MORE CAMBRIDGE

 The Corpus Clock! This was really a fun find. It has a  24-carat gold dial and gruesome grasshopper locust-like time-keeper.   It moves its mouth, appearing to "eat up" the seconds as they pass, and occasionally it "blinks" in seeming satisfaction. The creature's constant motion produces an eerie grinding sound .The hour is tolled by the sound of a chain clanking into a small wooden coffin hidden in the back of the clock, but it didn't really sound like that. Every 15 minutes it "stings" the clock. Its all manual parts, no computer. 

The G Man! 

Gloomy Day Doesn't Stop Us!

The drizzle comes and goes, the wind is chilly, then balmy. There's a lot to see. 
We take a walking tour from the Guidebook, which is great because it means I don't have to think. Away from the main streets and people and around the little lanes.

Harriet's Tea Room - Take a Break

And It Really Is! 

Dinner at The Eagle Pub, interesting in it's own right. It was first a tavern in 1525. The scientists who discovered the DNA helix used to hang out here and discuss their theories, James Watson and Francis Crick. The back bar was an RAF airmen's bar, the many men wrote their names on the ceiling both during WW2 and in current times when they returned. 

And I don't know why there's a picture of Oliver Cromwell .....

..... except he was a student at Sidney Sussex College. He died in 1658. It was assumed that the corpse had been interred somewhere within Westminster Abbey, probably at the spot near the east end of Henry VII's Chapel over which the hearse and recumbent effigy were placed at the conclusion of the state funeral. In autumn 1660 parliament ordered the exhumation  and in January 1661 Westminster Abbey was searched for the remains of Cromwell. His corpse was produced and conveyed to Tyburn, where he was hanged and then decapitated . The head was displayed on a pole above Westminster Hall. The supposed trunk of Oliver Cromwell, was simply dumped at dusk in an unmarked pit beneath Tyburn gallows. The legend of how the head left Westminster Hall states that a high wind blew the head and spike from the roof, where a guard found the head, removed the spike and took it home. On hearing that a large reward was being offered to find the person in possession of the head, the soldier became scared and hid it. Here it remained until his death, when it was passed down to his daughter.

Cromwell’s head became a peculiar collector’s item in the centuries that followed, passing through many hands on it’s way to its final burial placewhere it was secretly and anonymously left at the college where it's on display today in the chapel. True or false?