I wasn’t sure if I should include Cambridge on my #50places2025 list. There were two reasons why, firstly I grew up in Cambridge in the 1970s and early 1980s, as a result it’s my home town. Can I count visiting a place I know well, as a visit? Secondly this”visit” was rather short, I arrived the evening before and was attending a conference at Downing College.
I did write about the #50places2025 series of blog posts that:
Each visit has to be more than just seeing a place, when I work in London for example, I often see St Pauls’ Cathedral during a lunchtime walk, but that to me is not visiting that place.
However as I had arrived the night before and was up early I had arrived in the centre of Cambridge using the Park and Ride quite early, so I took the time to explore the city before heading off to Downing College for the conference.
I also spent some time travelling up and down Newmarket Road, I was staying in a hotel just off the A14 (or as I like to call it the A45), so drove down Newmarket Road and also took the Park & Ride bus up and down it as well. There have been some changes on that road, the old brickworks has become a retail park, whilst the location of the gas towers is now a Tesco. There were some places which hadn’t changed. The Cambridge United football ground is still in the same place.
I also saw The Leper Chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene from the bus. I did a school visit there and we made a model of it. That was primary school.
After catching the Park & Ride bus to the centre of Cambridge I had a short time to do some exploring before heading off to Downing College for the conference I was attending.
In some ways Cambridge never changes and sometimes it keeps changing. I remember Robert Sayle department store (part of the John Lewis partnership) which has now disappeared to be replaced by a “properly” branded John Lewis shop in the Grand Arcade shopping centre. Lion Yard which was built in the 1970s and was refurbished the late 1990s. This is still home to the public library, and I remember going there to borrow books. It was also home to a WHSmith. The top floor of which was devoted to music.
The colleges of the university probably haven’t changed that much over the last hundred years and I popped over to photograph Trinity Lane for my photography series.
I walked along Kings Parade to get to Downing College for my conference.