Day 1 - Cambridge (continued)
We returned to the river, where Jen rented a punt for us.
You get a boat and a big pole with which to push yourself up the river.
You also get an auxiliary paddle in case you get too close to the shore; I
started out in the front with paddle duty, while Jen did the
actual punting:
We mostly did a good job, though we did end up inside a willow
tree at least once:
There was a lot of wildlife on the river. First some ducks, then
a swan, which swam right at us:
Later we saw a black swan:
We punted the whole way to Grantchester to have tea at
The Orchard.
They had a brochure listing all of the famous people who had eaten there.
To get there we had to walk across another pasture, which was getting
to be a common thing:
For tea, we got a treacle tart and a scone, both of which
were very good.
After tea, it was time to return. We all took turns punting, but
I lucked out and my turn was on the easier downstream journey (Kristina
was brave and tried it on the harder upstream part).
Another bird we saw a lot of was a moorhen.
They were pretty black birds with red and yellow beaks;
unfortunately this is the best picture I have of one:
All along the river there was the constant "coo coo"ing of what I assume
were pigeons.
At the end it was my turn to start punting:
I managed to not crash into anything major. We had to avoid a group of
people who were taking up the whole river playing kayak-basketball.
I got pretty good at maneuvering and even managed to park the punt at the
rental place w/o hitting any of the other boats.
Here is a view of Cambridge off in the distance from the river:
Jen took us to her college, Peterhouse.
To enter any of the colleges you have to go through a gate
to get into the walled off grounds.
After that we went to her flat where she made us a fancy dinner,
which included strawberry shortcake.
It got dark around 10, and we headed back to our B&B. We
collapsed into bed, because by this time we'd been up for nearly 2 days
without any sleep.
We slept well, despite all the traffic noise (as this was the view out
of our window).
For the curious, £0.97/Liter was around $8/gallon at the time.
On to Day 2 in Cambridge
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