puddleshark

The Bridge of Sighs, Cambridge.

As I was wandering by the river in Cambridge, a young man accosted me with a leaflet, offering tours of the river by punt - only £35 for a bench in a shared punt. I winced, then thought to myself, "Hang on, when will you ever get the change to go anywhere by punt ever again?" So I splashed out (no pun intended).

And as it turned out, it was still early, and the punters had few punters, so I had the punt entirely to myself (apart from the young man providing the propulsion, obviously).

In any other city, this would be a dark Satanic mill. In fact, it's a college: a mill of learning.

The Mathematical Bridge.

"The bridge was designed in 1748 by William Etheridge (1709–76), and was built in 1749 by James Essex the Younger (1722–84). It has subsequently been repaired in 1866 and rebuilt to the same design in 1905...

The design is an implementation in timber of a voussoir arch bridge, in which the individual elements are held in a state of compression by the action of gravity on the whole structure: a voussoir bridge requires strong abutments to balance the compressive forces at the springing of the arch..."

www.queens.cam.ac.uk/visiting-the-college/history/college...

From the river, backs of the colleges, green lawns where huge marquees had been raised for the recent May Balls.

Travel by punt would have been a lovely way to see the city, if only the tiny graduate who was guiding the punt had not insisted on delivering a very bad tour guide spiel. He kept burbling on as we went, though I gave him no encouragement.

Tiny graduate: "You may have heard of Isaac Newton?"
Me, silently: "Yes, even in Dorset we have heard of Isaac Newton."

But I couldn't think of a tactful way to ask him to shut up, and he seemed so young, I didn't want to upset him so that he leapt into the river in mortification. (It was quite deep in places). So I tried not to listen, and succeeded well enough that I cannot tell you the name of any of the colleges I saw. (Also, I failed to number my photos when I processed them, so they are in completely random order).