Cambridge
Created | Updated Apr 7, 2002
City of bicycles, undergraduates, science parks, Backs and confused tourists. The Backs are those parts of the Colleges which line the river Cam and collectively make up what is usually referred to as Cambridge University. This apparent lack of leading academic institution, despite obvious abundance of undergraduates, is partly responsible for the confusion of the tourists.
The science parks surrounding Cambridge give rise to further confusion: during the day, the town centre is completely deserted of local residents, filled instead with bewildered tourists asking each other where they might find the University. The bicycles are now an endangered species, the local council having insisted they be banished from the town itself, and operated preferably two- or three-abreast by Italian schoolchildren, with the result that the Ring Road has a voluntary speed limit of around a dozen miles per hour, or less for particularly rusty examples.
At the end of the day, the tourists go home only slightly perplexed, the locals return to their homes, and the undergraduates cycle illegally between colleges, wearing traffic cones on their heads.
The science parks surrounding Cambridge give rise to further confusion: during the day, the town centre is completely deserted of local residents, filled instead with bewildered tourists asking each other where they might find the University. The bicycles are now an endangered species, the local council having insisted they be banished from the town itself, and operated preferably two- or three-abreast by Italian schoolchildren, with the result that the Ring Road has a voluntary speed limit of around a dozen miles per hour, or less for particularly rusty examples.
At the end of the day, the tourists go home only slightly perplexed, the locals return to their homes, and the undergraduates cycle illegally between colleges, wearing traffic cones on their heads.
