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Messing about in boats in Cambridge

In the beloved children's book, Wind in the Willows, Ratty declares that:
there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
The Crumb to Crunch sisters recently discovered this joy as they attempted to navigate the River Cam in a punt. As punting novices, we were excited yet a tiny bit nervous. Our more experienced punting friend set us off and then it was our go. We were so eager to unveil our secret punting abilities but this was not the case.

Instead, hilarity ensued. 

We both managed to block the entire river causing a huge punt traffic jam, annoying tourists and professional punters alike. However, their annoyance just got us in stitches! One sister was laughing so hard, she was unable to flex what little arm muscle she had to manoeuvre the punt. Thank goodness we had a native Cambridge girl in our party to save us! 

A rare moment of success!

Punting was surprisingly hard work so we had built up a hearty appetite. Cambridge offers so many sweet treats, it was impossible to choose. We took the greedy option by sampling as many goodies as possible! 

Our first stop was the delightfully old fashioned Fudge Kitchen. The creamy free samples drew us in and we watched the dapper fudgemasters concoct exciting fudge flavours. The next stop was Stickybeaks Café where we had delectable rocky road and a slice of pear cake. We particularly enjoyed the ice cold mojito ice tea. The final stop on this tea crawl was Afternoon Tease which had a great spread of inviting cakes. The blueberry, nectarine and sour cream was a great flavour combination and the coffee walnut flapjack was an inventive way of jazzing up flapjacks.

Unsurprisingly by this point we were on the verge of exploding. However we were delightfully content to have had spent an idyllic day messing about in boats with friends. 

Left to right: Stickybeaks, Fudge Kitchen and Afternoon Tease.
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  1. Unknown4 October 2016 at 17:55

    Nice blog post. I'm writing a listing website to help more people get on the water called... Messing about in boats. http://messing-about-in-boats.com/

    ReplyDelete

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