From Platform 9 3/4 to Cambridge

25 March 2008

The tube (Underground) is definitely the fastest way of getting around Greater London, but it is boring and often means negotiating many steps or taking lifts or escalators and/or walking miles of corridors to connect between the various platforms. Today we figured out at least one route of the London busses. Virginia much prefers this because it not only reminds her of her childhood when she rode upstairs at the front of the double-decker busses but it also allows one a clear and uninterrupted view of the fabulous London scenery.

Route 205 starts very near Paddington Station and goes directly to Kings Cross station where we discovered that there really is a Platform 9 3/4! And all this time we thought Harry Potter was a figment of J. K. Rowling's imagination. We may have to rethink that and as you can see from the picture, we caught a luggage trolley just as it was going through the wall!

We then picked up cheap day return tickets to Cambridge and our train actually departed from platform 9 1/2! Needless to say, we enjoyed a lovely day out in that old University city. It is essential to gain a place at one of the more than thirty colleges before one can study at Cambridge University.This is quite the opposite of what happens at Jane Franklin Hall where one must first be admitted to study at the University of Tasmania before being received into a residential college.

Cambridge is an interesting place; made up of the old and the new. There are gorgeous medieval streets and some pretty ugly modern buildings. On the right is one of the old streets which really impressed. It looked like one of the drawings by Dore in his and Gerrold's wonderful book on London 1872.

The high point of our visit was walking through Kings College and spending time in the chapel from where we have all heard the service of nine lessons and Christmas Carols every year. A friend of Virginia's told her that to get a ticket for one of these services you need to have your name put in a waiting list at birth! It is a magnificent building. Begun in the 1450s it is noteworthy for many reasons particularly its magnificent fan vaulted ceiling completed in 1515.

The weather was so bitterly cold we ducked into a pub for lunch (as if we really needed an excuse). There is now no smoking in British Pubs which for us, being non-smokers, is wonderful. In fact, most indoor smoking appears to have been banned even in the railway stations. It is hard to imagine a British Pub or Railway station without the thick fug of smoke which always used to be a part of the building. It is a huge change since our visit last year and we are told that we can expect much the same sort of change in Paris.