Photos from punting

I went punting on Wednesday afternoon, and it was a very relaxing experience :) Here are so photos I took from the ride - a punt's-eye view of the buildings along the Backs of Cambridge.

Setting off from Scudamore's Punting Shack.. (It's not really called that... well it is called Scudamore's)

The rather attractive legs of our very own punter.

Other punters

Heading upriver - the current was really strong because of all the rain we've had.

Both ends of the Mathematical bridge 

The whole Mathematical Bridge.

:-D

A punt's-eye view of King's chapel

And King's college

School kids trying to punt by themselves... not a good idea, it made for much banging into each other.

The Jerwood Library, built to look like a ship setting sail into the two-metre deep canal.

Another punting company

A famous library built by a rich guy. All the books are kept on the second floor because sometimes the river floods and breaches the banks.

There were lots of these little doorways onto the river, they were the back service doors where market-punts sold their produce to the big houses

A typical English green house

The first bridge put across the river Cam, the first version of it was put there by farmers and townspeople in 760 AD to be able to buy and sell produce to the rest of East Anglia.

Pigeon-holes! Nests for the messenger-pigeons of professors before they invented the internet, where a pigeon would return with a message and it could be taken from them on the other side of the nesting box, hence the term 'pigeon-hole'!

Cambridge's answer to Venice's Bridge of Sighs. The Venetian Bridge of Sighs was built between the jail and the gallows, and people would be led from their cells to meet their doom, whereupon they sighed as they crossed the bridge. This bridge goes between one of the colleges and the place where students receive their exam results, hence the reference to sighing in the face of one's doom.

Ducklings :-)