Cambridge

I used to dread this time of year. The fading light, the shorter days, the colder weather, needing more fingers than I have on one hand to count how many months before it gets vaguely warmer. But that’s all changed, and now I love November. What made the difference was moving here, to Cambridge, five and a half years ago, and being able to reframe a miserable season into one of the most special and atmospheric.

[Great St Mary’s railings: perfect for posters and parking bikes]

When the students return in October, Cambridge reverts to being what it is meant to be: a small university town with a market. It’s really small - you can be out in the Fens in a matter of minutes on a bike - and there’s only one central area so in summer it gets massively overcrowded with tourists and language school students. But when they melt away, Cambridge is left to the university and the locals. The railings all over town are suddenly covered with posters for events, the bike parks and racks are full, the coffee shops overflow, and the local vegetables, often covered with rich black Fenland soil, arrive in the market.

[Fenland veg]

There is the wonderful atmosphere in the evenings which is the time I used to fade with the light. The temperature drops, the Fen mists roll in, the shops and college lights come on, and peace descends on the streets which are virtually empty by 6pm. I find that there is nothing better, nothing more guaranteed to make me feel I’m living in a special place, than cycling home in the dark on glittering frosty roads in freezing temperatures past people in gowns dashing to dinner in college, as I think about the medieval patterns and timetables of university life many of which which haven’t changed in centuries. There are church and chapel bells, evensong and, later, compline, books being read in libraries, and people climbing ancient staircases to ancient rooms.*

[King’s College Chapel]

And there is another thing about living here. I didn’t come to Cambridge to study and I have no association with the University. With its reputation, you think it might be exclusive, with town and gown quite separate, but so much is on offer for free here it’s not hard to feel a part of it. Although one or two colleges charge for entry, most are very welcoming, but do have restricted visiting hours (understandably).

So you can see stained glass by Morris & Burne-Jones (above, in Jesus College),

or windows by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens (above, in Robinson college), walk round beautifully planted and maintained gardens and courtyards, see the art collections in Girton (People’s Portraits) and Murray-Edwards (art by women), pop into the Heong Gallery in Downing (recent exhibitions of David Hockney and Quentin Blake), cross bridges over the Cam, visit an exhibition in Magdalene’s new library and go into the Pepys library opposite, and attend candle-lit evensong in King’s College Chapel (and other college chapels). All for free.

[medieval chimneys, Trinity Lane]

For £30 a year you can use the University library designed in 1934 by GG Scott, architect of Bankside Power Station now Tate Modern, and you do feel like you are in the engine room of research, the turbine hall of learning. There are herons by the Cam and kingfishers on Hobson’s Conduit, and it’s easy to catch fabulously esoteric snippets of conversation or sit in a pub next to someone with part of the periodic table tattooed on a forearm (not sure how that works in a chemistry exam). Such are the achievements that have taken place here, plaques proliferate, such as this one which is close to my heart.

[SPRI library - I really hope ‘The Lost Pianos of Siberia’ is as good as it sounds]

The Scott Polar Research Institute library has the largest collection of books in Russian about the cold I have ever seen and the excellent Polar Museum,

[Kettle’s Yard flowers]

and Kettle’s Yard where I volunteer (more of that another time) has flowers which are chosen with great care and precision to work with the contents of each room, just as HS ‘Jim’ Ede directed when he bequeathed this unique house and collection to the University, stipulating that it had to remain free to visit.

As if that were’t enough, the magnificent Fitzwilliam Museum (free entry) has a whole room of Dutch flower paintings (eg above).

Where once the University may have been insular and closed-off - literally, behind high walls and heavy wooden doors - it’s now much more a part of the town, and the town is much more a part of the University. And I no longer have the autumn blues. (Cue a pun on Cambridge blues, but that’s too obvious.)

*There are of course more modern rooms in ancient and new colleges. It’s just the very old, probably very cold, rooms I think about when cycling home at dusk.