Stevensons: We Love Cambridge

Orchard Street.

I have said this before, but I defy you to go into Cambridge and not be educated. That is, unless you are a complete..........(fill in the blank).

It should come as no surprise, but it always does. The whole city was founded on learning, but it can resemble a shopping mall unless you look around you. The same applies to Oxford where most of the business of education takes place behind big walls and locked gates. But you can get in without being arrested. If a gate or door is open, you can interpret this as being a welcome sign. Go for it!

City flats.

Magdalene College lies right by the river in the oldest part of town below the castle mound. It has gardens by the popular Magdalene Bridge where novice punters regularly fall into the Cam for the pleasure of photographers. Most of the college lies hidden behind ornate gates or stout wooden doors that are set into a plain wall. However, this week there are builders on site and the place is wide open.

I went through the first gate into the courtyard which is very Harry Potterish with Tudor doors leading off to spiral staircases. Each door has a painted crest above it and the flowering borders are beautifully tended. It is hard to believe that this is a real college and not a film set.

But it gets even better. Pass through the second arch and you face the Samuel Pepys Library. I live in the village where he went to escape the plague, the fire and his other troubles. You can't miss Samuel Pepys in Brampton and my son Dan went to Sam Pepys school in St Neots. The BBC is serialising his diaries right now and I'm fascinated.

Museum of Anthropology.

More legitimate access to learning can be obtained by going to about a dozen museums that are scattered throughout the university. This week we spent an hour on Downing Street visiting the Sedgewick Museum which is all fossils and minerals, then went next door to the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. It has a special feature on the Afro hair-do that includes a hair dressing salon. Don't miss it.

Sadly the Museum of Zoology is being refitted, but we paid tribute to its big fin whale tghat is housed outside and we sneaked through the campus to enter the Whipple Museum from the back. The history of science is not a dull subject and we would have stayed there a bit longer, but the women called us from a pub where they were about to order food.

The Free Press.

The Free Press is not just a pub; it is almost a museum itself: A perfect example of the sort of pub that my grandfather spent his time and his money in. He worked in a brewery in Edinburgh and treated his work as a vocation, faithfully ploughing back every penny into the business.

In those days, pubs were for drinking in and they were for men. The Free Press still has a tiny snug bar for the women to sit in, but our's refused and set themselves up in the garden. They are a bolshy, feminist bunch.

City Pub.

Today, this pub has all the history but none of the sexism that prevailed in the 50s. There are toys and games for the youngsters and good and reasonably priced menu to suit the family. We spent another happy hour or so sampling the food and some real ales.

After lunch the women wanted to go shopping and the men didn't, but we were given a list of things to buy in the ethnic shops down in Mill Road. First, James and I headed for the Scott Polar Institute because I wanted to get pictures that relate to the polar whaling industry.

Fin whale stranded in Downing Street.

The current exhibition is largely about the Inuit people of Greenland and Canada, which was a pleasant surprise. This used to be a stuffy place that exhibited old boots and sold ties and mugs. Today it has an artist in residence who is building an installation on Snow White.

Come to Cambridge and see why I think it is almost, but not quite, as educational as Edinburgh.