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This is the first time I have ever used a yarnbombed bike rack....
This is the first time I have ever used a yarnbombed bike rack.

There's no real reason for me to have come to Cambridge. I'm just using up the time while I wait for my ferry and thought this would be a good place to buy a new set of gears for the bike, which I have now decided I don't need, and some guidebooks. I wish I had never come here. If you're thinking of booking a hotel in Cambridge, don't. It's been a disaster.

I booked the first hotel at about four o'clock. The website said that it was preparing a confirmation e-mail for me and then my Internet connection cut off. Now that it's come back, there isn't any such e-mail. At half past five I got to the address and found that it was just an ordinary house with nobody at home. After a while, one of the other guests arrived. He barely spoke English but he let me in and pointed to where the checking-in book had been when he had arrived. He looked in the drawers but couldn't find the book. The place showed no visible sign of being a hotel at all. I then gave up on that hotel, hoped I wouldn't be charged for it, booked a different hotel and went off to buy my guidebooks.

The second hotel, which near these bike racks, did look like a hotel but its door was also locked. This time there was an intercom, which I pressed a lot of times but all it ever did was beep. There was a phone number printed on it. When I called that, I got put on hold for about five minutes, after which I hung up, worried about how much the call was costing from my mobile, and went to the Co-op across the road, with all my luggage, to get some change for the phone box which was handily placed right next to the hotel. I then found that the phone box was broken so I called from the mobile again and this time got straight through to someone who explained that the check-in desk was in their other hotel, which she described as being just to the left of the Co-op. It turned out to be about 600 metres away but when I eventually found it and carried all my luggage into their reception, they did give me a key.

I'm worried about carrying on with this trip now. I was lucky today because I can speak English but if this kind of thing happens anywhere else, I won't have a chance. It reminds me of the last hotel from last year's trip, in Moscow, where I had to get the doorman from a bar down the the road to help me get in. I can't quite decide which hotel has the worst arrival procedure out of this one and the one in Moscow but this one also lied about having free WiFi so I would be pretty confident in saying that this evening I have encountered the first and second worst hotels I have ever known.


UTC Time: 18:46, Monday 20 August 2012
Local Time: 19:46, Monday 20 August 2012
Estimate of longitude: 0° 7' 38.32" E = 0.127310°
Estimate of latitude: 52° 12' 52.85" N = 52.214680°
Possible error on position estimate: 100 metres