UFO Info Week-End

Of the pubs in Grantchester the Green Man is best for outdoor meals the Red Lion has an excellent

Of the pubs in Grantchester, the Green Man is best for outdoor meals, the Red Lion has an excellent indoor play area, while the Rupert Brooke is best for food but less family- friendly than the others.. “Art is the last branch of British retailing that treats its audience with complete disdain,” says Johnny Gorman, chairman of Quantum Contemporary Art. “Can you imagine Marks and Spencer treating their customers like that?”

Despite valiant attempts by the likes of Habitat and Harvey Nicks to make the buying and selling of art a less formal affair, the customary setting is still formidably centred around hushed galleries with lofty attendants and even loftier prices. As you walk back to Cambridge you can just make out the spires of King’s College chapel above the trees on the horizon.8 Distance: Five miles There is free parking on Trumpington Road on Sundays.

Alternatively, it is a 10-minute walk from Cambridge station The Orchard is open daily from 10.30am-6.30pm. Turn left along Broadway and look for the footpath on your right, crossing a field to return to the Grantchester Grind. Take this track, turn right at the junction, left at the next farmyard and right at a crossroad of footpaths to return to the village the back way with a brief glimpse of the surrounding farmland.You emerge beside the Rupert Brooke pub. Brooke and Virginia Woolf swam naked here by moonlight, but today’s free spirits are put off by a stern notice forbidding bathing within 36 metres (why 36?) of the lock.Back at the mill, a wide track leads towards Canteloupe Farm. A short diversion along the road leads to a shady woodland path to Byron’s Pool, whose stagnant water and concrete weir belie its romantic name.

The current resident is another writer – Lord (Jeffrey) Archer, would-be Mayor of London. Peer over the wall at his collection of modern sculptures; if you are lucky you just might catch one of his celebrated garden parties.A path beside the house leads back to the river, at a delightful spot beside an old mill (“And laughs the immortal river still, under the mill, under the mill?”). It does, it does, and on the day I was there a family of swans were cackling with it. Arrive early, draw up a deck chair, and you can sit under the apple trees all day over one pot of tea. If it rains, you can retreat to the original wooden pavilion, hung with portraits of a youthful Brooke, a Hugh Grant lookalike with his flapping hair and foppish good looks.Leave through the car park and look at the house on your left – this is the Old Vicarage, where Brooke also lived.

The queues are legendary – though even on a sunny Sunday at the end of July it only took me half an hour to get my Earl Grey and scone. It was important to note that it exactly matched his career average.Cricket diary, Page 16. Ben stared rigidly ahead and neither rushed nor dawdled on his walk to the crease.He played his first six balls over 14 minutes with model patience. His opening boundary off Paul Reiffel was delightful and two deliveries later he added another when he swivelled quickly and adroitly pulled a short ball to square leg. When he played that shot it was impossible not to draw comparisons with David Gower as he faced his first ball in Test cricket 19 years ago, six months and five days, give or take a few hours, before Ben was born.But the young man does not need or deserve comparisons.