at about 9am and then wandered to Liverpool Street where the train I was taking left from. Is still “cool” to see the big stations and to take photos of the scale of them inside. Figured out how to collect my prepaid tickets (did for the return leg too) and then waited on the train. While doing that there was this Yorkshire Tea promo thing where you had to ride a Wattbike for 2 min and the top 10 times would win a cycling jersey. So I gave it a go, after about 1min my saddle sliped down so that made things awkward, after 1m15sec I was knackered so went super slow in the last 45sec. I managed 1.22km in the 2min. They had taken a pic and gave me a mug with me printed on it and all their branding.
I was then in the train off to Cambridge, was a nice luxurious train (better then the one back down which was a bit old). Got into Cambridge at 11:45am and was then time to start my sightseeing. It was the Cambridge University Open Day so was able to look round more than I may have otherwise and got into a lot of colleges that may have charged otherwise. Some were a little “rude” and asked – college: “are you a prospective student?” me: “no I am just looking round” college: “sorry it is only for prospective students today” – weren’t too many of those so just skipped the insides of those ones.
It was really cool to see all the places and the scale of the Campus/town and how spread out things were. I’m not going to try and put names to the Colleges/buildings right now but will just include a whole lot of pictures.
A major attraction in Cambridge is Punting on the River Cam, due to the crowds etc. I never bothered with that, I was quite happy to get my photos of it.
I found the Grand Arcade and then the Cambridge Apple Store in there so charged my phone a few minutes as forgot my emergency battery charger at home and was getting low.
An amusing photo I saw in the window of SportsDirect.com
For lunch I stopped at a little shop called Sam Smileys and got a snack lunch to eat while walking around, bought a Chicken Samoosa and a Cheese & Onion pastry/pie, both were REALLY yummy, I could have had another one of the Cheese & Onion things quite easily but only ate that 2nd and was already a little bit away from there, was fine I was plenty satisfied with my nibbles. I managed to fine the odd water cooler and topped that up on my wanderings so kept me hydrated. Some of the open day desks had sweets/bite size chocolates so made sure I took advantage of those too.
The town was VERY busy due to the Open Days and also no doubt due to the fact the Tour de France 3rd stage starts there on Monday 7 July 2014.
After walking miles and miles I headed off to Simon’s work. I had written down the directions earlier as I knew my phone would die and it did so that was lucky. Was a little bit of a walk out to the West Cambridge Site but was fine and found the University Information Services (Academic & Infrastructure) building OK (eventually). We chatted a while then headed out to his home in a village called Linton. Got there quickly and met his wife Lesley and chatted while she was preparing dinner. We were maybe going to go out but they thought would be easier to stay in and have something. Probably a good idea as I was quite weary by then. Lesley made a delicious Chicken & Bacon lasagne we had that with salads, garlic bread and all sorts. I even had seconds was so tasty … but still left space for a bit of pudding afterwards. We watched the SWC game an chatted in the lounge for a while and then I crashed as I was so tired by then. Had a great sleep and then Simon dropped me off at the Whittlesford Parkway station for the 10:30am train back to London.
A big thanks to Simon & Lesley for hosting me for the evening in Cambridge, I really enjoyed my trip up there.