UK: Cambridgeshire – Cambridge
🎓 Cambridge: Colleges and Courtyards
The idea came about, as many ideas do, because someone pointed out the obvious.
Neither of us had been to Cambridge recently enough to count. Karen had visited just the previous year, so she at least had some idea of what we were walking into. I, on the other hand, had not been since the late nineties — nearly thirty years — which is long enough for a city to change considerably, or for your memory of it to become so unreliable as to be functionally useless. Both, as it turned out. There was really no debating it. We were going.
Cambridge, for those who have never attempted to drive into it, is one of those places that gives the strong impression it would rather you hadn’t come by car. This is not entirely unreasonable. The city centre is medieval — genuinely medieval, not in the sense of a themed pub — and the street pattern reflects a time when the most demanding vehicle on the road was a cart being pulled by a horse that had probably seen better days. The Romans had a settlement here, known as Duroliponte, and the Saxons followed, but it was the Normans who really got things going, building a castle on the hill shortly after the Conquest of 1066. The university itself began to coalesce in the early thirteenth century, around 1209, when a group of scholars decamped from Oxford following a dispute with the townspeople — the kind of town-and-gown tension that has never entirely gone away. By the time the motor car arrived in the twentieth century, Cambridge was already seven hundred years into doing things its own way.
Even back in the nineties, parking had been the sort of experience that made you consider walking from the county boundary. Nearly thirty years on, I harboured no illusions that things had improved. They had not. If anything, Cambridge has become more committed to the idea of keeping cars at arm’s length — and, to be fair to them, they’re probably right. Karen, having been the previous year, assured us that the Park and Ride was the only sensible option, and she was absolutely correct. The city operates a network of these facilities on the outskirts, large and well-organised car parks where you leave the car, pay nothing for the privilege, and climb aboard a bus into the centre. The return fare was £4.50 per person, which for a day spent in one of the world’s great seats of learning struck us as something of a bargain. We parked up, boarded the bus without incident, and were deposited in the city centre feeling faintly virtuous.
🏛️ Christ’s College: Darwin, Biscuits and a Stroke of Luck
Our first stop presented itself almost immediately upon stepping off the bus — Christ’s College, sitting there on St Andrew’s Street as if it had been waiting for us, which in a sense it had, though not intentionally.
What we had not known, and what turned out to be a remarkable stroke of good fortune, was that the University of Cambridge had chosen that particular day, along with one other, to open its colleges to prospective students. Were we prospective students? We were not. Were we the parents of prospective students? Also no. Did we allow this to trouble us in any meaningful way? Absolutely not. We simply walked in.
Christ’s College was founded in 1505 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII and one of the more formidable women of the entire Tudor era. She had form for this sort of thing — she also co-founded St John’s College and played a significant role in establishing a readership at Oxford. What had previously existed on the site was a smaller, rather modest institution called God’s House, founded in 1437 to train grammar school teachers. Lady Margaret had bigger ideas. The gatehouse she commissioned still stands, bearing her coat of arms and the Tudor portcullis, and it looks rather impressive even now, in the way that things built to impress tend to do.
Over the centuries, the college has produced an alumni list of somewhat improbable range. Charles Darwin spent three undergraduate years here between 1828 and 1831, years that were, by most accounts, not academically remarkable — he preferred riding and collecting beetles to attending lectures, which is either deeply relatable or mildly alarming, depending on how you look at it. He went on, of course, to develop the theory of natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, which provided the intellectual foundation for entire disciplines that have followed in its wake ever since. The poet John Milton was also here, arriving in 1625 and distinguishing himself in ways that did not include an entirely smooth undergraduate career — he was reportedly temporarily rusticated, which is the Cambridge way of saying you have been asked to leave for a bit and think about what you’ve done. The college has since forgiven him, presumably on the grounds that Paradise Lost compensated somewhat for any earlier inconvenience. Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman credited with developing the scientific method, was another alumnus, having entered the college in 1573 at the age of twelve, which seems either precocious or troubling. And then there is Sacha Baron Cohen, which gives Christ’s College a range of human achievement that most institutions would struggle to match.
We wandered the First Court and the Fellows’ Building with a proprietary confidence that we had not strictly earned. The gardens beyond — some of the finest in Cambridge, incorporating what is said to be the mulberry tree under which Milton composed — were open and very pleasant. And one of the more tangible benefits of the open day was that the college had laid on refreshments for the prospective students: tea, coffee, and biscuits. We helped ourselves without a flicker of hesitation or guilt.
⛪ King’s College: The Postcard One, and It Earns It
From Christ’s, we made our way along King’s Parade — one of those streets that seems designed to make you feel better about the world simply by existing — to King’s College, which is the one that appears on every postcard, every calendar, every biscuit tin, and every piece of Cambridge merchandise produced since the invention of merchandising.
King’s was founded by Henry VI in 1441, and the scale of his ambitions was considerable. He envisioned a college of royal magnificence — a statement of both royal piety and royal power — and cleared a significant portion of the old town centre to build it, demolishing houses, a church, and several streets that had been there for centuries. The residents were presumably consulted in the way that medieval residents tended to be consulted, which is to say they probably weren’t. The result, however, is the kind of front court that makes you stand still and just look, even if you had something else you were meant to be doing.
The Chapel is the thing, of course. It took over a century to build — begun under Henry VI in 1446, continued fitfully through the Wars of the Roses as the crown changed hands several times, and finally completed under Henry VIII around 1544, by which point the original patron had been dead for seventy years. The style is Late Perpendicular Gothic, and the fan-vaulted ceiling — completed between 1512 and 1515 by master mason John Wastell — is widely regarded as the finest example of fan vaulting in existence. Whether or not you have opinions about fan vaulting going into the building, you tend to develop them fairly quickly once you are inside and looking upward. We stood there for quite some time in that particular posture people adopt when they cannot quite process what they are seeing — heads back, mouths slightly open, possibly looking a little simple. Karen had seen it the year before and was, to her credit, just as struck the second time around.
The Rubens painting, The Adoration of the Magi, hanging above the altar was given to the college in 1961 and caused considerable debate at the time about whether a seventeenth-century Flemish masterpiece belonged in a fifteenth-century English Gothic building. It has settled in rather well. Notable alumni include E.M. Forster, who wrote A Room with a View and Howards End and who lived in Cambridge on and off for much of his life; John Maynard Keynes, the economist who more or less invented the theoretical framework that governments still argue about today; and Alan Turing, whose foundational work on computation and artificial intelligence in the 1930s and 1940s has since become inseparable from modern genomic research and bioinformatics.
⚖️ Trinity Hall: Quiet Dignity, Black Death and Stephen Hawking
From King’s, we made our way to Trinity Hall, which causes confusion to the uninitiated because it has nothing whatsoever to do with Trinity College and is, in fact, an entirely separate institution with its own distinct history and identity. It is one of the older Cambridge colleges, founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. The plague had reduced the population of England by somewhere between a third and a half in the space of a few years — estimates vary, but the scale of the death is almost incomprehensible in hindsight — and the surviving clergy were in very short supply. Bateman’s solution was to found a college specifically to train lawyers and clergymen who could fill the gaps. It is a practical, rather pragmatic origin story, and the college has retained a certain practical sensibility ever since.
Trinity Hall is compact, rather handsome, and perpetually overshadowed by its more famous neighbours, which probably suits it. It sits next to Trinity and King’s and Clare without seeming remotely bothered by the comparison, which requires a certain quiet self-confidence. Its gardens running down to the Cam are often described as among the most beautiful in Cambridge, and on the afternoon we visited, they looked rather lovely. Stephen Hawking was an undergraduate here from 1959 to 1962, before moving across for his doctorate and eventually going on to occupy the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics — the same chair once held by Isaac Newton, a detail that carries a pleasing circularity.
👑 Trinity College: Nobel Prizes and a Famous Run That Didn’t Happen Here
Then came Trinity College — a rather different proposition.
Trinity is the largest college in Cambridge, and one of the wealthiest institutions of any kind in Britain. It was founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, who merged several existing colleges — King’s Hall, Michaelhouse, and four smaller hostels — with the efficient decisiveness of a man who was also at that time in the process of dissolving the monasteries and had developed a certain ruthlessness about institutional arrangements. The result was a college of extraordinary resources and ambition, and it has, over the centuries, made use of both.
The alumni list is almost comically impressive. Isaac Newton arrived in 1661 and spent most of the following thirty years there, developing calculus, the laws of motion, and his theory of universal gravitation — reportedly after an apple fell in the orchard, though historians treat the apple story with the sort of scepticism it probably deserves. Lord Byron was briefly here in the early 1800s, famously keeping a bear in his rooms because the college rules prohibited dogs — a workaround that shows a certain creative relationship with authority. Alfred Lord Tennyson studied here in the 1820s. Bertrand Russell arrived at the end of the nineteenth century. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would go on to become the first Prime Minister of independent India, studied at Trinity in the early twentieth century.
And then there are the scientists. James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations describing electromagnetism are the foundation of essentially all of modern physics, was a Fellow here. Francis Crick, who together with James Watson and with crucial assistance from Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallography work, determined the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 — a discovery as consequential as any in the history of science — was a Trinity man.
Trinity has produced more Nobel laureates than most countries. The college mentions this with a frequency that is entirely justified. The Great Court, completed in its current form around 1608 by Thomas Nevile, the Master of the college, is the largest enclosed courtyard in England — larger than it looks, which is saying something, because it looks very large. It was made briefly famous in the film Chariots of Fire, in which Harold Abrahams appears to run around the perimeter of the court in the time it takes the clock to strike twelve. The scene was, in fact, filmed at Eton College, because Trinity refused permission. This is the sort of thing you feel slightly betrayed to learn, and then immediately start telling everyone.
📚 The Wren Library: Newton’s Equations and Milton’s Drafts
Our particular wish had been to see one of the university’s great historic libraries. Cambridge is full of them — the University Library holds legal deposit rights and has been doing so since 1710, and several colleges have their own collections of considerable antiquity — but the one we were going to was the Wren Library, which sits at the far end of Nevile’s Court in Trinity College and is, by any measure, one of the most beautiful rooms in England.
It was designed by Christopher Wren — already famous for rebuilding much of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, and still in the middle of rebuilding St Paul’s Cathedral at the time — and completed in 1695. Wren did the job for free, donating his services to the college, which is the kind of gesture that does rather close down any argument about value for money. The exterior is classical in style, with an open loggia at ground level, and the interior is serene and precise: carved limewood bookcases by the master craftsman Grinling Gibbons, tall arched windows flooding the room with light, and a floor of black and white marble that does something good for the proportions of the whole space.
Among the manuscripts held there are early drafts of Milton’s Paradise Lost, showing revisions and crossings-out in a hand that knew what it was doing, and a first edition of Newton’s Principia Mathematica — the 1687 work in which he laid out the law of gravitation and the three laws of motion that governed physics for two hundred years. There are medieval manuscripts, letters, and papers of considerable historical weight, and Wren’s own papers relating to the building’s design. We stood in front of the display cases for rather longer than we had planned, which is probably the correct response
St John’s and the Porter Who Meant Business
St John’s College sits just north of Trinity, founded in 1511 by — Lady Margaret Beaufort again, the woman was ubiquitous — though she died before the college formally opened, leaving instructions and endowments that were carried out by her executors. The gatehouse is one of the most elaborate in Cambridge: sixteenth century, stone-built, and covered in heraldic beasts including a yale, which is a mythological animal that looks somewhat like a goat with tusks and which clearly means business. The Bridge of Sighs, a covered Gothic bridge completed in 1831 that crosses the Cam between two of the college’s courts, is among the most photographed structures in Cambridge and visible from the public towpath.
Unfortunately, our encounter with St John’s did not progress to the Bridge of Sighs or anywhere else inside, because the porter on duty that afternoon also meant business. He was not what you would call welcoming. He was not even what you would call neutral. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, quite rude — the sort of brisk, territorial rudeness that suggests considerable practice.
Karen, who has a gift for these situations and who has, over the years, successfully talked her way into and out of circumstances that would defeat most career diplomats, gave it a thorough attempt. She was charming, reasonable, and persistent in exactly the right measure. The porter was entirely unmoved. He had seen it all before, and he was not remotely interested in seeing it again. We retreated. St John’s is the only college that defeated us on the day, and we have chosen to regard this as entirely the college’s loss.
📖 Magdalene College: Pepys, Volumes and Renovation
Around the corner — literally, Cambridge is compact enough that most things are around the corner from most other things — was Magdalene College, pronounced “Maudlin,” which is one of those pronunciation conventions that English place names and institutions maintain largely to catch out visitors and remind them of their place.
Magdalene was founded in 1428, making it one of the older Cambridge colleges, and it sits on the north bank of the Cam, separated from the rest of the university by the river and consequently with a slightly different character — more self-contained, a little quieter. Karen had established in advance that the college was home to the Pepys Library, and this was our primary reason for coming.
Samuel Pepys — the seventeenth-century diarist, naval administrator, and Member of Parliament — had been a student here in the 1650s, and he left his entire personal library to the college on his death in 1703. It is a collection of 3,000 volumes, not a large library by modern standards, but an important one. Pepys was famously systematic about his books, numbering each one and arranging them by height — not by subject or author, but by height, in ascending order, using small wooden platforms where necessary to keep the shelves even. This cataloguing system, which is either charming or maddening depending on your relationship with books, was preserved exactly as Pepys left it. The twelve original bookcases still stand in the college library, and the volumes remain in Pepys’s arrangement, including the famous manuscript diary written in shorthand between 1660 and 1669.
Getting into Magdalene proved considerably less fraught than St John’s — they let us in without incident, which at this point felt like something to celebrate. The Pepys Library, however, was closed for renovation. Karen, who had presumably not had this problem the previous year, took it philosophically. We had a look around the college, which is pleasant enough, found nothing further to detain us, and made our way back towards the Park and Ride.
The bus returned us to the car park without incident. We collected the car and drove back to Halstead, arriving in time to watch a World Cup match. As endings go, it served its purpose.
💭 Reflections
Cambridge is one of those places where the sheer weight of accumulated history threatens, at moments, to become almost oppressive — if you let it. Around every corner is another building that has been there since before the printing press, or another plaque marking where someone reshaped human knowledge, or another courtyard that has watched seven centuries go by without much visible concern.
For me, coming back after nearly thirty years, the most striking thing was how much I had forgotten and how much had stayed exactly the same. The colleges look precisely as they did, because they are built from stone and were never going anywhere. What had changed, mostly, was me — or at least my capacity to pay attention properly, which is probably what thirty years tends to do.
The open day was a piece of luck we hadn’t earned but accepted without complaint. The porter at St John’s remains, in our collective memory, a monument to the kind of unnecessary unpleasantness that one sincerely hopes is not what the college is trying to project to the world. And the Pepys Library being closed for renovation is simply one of those things that life does to remind you that you should always check before you travel, which we had done and which hadn’t helped.
Planning Your Visit to Cambridge
📍 Location
Cambridge is the county town of Cambridgeshire, situated in the East of England, approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London. The city lies just south of the flat, low-lying Fenland landscape and sits only a short distance above sea level. Most of the historic centre is built on the east bank of the River Cam — a tributary of the Great Ouse — with the famous university Backs stretching along the western bank.
The city is compact and largely flat, which makes it one of the most walkable and cyclable in the country. Despite its relatively small size, with a population of around 130,000 (roughly a fifth of whom are students), Cambridge has an outsized presence on the world stage thanks to its ancient university, world-class museums, and growing technology sector — a cluster of science and tech businesses so dense it has earned the city the nickname Silicon Fen.
Cambridge officially became a city only in 1951, though its origins stretch back to pre-Roman times, when the site was known as Camboritum. Its original settlement name, Grantabrycge — meaning “bridge over the Granta” — eventually gave way to Cambridge, and the river itself was gradually renamed the Cam to match. The University was founded in the 13th century, and the city has been shaped by academic life ever since. Its medieval core survived the Second World War largely intact, making it one of the best-preserved historic cities in England. Today, more than six million visitors come to Cambridge every year.
✈️ Getting There
By Air
The closest major airport is London Stansted (STN), just 25 miles south of the city. There is a direct train service from Stansted Airport station into Cambridge taking around 30–40 minutes, and National Express coaches also run the route regularly. London Luton Airport (LTN), around 40 miles to the south-west, has National Express coach connections directly to Cambridge, with the journey taking around 90 minutes to two hours. There are no direct rail links from Luton to Cambridge without travelling via central London.
London Heathrow (LHR) and London Gatwick (LGW) are the main international gateways, though both are further afield. From Heathrow, travellers can take the Underground (Piccadilly line) to King’s Cross and then a direct train to Cambridge; National Express also runs direct coaches from Heathrow to Cambridge approximately every two hours. From Gatwick, Thameslink trains serve Cambridge directly, making it one of the more convenient connections for international visitors arriving into that airport. From St Pancras International — where Eurostar services from Europe arrive — Thameslink trains also provide a direct route into Cambridge.
Cambridge does have its own small airport close to the city centre, though it handles only general aviation and private business jets rather than scheduled commercial services.
By Train
The train is the most popular and straightforward way to reach Cambridge. From London King’s Cross, fast services reach Cambridge in around 45 minutes, with trains running every 30 minutes. Some services also depart from London Liverpool Street, taking between 60 and 90 minutes. Cambridge has two railway stations: Cambridge station, which is the main station serving the city centre approximately one mile away, and Cambridge North, which sits to the north-west of the city near the Science Park and is less useful for most visitors. Regular bus services connect Cambridge station to the city centre, and bike hire is available outside the station.
By Coach
National Express operates services from across the country, including direct routes from all major London airports and from cities throughout the UK. From London Victoria Coach Station, the journey to Cambridge takes around 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on traffic. Coach travel is notably more affordable than the train, particularly when booked in advance.
By Car
Cambridge is accessible by road via the M11 motorway from the south (connecting to the M25 and the wider motorway network) and via the A14 from the east and west, linking to the A1 and beyond. Driving into Cambridge itself, however, is not recommended for visitors. The city centre is heavily restricted, parking is limited and expensive, and congestion can be significant. Park and Ride facilities are available on the main routes into the city, offering a much more practical alternative for those arriving by car — buses from these sites run regularly into the centre.
By Eurostar and Onward Rail
Visitors arriving in the UK via Eurostar from Paris, Brussels, or Amsterdam arrive at London St Pancras International. From there, Thameslink trains run directly to Cambridge, making the onward connection straightforward without the need to change stations.
🚲 Getting Around
Cambridge is exceptionally well suited to exploring on foot or by bicycle. The city has been consciously designed to reduce car dependency, and the historic centre — where the vast majority of attractions are concentrated — is highly walkable. Most of the colleges, museums, gardens, and riverside areas are within comfortable walking distance of one another.
On Foot
Walking is the most natural way to explore Cambridge. The centre is compact, and strolling between the colleges, along the Backs, through the market square, and down to the riverside takes no great effort. Many of the finest sights — including King’s College Chapel, the Mathematical Bridge, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the market — are within a short walk of each other.
By Bicycle
Cambridge has the highest level of cycle use of any city in the UK, and cycling is deeply woven into the fabric of daily life here. The city is flat, well-signposted for cyclists, and has an extensive network of dedicated cycle lanes and paths. Bikes can be hired from several locations around the city. A few rules to keep in mind: cycling on the pavement is not permitted unless blue signs indicate otherwise; one-way street rules apply to cyclists unless stated otherwise; and cyclists must stop at red traffic lights, though some junctions have bike-only early-release lights.
By Bus
The city’s bus network covers the wider city and connects the centre with outlying areas. Single fares are modest — generally between £1 and £3 depending on the distance. The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, the longest of its kind in the world, links Cambridge with St Ives and Huntingdon to the north-west and with towns to the south, providing a congestion-free alternative for travelling beyond the city.
By Taxi
Taxis are available at Cambridge station and around the city. For most visitors, they are rarely needed within the centre, though they are useful for the journey between the station and city heart if arriving with heavy luggage, or for reaching destinations further afield.
By Punt
No visit to Cambridge is complete without considering a trip by punt. These flat-bottomed boats, propelled by a long pole, are a quintessential part of Cambridge life. They can be hired or enjoyed as guided tours along the River Cam through the Backs — the stretch of riverbank that runs behind the oldest colleges — offering an entirely different perspective on the city’s magnificent architecture.
The Best Time to Visit Southeast England
🌸 Spring (March–May) – Best Time to Visit
Weather: Mild and pleasant (10–18°C)
Crowds: Moderate
Highlights: Blooming gardens, countryside walks lined with wildflowers, golden evening light perfect for photography
Why Go: Southeast England comes to life in spring. From the rolling South Downs to the woodlands of Kent and Sussex, nature bursts into colour. It’s the perfect time for gentle hikes, garden visits, and exploring heritage sites in comfortable weather.
🌿 Ideal for photographers, garden lovers, and relaxed walkers
☀️ Summer (June–August)
Weather: Warm to hot (18–28°C)
Crowds: High – school holidays and tourist peak
Highlights: Long daylight hours, vibrant coastal scenes, festivals in towns and villages
Caution: Popular destinations like Brighton, Canterbury, and the New Forest can get very busy, especially during weekends and holidays
🧴 Pack water, sun cream, and a sunhat
🕶️ Visit early or late in the day for a quieter experience
🍂 Autumn (September–November) – Another Excellent Option
Weather: Cooling down (10–20°C in September; 5–12°C by November)
Crowds: Quieter
Highlights: Rich autumn foliage in ancient woodlands, harvest festivals, and local produce markets
🍇 Pair your trip with vineyard tours, farmers’ markets, and seasonal menus
📷 Ideal for tranquil walks and cosy countryside stays
❄️ Winter (December–February)
Weather: Chilly and often wet (2–8°C)
Crowds: Very light
Highlights: Historic towns like Rye and Winchester offer quiet charm, with festive lights and wintry atmospheres
☔ Dress warmly, bring waterproofs, and check for seasonal closures
🔍 Great for history buffs and those seeking peaceful escapes
✅ Summary
| Season | Weather | Crowds | Experience | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🌸 Spring | Mild 🌤️ | Moderate | Colourful, great for walking | ⭐ Best |
| ☀️ Summer | Warm 🔆 | Busy | Long days, lively scenes | ⚠️ Plan ahead |
| 🍂 Autumn | Cool 🌥️ | Light | Peaceful, food-rich, scenic colours | ✅ Great |
| ❄️ Winter | Chilly 🌧️ | Sparse | Quiet, atmospheric | 🎯 Niche |
| Tranquil, atmospheric, cosy escapes | 🎯 Niche |