For the final post of our trip, we popped into central Cambridge to soak up the last few hours of our journey. The British sunshine didn’t let up—in fact, the heat was pretty high by mid-afternoon, making the shaded waterways of the River Cam the absolute best place to be.
We hopped onto a little boat tour to try our hand at the city’s most famous pastime: punting. Gliding along the College Backs, we got a spectacular, lazy-afternoon view of the pristine university lawns, elegant stone bridges, and historic architecture sloping right down to the water’s edge.
A Living Timeline of History
As our punting guide steered us down the river, it was impossible not to feel tiny against the sheer weight of history lining the banks. Founded way back in 1209, Cambridge is a collegiate university, meaning it’s made up of individual colleges that operate like tiny, self-governing walled kingdoms.
We floated past King’s College, dominated by its jaw-dropping Gothic Chapel which took over a century to build, spanning the reigns of five different kings. A little further down, we slipped under the famous Mathematical Bridge at Queens’ College. While the local myth says Sir Isaac Newton built it without pins or screws, it was actually constructed in 1749 by William Etheridge using sophisticated timbers that cleverly lock together under tension.
The Unrivaled Brainpower of Cambridge
Our guide rattled off a statistic that completely blew our minds: University of Cambridge affiliates have been awarded a staggering 126 Nobel Prizes.
To put that into perspective, if the university were its own independent country, it would rank near the very top of the world for Nobel wins. We floated right past the locations where the very fabric of modern reality was unraveled—from J.J. Thomson discovering the electron to Watson and Crick mapping the double-helix structure of DNA.
Deep Roots Across the Atlantic
For an American traveling here, the most fascinating realization was discovering how deeply woven Cambridge is into the very foundation of the United States.
Back in 1630, the ship Arbella crossed the Atlantic to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Onboard was John Winthrop, an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge. He and a group of fellow Cambridge graduates helped shape the earliest concepts of constitutional government in America. When they founded a new college just outside Boston to educate their young colony, they named the town Cambridge, Massachusetts, in honor of their alma mater—a college we now know as Harvard.
The American fingerprints on this historic soil go even deeper. Three signers of the United States Declaration of Independence—Arthur Middleton, Thomas Nelson Jr., and Thomas Lynch Jr.—all walked these exact cobbled paths as Cambridge students before returning home to help birth a new nation.
Saying Goodbye
Once we stepped back onto dry land, the midday heat had us craving some shade and a cold drink. We ducked away from the crowded historic streets and grabbed some lunch in a classic, hidden little pub, enjoying a few quiet moments to chat about our favorite memories from the road.
Now, we are officially packed up and heading to Stansted Airport. It has been an absolutely unforgettable journey from the spires of Salisbury and the dramatic cliffs of the Jurassic Coast to the brilliant minds of Cambridge. But it’s time to head home.
Back to reality!
