This morning Ken and I parted ways and I hopped onto a train to Cambridge to meet my sister, Nola, and her girls, Harriet and Imogen, while Ken went to visit the Tate Modern Gallery before getting on a train to Chelmsford to go to a beer festival with Steve and his brother.
I sat back and listened to a podcast while dozing and was soon in the City of Cambridge . Nola and the girls were waiting for me. It was nice to see them, great that we are all overseas at the same time. They are staying about half an hour away.
Nola had booked us into a bike tour so we made our way to the meeting point, a lamp post in the middle of Parker's Piece. The lamp is known as the Reality Checkpoint. There are many theories as to how it got this name. Some of them to do with drunken students.
Our tour guide, Greg, came and collected us and we walked back to the garage where they keep the bikes. There were four others on the tour, 2 girls from Poland and 2 from Kent.
Once we were kitted up we were off and riding along, stopping every now and then so that Greg could tell us interesting facts about the colleges and the history.
We started by going to the outer edge of the town, along Midsummer's Green and the canal where the rowing clubs are situated. The rowing is a big part of the history and culture of the colleges.
We rode, taking care to avoid the cows on the path, into the town and the more crowded areas where we looked at the beautiful old college buildings . They are steeped in tradition and history.
Greg talked about the achievements of of the alumni of Cambridge, and the 92 Nobel Awards that have been achieved, out of about 700 that have been awarded. Impressive, and more than the 60ish "the other One" (Oxford) has received.
He told us about the Night Climbers, including Lord Byron, who would climb the buildings in the middle of the night and pull pranks. The gold sword from the statue of King Henry at King's College was replace with a chair leg.The college replaced it twice, the climbers kept taking it, once putting up a bicycle pump. Eventually the college gave up and a chair leg still sits there today. Isaac Newton studied at King's College and among other things, invented the cat flap here!
We could see the punters punting on the Cam River. Nola and her family had spent the previous day punting and it certainly looks like a relaxing way to get about.
We biked over to the actual university buildings. The colleges are all accommodation. The Uni buildings look pretty much like any other Uni, completely different from the beauty and heritage of the colleges. We saw the Uni Library, which houses 30 million books. It is a copyright library so can have any book published in the UK. Their catalogue includes magazines.
We finished the tour. We had gone over by about an hour. It was really interesting and Greg was really enthusiastic. I'm not sure if the others were engaged as we were, they didn't show a lot of involvement and Greg ended up mostly directing his talk at us . They were all going off with another tour guide as they were doing the full day tour and heading out to Grantchester.
We went and had a late lunch at the Eagle, the pub that famously was the spot where scholars first described DNA as one night they had a drunken revelation. It is also the place where there is a RAF bar. Airmen leaving for the war signed the walls the night before they went. Some of them never returned. Their dedications are still there today. When we were cycling we had seen the only building damaged by war. It had machine gun holes in and everything else was left untouched, which has left the historical buildings complete.
After lunch we wandered to the King's College Chapel, but it was 4 quid to get in and we weren't that interested, though the stained glass is supposed to be fantastic.
We went back to the Wren Library and had a bit of a look at the old books. There was not a lot we could look at there, so we finished up and made our way to the train station. We stopped into the Fitzwilliam Museum but it was about to close. We were allowed to have a quick look in the foyer and gorgeous staircase where we managed a little photo shoot! We said our goodbyes as I left on the Kings Cross line and they left on the Liverpool line. I will see them back in Perth.
I had a quiet night in catching up on some rest and some writing, while watching Andy Murray win his match and Portugal beat Wales. Ken arrived home after a great day of beer and mates.

Steps 16,436
Kms walked 11.6
Kms cycled 4.9