Late Summer on the River Cam

Cambridge for the day, colleges first. Christ's gatehouse is worth standing under for a while — the arms above the door are regilded, two spotted yales holding the shield, Tudor roses the size of dinner plates. Around the corner, King's College Chapel does its usual trick of being bigger than the street it sits on, pinnacles all the way down the roofline like a row of chess pieces.

The afternoon belonged to the river. The Cam is a chalk river, and through the end of September everything above La Mimosa is closed to motors, so the upper stretch was all punts and kayaks — one punt loaded with five people gliding under the bridge we were standing on, the chauffeur working the pole with a cap pulled low. We followed the bank upstream past the meadows, where the water went glassy and a lone kayaker had it mostly to himself.

Stopped at a thatched pub along the way, white walls almost invisible under the hanging baskets — begonias and impatiens stacked from the windowsills up to the balcony rail.