Great reasons to visit Cambridge include the Polar Museum, evensong at King’s College and punting on the River Cam.
Why visit Cambridge?
There’s an element of truth in Cambridge’s reputation as a nerdy place of purist academia, with a rarefied air of knowledge and study. The University has a strongly dominant effect on the city, but also provides its plethora of beautiful buildings, greedy clutch of museums, and bookish atmosphere. There are many reasons why Cambridge is worth a visit, but here are five particularly good ones…
Nipping into the colleges
Cambridge’s 31 colleges all have their own quirks, and most have something worth going inside to see. Pembroke College, for example, has a gloriously quaint 14th century Old Court. Meanwhile, Magdalene hosts the library of Fire Of London diarist Samuel Pepys and Corpus Christi has a startling gold clock straddled by a malevolent-looking grasshopper.
The joy of Cambridge comes in hunting out the small stuff.
The Polar Museum
Amongst a gaggle of often stridently old school museums, the one at the Scott Polar Research Institute offers the most fascinating dive into a niche topic. Much the Polar Museum is dedicated to the derring-do of explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen whose expeditions helped us learn much more about the Arctic and Antarctic. But there’s also some fascinating insight into the lives of the nomadic people who live in the Arctic Circle.
Punting on the River Cam
Lazily gliding down the River Cam on a punt is the quintessential Cambridge tradition – and doing so offers marvellous views of the most impressive college buildings, framed with their pristine grassy back lawns. Scudamore’s hires out punts for £27.50 an hour for those wanting to try their hand with the long wooden pole, but there are also tours for the less adventurous.
Evensong at King’s College
The King’s College Choir – famous for its Christmas carol services amongst other things – performs evensong just about every day at 5.30pm. The sounds are impeccable – the harmonies of the boys and the undergraduates are spellbinding – but looks arguably trump them. The delicate fan-vaulted roof and huge stained glass windows give King’s College Chapel an ethereal majesty.
The Pint Shop
The Pint Shop does excellent locally-sourced food cooked over charcoal grills, while serving up a long list of craft beers on draught. It’s also a few steps away from the Eagle Pub, the supposedly haunted old coaching inn where Francis Crick and James Watson unveiled their groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA.
