Things to do in Cambridge

Cambridge is a compact university city built around the River Cam, and punting is the activity most visitors come for: flat-bottomed boats poled along the water past college backs, with self-hire runs from around £20-30 an hour and chauffeured trips from roughly £15-20 per person for about 45 minutes.

King's College Chapel, with its fan-vaulted ceiling, charges around £13 for a look inside outside choral services. Trains from King's Cross or Liverpool Street take about 50 minutes to an hour, making this a realistic day trip from London.

Unlike Oxford, whose colleges spread across a busier city centre, Cambridge is small enough to cover on foot in an afternoon, with the river as its spine rather than a backdrop.