A few snaps taken from my stroll around Cambridge before Strawberry Fair.



Cambridge is stuffed full o'history - among the great and the good who have attended their hoity toity universities include William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood in 1628; Isaac Newton, who worked on gravitation in 1687; Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory in 1859; Ernest Rutherford, who split the atom in 1903; and scientist Professor Stephen Hawking who wrote the best selling 'Brief History of Time' book in 1988 (like many others, I failed to see that particular book through to the end).



The former home of Jim Ede - formerly a curator at the Tate Gallery - houses a superb collection of 20th century art including works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood and Henri Gaudier-Breszka.







Faced with an urgent need for a new water supply, Thomas Hobson constructed a causeway in 1614 which transported water from springs at Nine Wells near Shelford outside Cambridge into the city centre.

Although the conduit head has been moved from the market place to the corner of Lensfield Road, the water channels still run along Trumpington Street.

Incidentally, Thomas Hobson gave the world the expression, 'Hobson's choice' (meaning there's only a take-it-or-leave-it option available).

Hobson (1544–1630) was also a livery stable owner at Cambridge, England who, in order to rotate the use of his horses, offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.

Cambridge photos

Labels: cambridge, photos

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The British Transport police at Cambridge Station were heavy handed last year, but this year they managed to add even more layers of harassment for people coming to town for the annual free festival.



Arriving passengers were herded through a long, slow moving cattle run of zig-zag fencing, and then past a sniffer dog. Some were taken out for body searches.



The BTP operation at the station was completely out of scale, with something like 50 officers - a mix of regulars and PCSOs - backed by dogs, screening pens, fences, operations trucks and specially erected search tents.



It was a ludicrously over-the-top operation - even tourists visiting for the day were subjected to the same treatment. It felt like we'd arrived at a police state.

Labels: cambridge, photos, police