Byron woz ‘ere

Apparently, Lord Byron used to swim here. There was probably less concrete back then.

The migraine has cleared, the trains are running all day and at full speed, and the weather forecast isn’t too horrendous.

We deemed today the day we’d finally do our walk from Cambridge station to Trumpington to Grantchester and back to the station, via the Tall Trees for tea.

We got the midday train, walked down the boring guided busway, which has one lane unexplainedly closed off, to Trumpington, where it tried to rain on our parade. We refreshed ourselves in The Green Man.

Refreshed, we tootled off to Grantchester to the newly refurbished The Green Man, the point of the trip: last time we’d come through Grantchester, the pub was closed and there was a tree growing through it.

We sat out in the beer garden – even longer than the beer garden of the Cambridge Blue, we observed at the same time. It was very pleasant.

The Green Man has been a pagan symbol of fertility since the twentieth century. Since long before then, it was a decorative architectural motif and a symbol of rebirth.