Day 11 Cambridge

Day 11

Oct 25/09

Once again I woke up before Trevor and took a walk around the "wood" which turned out to be an area with lots of ferns and flat plants, and some trees around the outside, just beside a farmer's field. It also apparently was an area for people to walk their dogs because the only people that came in the area were those with dogs. We drove over to Cambridge and found ourselves a parking spot and then headed over to the many colleges that make up Cambridge University. This town was really neat. Everyone here seemed to ride their bikes everywhere and there were tons of bikes parked all over the sidewalks. The first stop was to the college where Stephen Hawking now teaches/researches, Gonville and Caius. In this college in the Great Hall is a series of stained glass windows made for the past professors of the college among those include Francis Crick, one of two men who discovered the DNA structure and John Venn, the man who invented the Venn diagram. It was then off to Trinity college to see Sir Isaac Newton's apple tree descendant. Some of the colleges charge entry fees, so we decided not to enter Trinity college to look around. Luckily the tree is just outside the college. Next geek atlas motivated destination was the Eagle pub where Watson and Crick had announced their discovery of the DNA structure. We had lunch there, where I had a traditional English Sunday roast. Next we went to the Mathematical bridge, a bridge claimed to have been built by Newton, but our geek atlas told us that it wasn't the case and it was just a nice wooden bridge. While there we watched some people punting boats down the little river. You could rent a little wooden boat and punt down the "canal" like in Italy. It was hilarious to watch as people almost fell into the water. Finishing up in Cambridge we try to seek out some free internet, to no avail, so we headed out of town to our next parking spot, as close to our next destination as we could. It was tough work and in the end I decided I wanted a shower so we headed to another Travelodge for the night.