The New New Yorker: Cambridge

We visited Cambridge recently - my dad's friend, Bob, was up there visiting his "adopted family", Mr. & Mrs. Lewcock, and asked if we wanted to join them for the day, we hadn't been to Cambridge yet so we went!

The modern city of Cambridge was founded in 875 when the Danes conquered Eastern England, and a bridge has been over the Cam River since that time - hence the name "Cambridge".

Mr. and Mrs. Lewcock are pretty incredible people - Mr. Lewcock is a professor at Cambridge in Middle Eastern architecture (and has taught all over the place) and Mrs. Lewcock is an internationally known writer and textile designer. They split their time each year between their three homes: Cambridge, Sri Lanka (her origin), and Australia (his). They are fascinating people and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with them.

Here they are at the pub where we ate lunch, isn't this just the cutest picture?? Can you feel the love?

They have visited Texas where Bob took them to Billy Bob's ("the world's largest honky tonk") and the stockyards in Fort Worth, where Mrs. Lewcock picked up a genuine Texas cowboy hat. She brought it out along with her best Texan accent, both were great!

Mr. Lewcock took us on a tour around the campus, the highlight of which was seeing the King's College Chapel. It is considered one of the greatest examples of late Gothic architecture, and the place will knock your socks off.

The chapel was started in 1446 by King Henry VI and took over a century to build. It has the largest fan vault ceiling the in world and some of the finest medieval stained glass. Amazingly enough, after mason John Wastell took charge in 1508 (the architect of the ceiling), the ceiling took just three years to build.

During the WWII, most of the stained glass was removed for safe keeping. Our punting chaperone (more about that in a bit), told us that in their haste to remove the windows and get them to safety, they didn't take very good notes about where it had all been originally placed. When the time came to re-install all of the stained glass, it took a lot of thought and head-scratching to right it all again!

We weren't around for the choral evensong, how I would have loved to have heard that!

The view from the door of the chapel:

Punting! By far the best way to tour Cambridge on a beautiful afternoon. A punt is a flat-bottomed boat especially good for small rivers or other shallow waters. A punting driver (ours called himself a "chaperone") stands on the back end with a very long, skinny pole (aluminum or lightweight wood) and while holding on to one end of it, finds the river bottom with the other and pushes, propelling the boat through the water. (This is different from a gondola, which propels the boat through the water using an oar.)

Us, punting down the Cam River:

As a novice, anyone can rent a boat and punt your way down the river unsupervised, but I felt no need to try given my God-given gift to fall anywhere. Plus, those poles can get stuck in the mud at the river bottom - the trick is to let go of the pole if this happens and not try and hang on to yank the pole free. Usually what happens is the pole remains firmly planted, and if you hang on, the boat will continue on without you and you fall in the river with a splash. Of course if you let go, then you're stuck unless someone comes to help you or you can back up on your own - like these people: