What’s it about?
It’s not the one with the Bullingdon Club, it’s the one with the twat who burned £20 in front of a homeless man: Cambridge is the place to be if you want posh, superior dickheads everywhere but don’t quite have the stomach for Oxford.
Alternately packed with vile, obnoxious students – they’re not all rich, but they all know they’re better than you – and loud, obnoxious tourists, fight your way down the world’s narrowest pavements for a watery ice-cream and a gawp at some old shit.
Any good points?
Cambridge fosters many of society’s future culturemakers, so you’ll have ample chances to witness the next generation’s most prestigious actors, writers and musicians at the ADC Theatre. Or at least the ones whose parents are prestigious actors, writers and musicians.
If you’re yearning for something more authentic, stroll down King’s Parade and you’ll be treated to a wide range of street performers, from buskers singing Oasis to buskers singing Ed fucking Sheeran to a man outside Boots shouting that you’re going to hell. The grassroots of the arts is flourishing.
Wonderful landscape?
Take in all of the beauty and history of the university buildings, dating back up to eight centuries. Marvel at the students flitting in and out of them while you’re not allowed. Allow yourself no little resentment about this, especially as your taxes subsidise them and they wouldn’t even grant you an interview when you were 18.
That should take a couple of hours, then you will be free to stare at the miles and miles of surrounding entirely featureless countryside. Like flat fields? And a horizon that’s about 400 yards away? Because that’s what fenland is.
Hang out at…
Take in the city with a traditional punting tour; traditional in the centuries-old Cambridge custom of rinsing tourists for cash. You’ll spend an hour crashing into alternate banks of the most congested bit of the river if you punt yourself, or alternatively joining the traffic while an adolescent guide shouts his script about stuff you can’t see between arguments with other inadequate and/or pissed punters.
Hungry? Weave through pickpockets and wasps for a snack from the market, or return at 2am, lightly shitfaced, for a grease-dripping nightmare at the establishment known by students as ‘the van of death’. If you’re strapped for cash but still have some pride to burn through, enjoy a DIY dessert by harassing the free sample man outside the fudge shop.
Where to buy?
You think you can afford to buy in central Cambridge? Where a three-bed terrace costs £650,000? Yeah fuck off. Getting on the property ladder is hard enough when you’re not getting gazumped by a university college still blindingly rich off their cash from Henry VIII.
Going further out? Most of that land’s being bought out by tech companies building fancy business campuses. Convince Microsoft you’re an AI and maybe you can doss down in a data centre.
From the streets:
Donna Sheridan, aged 19: “I was worried that, coming from York, I’d feel out of place here if everyone was all snooty old money and that. But they don’t even bother talking to me long enough to be snobby, because with my accent they just assume I’m kitchen staff.”
Norman Steele, aged 62: “I’m not a student and actually live here. I’m considered worse than vermin, as my family has been for six generations.”
