A stroll around Cambridge, an old English charmer

You can often — though not always — gauge if you’re going to like your tour guide within the first 10 seconds. Their mannerisms, demeanour, attitude and voice are all telltale signs.

I can sense after about three seconds that I’m probably going to get on well with Jonathan Thornalley. With a cheerful smile, a trimmed beard and wide-brimmed hat, he shakes my hand and inquires, in a friendly East Anglian burr, how well I know Cambridge.

Truth be told, I’ve had many outings and nights out here over the decades. It’s close enough to London — an hour away by train — to visit on a day trip, but you could easily spend a week (or a lifetime) here, soaking up the abundant charms of a city that, like its old rival Oxford, makes you feel simultaneously silly and smart, such is the array of big, groundbreaking, globe-changing ideas bouncing around the place.

Despite my relative familiarity with Cambridge, I still only have a superficial knowledge of its long and storied history, so I was keen to book a walking tour. There are public and private options, with itineraries that can be tailored towards specific fields of interest.

I’d like to see some big hitters, but hidden gems too, and Jonathan — also known as Johnny — knows just the spots.

You’ll almost certainly want to visit King’s College, perhaps the most famous of the 31 colleges that comprise the University of Cambridge.

Begun in the mid-15th century, and taking more than 80 years to build, the college’s chapel is larger and more impressive than many cathedrals I’ve visited. The fan-vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows are particularly jaw-dropping.

However, several other Cambridge colleges are usually open to the public, affording entry to their libraries and lodges, chapels and courts. Many don’t charge for admission, yet some are so discreet you might pass their entrances without realising it.

Peterhouse, the oldest college, founded in 1284, overlooks Little St Mary’s Lane, a quiet, pretty street that’s new to me. “My grandparents lived in that house,” says Johnny, pointing to one of the neat properties opposite the college and churchyard.

“And this house,” he adds, walking a few doors down, “was where Stephen Hawking lived with his first wife, Jane, in the early 1970s.”

We press on to Trumpington Street, passing the Fitzwilliam Museum — a neoclassical landmark that stores a treasure trove of antiquities — en route to Pembroke College, which was established in 1347 by a French noblewoman.

We duck inside its pretty little chapel, almost Italian Baroque in style, and lashed with marble and woodwork. This was the first completed architectural project of Sir Christopher Wren, who would go on to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral after the 1666 Great Fire of London.

Johnny lists some of Pembroke’s notable alumni, which include actors, poets, comics and broadcasters (think: Clive James, Ted Hughes, Tom Hiddleston, Bill Oddie, Peter Cook and Eric Idle).

Outside Pembroke’s library is a bronze statue of William Pitt the Younger, who graduated here, then became the UK’s youngest prime minister, aged 24, in 1783.

Most recent UK premiers studied at Oxford, including David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer, whose replacement, Andy Burnham, is the first Cambridge graduate to hold the top office since Stanley Baldwin in 1935. Mr Burnham is also the first UK prime minister to have a degree in English (he went to Fitzwilliam College, a relative newcomer in Cambridge’s collegiate system, dating from just 1869).

Later on our tour, we peek into the elegant, manicured grounds of Trinity College, which claims to have produced more Nobel Prize winners (34) than any other educational institution on the planet. Founded by King Henry VIII in 1546, the college counts Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Byron and the current monarch among its past students. The then-Prince of Wales initially read archaeology and anthropology, before switching to history, graduating in 1970.

Johnny points out a recent addition by the college’s entrance gate: a glass cabinet containing one of the legs from King Charles’ 2023 coronation chair.

Although the university dominates the city — and has been the focal point of our tour — Johnny is keen to stress that Cambridge was here long before it.

”The river, the Cam, was a crossing point for Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings,” says Johnny, who, before he became a full-time tour guide, ran a stall at Cambridge Market, which has been held since at least the 10th century and trades daily in the square behind Great St Mary’s Church (it rises opposite King’s College and has outstanding 360-degree panoramas from its tower).

Although usually peacefully co-existing, there have been flare-ups across the centuries between “town and gown” — as the two separate populations are described (“town” being the local citizens, and “gown” the academics who traditionally wore long black gowns, but now tend to wear attire more suitable for riding the bikes they whizz around on).

Both “town and gown” — and tourists from everywhere — rub shoulders in Cambridge’s wonderful old pubs. Johnny takes me to The Eagle, a 17th-century coaching inn that’s a stone’s throw from King’s College and a short walk from the Cavendish Laboratory, where the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the double-helix structure of DNA.

It was in The Eagle, on February 28, 1953, that they apparently announced they had discovered the “secret of life”. But — and here is the value of having a guide with good local knowledge of past and present — Johnny adds greater depth to that much-repeated story. And he shows me a new plaque outside the pub crediting not only Watson and Crick, but the scientists whose data the duo relied on, notably Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins of King’s College London.

Wilkins, Watson and Crick shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962, but Franklin remains relatively unknown. She died in 1958, of ovarian cancer, aged just 37.

Johnny leads me through the courtyard of The Eagle and to the RAF Bar, a back room where Allied airmen drank and mingled in World War II. After browsing their doodles on the walls and ceilings, we head back outside and Johnny pauses by the beer garden.

He glances up towards an upper-floor pub window that is left permanently open. And he starts to unveil a ghost story — the plot and twist of which I won’t reveal here. But it’s another intriguing and entertaining episode on a rewarding walk that has deepened my appreciation of this always-inspiring city.

+ Steve McKenna was a guest of Visit Britain and Cambridge tourism. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication. fact file + A 90-minute Cambridge Highlights Tour costs £20 ($38) per adult and £12 ($23) for children. Tour frequency depends on the time of year, but it runs daily at 11.30am and 2pm throughout July and August. Private tours for groups and individuals are also available, costing from around £100 ($191). See cantabtours.com and thecambridgetourcompany.co.uk + To help plan a trip to Cambridge and Britain, see visitcambridge.org and visitbritain.com