Cambridge, England: Day Tripping

To mark our final weekend together Milly and I decided to go on a day trip to Cambridge, one of our favourite cities. 

We rose bright and early to beat the crowds, getting to Cambridge at about 8am. It was lovely and quiet and tourist free. For about 20 minutes. Accepting that we would be fighting through hordes of tourists all day, we decided to join in and be annoying tourists too, stopping to photograph each other in front of anything we thought cute.

It begins.

And it goes on.

The ‘Milly standing in doorways’ series.

And the 'Courtney and the tree' series. 

We didn’t really do much other than take our tourist snaps. I’ve spent weeks in Cambridge over the years visiting friends and attending social events, so I felt I’d covered most of the major landmarks before.

I did learn a couple of fun facts though:

This is the Mathematical Bridge. The popular story of this bridge is that Isaac Newton constructed it using nothing but wood and maths. No nails or bolts, just mathematical principle. Following his death, a group of Cambridge students disassembled it, curious to know how it really worked. Predictably, they were then unable to correctly reassemble it, so iron bolts now hold it together.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the Wooden Bridge (the actual, and very boring, name) was constructed in 1749, decades after Newton died, by James Essex. According to the Queens’ College website, only someone without a serious grasp of reality would believe that the bridge could have been constructed without nails and bolts. Burn.

The following story possibly has more truth in it, we read it in our official Cambridge walking tour pamphlet after all! Then again, we conducted our own walking tour, with Milly as the guide, so expertise was slightly limited.

Apologies for the dodgy photo, but this the The Great Gate of Trinity College, above the gate you can see a statue of Henry VIII, the college’s founder. Years ago, the sceptre was stolen from the statue and replaced with a chair leg. The sceptre was never recovered and the chair leg remains there to this day. Oh those Cambridge students, such hooligans.

And for my final fun fact, this apple tree (next to The Great Gate) was apparently grown from a cutting of the apple tree that inspired Newton's theory of gravity. 

We had a great day out. It doesn’t matter how many times I visit Cambridge, I am never desensitized to the beauty of this little city. The streets, the buildings, the colleges, the pristine grass, and all of the old things in general.

Do visit if you can.