If there's anything in this world that epitomises England's green and pleasant land it is medieval universities. Both Oxford and Cambridge are England's medieval university cities, but are different in distinctive ways. While Oxford is, as Irish novelist Gemma O'Connor noted recently, "a modest woman who keeps her beauty hidden", the somewhat more flagrant Cambridge is determined to retain a city for itself under swishing academic garb and tourist traps.
Cambridge is, of course, also associated with the desultory watery fens of East Anglia, a landscape best experienced through its quiet country lanes and apparently never-ending skies. The vast fields and plains of the Fenlands were drained as late as the 1820s under the aegis of forcefully optimistic Dutch engineers. From Norwich east to the English Channel, the water that long ago drenched immense areas of medieval peat bogs created a maze of waterways known as the Norfolk Broads.
Skirting the north coast between Great Yarmouth and Cromer, one of the waterways, the Weaver's Way, led Roman traders through dozens of market towns, while Norman invaders made their way to an elevated mound at Ely where they constructed a cathedral out of stone. South of Ely, in the early 12th century, renegade scholars from Oxford based themselves along the River Cam where they waited patiently for a royal imprimatur. When they received one 75 years later, they built a university. Which is where we came in.
In the late 12th century, Peterhouse was the first college founded; there are now 31, the most recent being Robinson College, which was founded in 1977 by a local millionaire. A walking tour of the colleges (not all of them - there are, needless to say, more quadrangles than you can shake a well-preserved walking stick at) is a great way in which to familiarise yourself with the architectural treasures of the city.
Because of the way they were founded - by kings, queens, bishops and noblemen - Cambridge's colleges attracted numerous powerful patrons with accompanying endowments of land and money. Inevitably the colleges used the best architects, among them Wren, Powell and Moya.
As you walk in and out of them, you can't help but feel that here are examples of some of the most breathtaking monuments to English aesthetics over the past 700 years. Packed into less than one square mile, the splendour and grandeur of the picture-postcard King's College Chapel and St John's Bridge of Sighs (not forgetting the sight of a languorous punt or two on the River Cam) are the tourist staples on which the city thrives. If you delve further into some of the lesser-known colleges, however, you'll discover sights unseen by most visitors.
It's important to note that the colleges are essentially private places where people live and work throughout the year. You're welcome to walk through the quadrangles, to visit the chapels and, occasionally, libraries and halls, but loud conversation is frowned upon.
One of the main pleasures of walking through Cambridge is that you can actually walk through it. Bicycles out number cars, with Cambridge claiming to have more bikes per person than any other city in Britain. That said, a wise pedestrian should look both ways before crossing the road.
If you're pressed for time and want to take in Cambridge in less than a day, you might favour the Greatest Hits approach: one chapel (preferably King's College), one garden (Christ's College) and one library (Trinity's is by far the most interesting). If you have more than a few hours to spare, you could easily pack in over 15 colleges, as most cluster around the centre of the city.
If you have time for a quick pint, the one pub you have to go to is The Eagle, in Benet Street, off King's Parade. This is the place where the Nobel Laureates, Watson and Crick, breathlessly rushed in to announce their discovery of the DNA double helix. Legend has it that the unimpressed barmaid insisted they settle their bar tab before she would allow them a celebratory double gin.
The Eagle is also the place where, during the second World War, US airforce men burned their names into its ceiling with lighters prior to going out on missions. The walls are decorated with war memorabilia harking back to a time when imminent death was sneered at through a woozy blend of half-pints and full-bodied women.
If you have a day or two to spare, it's no harm to look beyond the spires and settle your sights on a healthy range of country houses and gardens which the area has to offer - that is, if you can withstand the often bewildering behaviour of their owners. A doddery old dear at Woburn Abbey told our group that we should each wear leprechaun hats to distinguish us from other tourists. No offence was given or taken, but it makes you think.
That said, the home of the Marquess and Marchioness of Tavistock and their family is astonishing, housing one of the most important private art collections in the world. A tour of the abbey's three floors should be enough to acquaint you with the ways of the landed gentry and their eccentricities.
The best garden in the area? Dismissing the (admittedly beautiful) grounds of the various stately homes for the sole reason that they are beyond the practical aspirations of the humble green-fingered house-owner, my favourite was Benington Lordship, Benington, near Stevenage. Chemicals are used as little as possible in this Edwardian plantsman's garden with a spectacular western view. Tended by the owners, Sarah and Harry Bott, and a couple of hard-working gardeners, it's a contained private paradise that is, luckily for us, open to the public. From June to August, 2pm to 5pm, afternoon tea is available - on the verandah, naturally.