Expedition

Yesterday, finally finding a time that fitted after my brother Ben had suggested this several times, we cycled to the source of the Cam at Ashwell Springs.

It's a nice bike ride, about twenty miles each way over countryside that gets a little rolling as you pass Haslingfield: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2913585 is the route. There's an unexpected war memorial with a P-51 propeller sticking out of it just off the road into Steeple Morden: there was a USAAF air base there in 1942-1945

The source of the Cam is a shallow gravel-bottomed pond with two springs flowing into it; the water that nourished Newton, Darwin, Rutherford and Wittgenstein tastes very much like water, and the pond is chilly and pebbly enough that your feet feel tingly and warm after you've stopped paddling.

Cycling back via the road that passes Wimpole, you get a rather nice view of the vista that the builders of Wimpole Hall arranged, to capture which something better than a telephone might have been good:

With my hair as it is now, I really need to wear a wide-brimmed hat when cycling six hours in the sun: ran out of steam badly on the way back - I had to lie down at the top of Chapel Hill for a few minutes until my heart stopped pounding and the grampus in my lungs stopped puffing - and ended up with quite a headache in the evening despite carefully rehydrating with tea and ginger ale at the Orchard in Grantchester.