Cambridge No 1

Hi Family, Friends, Davenanters and Bloggers,

Yesterday, my sister and I decided to meet in Cambridge for some shopping, sightseeing and, of course, some lunch. Cambridge is about an hour from London and about forty five minutes from where I live when travelling North along the M11 Motorway and it is usually a pleasant journey. The main problem with Cambridge is that there is no where to park in the city centre and all visitors are encouraged to 'Park and Ride' from the city outskirts. I met my sister at eleven o'clock at the Trumpington Park and Ride and we joined the long queue of people who were waiting for the bus. It was half term week so we knew it was going to be busy but what we didn't know was that there were some roadworks nearby that was holding up all the traffic. By the time the bus arrived, forty minutes later, there must have been about four hundred people in the queue all feeling cold and fed up! By the time we got into Cambridge it was twelve o'clock - what a miserable hour that was!

We did have a really good day in Cambridge when we eventually got there and enjoyed shopping in the fantastic retail shops and the market. We had a delicious lunch in the traditional little English tea shop near St Mary's Church, next to the market, in the middle of Cambridge:

After lunch we took a stroll past some of the Cambridge Universities and saw Kings College and Trinity College:

We then walked towards to the river and saw some tourists, wrapped up in warm blankets, in a punt:

At four o'clock it was time to catch the bus back to the car park. Unbelievably, it took another bought of patience for thirty five minutes, with hundreds of other people in the queue, to get a bus. By the time I left the car park at Trumpington it was five o'clock so that was another hour of agony! To be honest, I have been put off ever visiting Cambridge again! If the Cambridge stores had poor takings yesterday it could have been due to the fact that hundreds of people spent two hours of the day at the Park and Ride instead of being at the shops. A bus lane would have come in handy!