Life Away From The Bench

Cambridge Life

Cambridge also has a lot to offer outside college life. There are a wide variety of pubs, from the Eagle to the many new bars that are appearing all over town. If you're looking for food, then Cambridge has scores of different places to eat out, from excellent noodle bars, to the impressive cuisine of renowned Midsummer House.

For those lazy summer days, there is always punting. Show off to the tourists with your well-honed technique or take a picnic and escape the crowds by heading away from the colleges and towards Granchester. Granchester also makes a good place to walk or cycle to across the meadows. To see a Hollywood blockbuster. head for the multi- screen Vue Cinema int he Grafton centre. If you get tired of a diet of pure Hollywood, then try the Cambridge Arts Picture House in Regent Street, for a more eclectic mix. For live entertainment, the Arts and ADC theatres have a varied programme. In the summer, reasonably priced open air performances of Shakespeare plays are staged in college gardens by two professional companies.

For music fans, the Corn Exchange is a great reference point. It's the main venue for touring bands in Cambridge and also hosts touring opera and ballet companies.

Several city sports clubs are based at the council-run gym: Kelsey Kerridge; adjacent to Kelsey Kerridge is Parkside Pools, with a 25 metre competition pool, a diving pool, and two waterslides!

Closer to the Lab

The Addenbrookes site has its very own gym (the Frank Lee Centre of 'Flee') that you can join for at various levels of membership. It boasts a swimming pool, sauna, fitness suite, aerobics classes, tennis and squash courts and much more besides. The LMB has squash and badminton ladders, whose members play their matches at teh Flee. If you are feeling a little less energetic, then the centre also has a very reasonably priced bar, which also serves nice food.

Getting Away

Of course, if all this fails to inspire, or Cambridge suddenly feels a bit like a village, the bright lights of London are a mere 49 minutes away by train. If you're really desperate to leave don't forget that Stansted is only half an hour away, from where the budget airlines will take you all over Europe.