So Friday night I set out for Cambridge. I left straight after work and headed onto the M6. The traffic wasn't too bad really. There was some conjestion after the Thelwall viaduct but nothing too bad. I made the journey in 3 hours which seemed to impress Simon so I obviously didn't make bad time. I am slightly concerned that there were a lot of speed cameras on the A14 (which links the M6 to Cambridge) and I may have been going a little over the limit through them. Unfortunately they were the type of cameras which are in front of you and don't flash so I won't know if I speeding for a little while. The main concern I have is that if I was speeding through one of them then I was most likely speeding through more of them... It would be fairly disastrous if this was the case. I would have a huge fine to pay, I would probably have enough points on my license to have it taken from me and this would mean that I would have severe problems getting to work. Lets hope I wasnt speeding.
Anyway, I had quite a good drive down. I listened to "Soul Music", one of the Discworld novels that I had on audio cassette. I dont think the audio cassettes quite measure up to the books but Tony Robinson does a great job of narrating them and if you have read the books before they are a good way to revisit the story.
Cambridge is a really nice city. Apparently the university own a large percentage of the property in the centre of Cambridge and the whole centre is filled with different colleges and old Victorian buildings. The only down-side to this is that the place was filled with tourists. On the whole I think that Cambridge is much more a "university" than somewhere like Bradford where I went.
That evening we had a couple of beers in Simon's flat and chatted loads. Then we went out for a couple of pints. The whole place just seemed really friendly.
The next day I woke up quite early and read quite a lot of my book before Simon woke up. I'm reading book one in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I can highly recommend it.
We went for a quick tour of the university and the centre of Cambridge before heading over to the cinema. We watched "The Chronicles of Riddick" which was ok but didnt really have much to it. It kept me entertained for a couple of hours I suppose.
Later on we went to the local driving range which was pretty cool but I'm still aching now.
That night we had a few more pints and went out to another couple of pubs. We played the quiz machines a little bit but I think they must be set to "hard" or something because none of them were paying out. I suppose if they are going to be set to "hard" anywhere then it would be Cambridge.
I really liked the pubs. To say that it was a saturday night, it was never rowdy and there were even people playing battleships in one pub. I can imagine that happening in Manchester on a Saturday night, you'd probably get shot.
So Sunday I headed back over to Manchester. I got hideously lost walking back to the car in Cambridge and Simon had to come and rescue me. I made good time on the trip back although there was some traffic on the M6. I queued for a while and then saw an accident on the other side of the motorway. A car was on its side and blocking 2 lanes and the emergency vehicles blocked the rest of the motorway. All of a sudden the traffic on our side of the motorway vanished. I hate that. People have got nothing better to do than slow down to watch an accident and they cause tailbacks for miles. Speaking of tailbacks, the cars on the other side of the motorway had obviously been there for a while. Most of the drivers had got out of their cars to stretch their legs while waiting.
Sunday night we had a good-bye meal for Vicky. My mum cooked and it was a really nice meal. To be fair, it always is a really nice meal when my mum cooks :-)
