The river acquires a new name at the Anchor, shedding “Granta” and becoming “Cam” as it flows by the punt hires and under the Silver Street Bridge. Upstream and southwest, it traces a lazy route towards the shady apple orchards of Grantchester. It’s a popular route—Bertrand Russell paced it out religiously, Wittgenstein made the voyage by canoe; even today one always seems to cross paths with a familiar fellow or Nobel Laureate, shoes caked with mud, on the way to a cup of tea or a pint at the Green Man. The Orchard’s clotted cream is sweet and in autumn the trees are heavy with fruit.
Immediately below the Silver Street crossing, even in frosty weather, the river carries a steady traffic of punts. Blanket-swaddled Chinese families listen in shivering silence as chauffers lie exuberantly about Cambridge’s buildings and bridges: the Mathematical bridge, held up without nails; the Clare bridge, a section stolen from one of its posts; the bridge at Magdalene which gives the city its name.
Further downstream the river makes a gentle right, drifting past the multicolored boathouses of Cambridge—Goldie and Caius in antiseptic green, red Jesus with its boxy clock tower, Clare Hall tacked like a doghouse to Clare’s yellow side, the hideous aluminum shed called Combined—before continuing on toward its distant terminus at King’s Lynn.
In months of rowing we have seen the Cam in all her moods: when, bloated with rainwater, she tugs at the rolling boathouse doors; when, on windy days, small waves on her surface roll backward and show her flowing in the wrong direction; when, at dawn’s first breaking, she wreaths herself in a delicate pink haze, in coal-smoke and barges’ grumbling. On icy mornings we glide through silent compaines of mute swans, our blades balanced and feathered, hovering expectantly over the river’s glassy surface.
Water follows us: to our hostels, where sopping fleece and lycra drip puddles on our floors; to nine-o-clock Maths lectures where the stink of the Cam, barely masked by spray-on antiperspirant, lingers above the chalky desks.