Day 1 - Cambridge (continued)

We returned to the river, where Jen rented a punt for us.
Punts at the River

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:
Jen Punting

We mostly did a good job, though we did end up inside a willow tree at least once:
In a tree

There was a lot of wildlife on the river. First some ducks, then a swan, which swam right at us:
Swan

Later we saw a black swan:
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:
Cow Pasture

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:
Moorhen

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:
Vince 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:
Cambridge

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.
Peterhouse

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.
Gas station
On to Day 2 in Cambridge
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