To Cambridge

We spent today (Saturday) in Cambridge. On the map, Oxford and Cambridge do not appear to be that far apart—probably less than 100 miles. But there is no direct way to get from one to the other. The train goes from Oxford to London's Paddington Station, then take the tube to Kings Cross Station, then another train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. We decided against that and signed up for a tour bus instead. Most of the people on the tour were international students and we had a lot of free time to wander around in Cambridge so it worked out well. The trip there was about two hours on the freeway, which looks similar to main highways in other places. We did note a few things to comment on.

First, we saw our first gas stations (petrol in the UK) since we have been here. There are none near us or in our regular walking circuit. Petrol was listed at 1.189 so you have to do the conversion. One pound nineteen pence is about $2.30. The price is listed per liter and there are slightly less than four liters to the gallon, so the total price is about $9 per gallon. Have we mentioned how many people bicycle? Second, we saw a horse van exiting the highway and headed for Newmarket. Those of you who read Dick Francis will recognize the significance of that.

(Speaking of Dick Francis, we have not mentioned that this week is the Royal Ascot horse races. We don’t know much about horse racing, but it seems to be an occasion for people to appear on the BBC wearing silly hats. All of the men are wearing top hats—it looks like the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club only not so distinguished—and the women are wearing a diverse selection of large floppy hats, similar to the type that bridesmaids are sometimes forced to wear. No one seems to be embarrassed by their hats, so perhaps we are missing something.)

Oh, and we also went to Cambridge. We crossed the bridge over the River Cam, even seeing the mathematical bridge between the halves of Queens College. (We had never heard of the mathematical bridge, and now we have seen the original at Cambridge and a copy at Iffley on consecutive Saturdays.)

Realizing that we have some regular readers who are graduates of the University of Cambridge, we will keep all comparisons between Oxford and Cambridge to ourselves except to comment that the University was founded in 1209 so it is coming up on its nona-centennial (its millennial minus a century? Its CM?) anniversary celebration next year. Second, Cambridge has produced many more Nobel winners but Oxford has produced more prime ministers. To us as visitors, Oxford is a small city with a university—it has had industries such as Oxford University Press and the Morris Motor Car Company (makers of the MG, among others)—while Cambridge seems like a university town. Albeit an old town, founded by the Romans, and an old and distinguished university. Missoula, Montana is also a university town, but even a casual visitor could tell it from Cambridge.

Trinity College, Cambridge

This post is getting long and I have barely described what we saw. Perhaps we need another posting with the facts. One important thing is that we had lunch in the Eagle Pub, which is where Watson and Crick hung out. It is also where Crick told everyone that he and Watson should get a pint on the house since they had solved the secret of life after they figured out the structure of DNA.


So now Phil has become one of the few geneticists who has made the pilgrimage to two of the birthplaces of genetics—Mendel’s pea garden in Brno and the Eagle Pub in Cambridge. If you ask how many geneticists have been to both of those places AND to Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, well, he may be one of a kind.