A Winter Weekend Wandering Through Cambridge

A winter weekend in Cambridge, built around the city center colleges and museums walk — about 6.2 km, which sounds modest until you keep stopping at every gate. Started on King's Parade, looking over the railings at Senate House lawn, King's College Chapel looming grey behind it. The chapel's fan-vaulted interior is the famous part, but even from the street the pinnacles are absurd, a whole roofline of them. A black-and-white portrait exhibition was set up on the lawn and again outside Great St Mary's, where the tower does its best to dwarf the market signs at its feet.

Made it into the Fitzwilliam, where the entrance hall alone justifies the detour — gilded coffers running up to a dome with statues tucked between the windows. Back out and up to Trinity's Great Gate, Henry VIII in his niche above the doors, bikes stacked against the wall as if the sixteenth century were just another rack. The colleges keep swapping between old stone and patterned brick — the Old Divinity School near St John's is all red brick and checkered chimneys, someone having put Santa hats on the statues along its front.