18 - Games for gownsmen: walking, athletics, boating, and ball games

Summary

WALKING AND ATHLETICS

WALKING

‘The staple exercise is walking; between two and four all the roads in the neighborhood of Cambridge – that is to say within four miles of it – are covered with men taking their constitutionals.’ Until the invention of the safety bicycle in 1885 walking was the most common exercise in Victorian Cambridge, at least for reading men. They devoted the afternoon hours to it – the time always recommended for exercise, between the morning and evening stints of intellectual labour. The favourite route was the ‘Grantchester Grind’ – out from the college along the Trumpington Road, then turning west past Trumpington church, over the river past Grantchester mill and through the village back to Cambridge, taking the road or the river footpath. It was on such a walk one chill November afternoon that Olva Dune met and murdered Carfax in Hugh Walpole's novel of Edwardian Cambridge. Most undergraduates walked in twos; conversation was part of the attraction of the exercise. ‘These walks meant close companionship and exchange of views, and were in truth a valuable part of the varied processes that made up an University training.’ But as for the large numbers of non-reading men, ‘the exercise was too humdrum to suit youths with no ideas to exchange and prone to intellectual rest’.

The walkers were time-conscious; they were fitting exercise into a brief afternoon slot. They wore ordinary clothes, and did not change into rambling gear.