Cambridge.

The pandemic heats up.

I got the train to Cambridge, it's a quintessential English village even in the rain. I have a lovely room opposite the river. I unload and walk into town for the famed Chelsea buns at Fitzbillies. The coffee is fantastic and the bun hot out of the oven, perfumed with cinnamon. Then I wander into the centre, past all the cool looking and nerdy students who are off to the world's fourth oldest surviving University, built in 1209.

The shops are beautiful, crafty and quirky. I lunch at the original 1920 Fitzbillie. Such is the importance of this place that Stephen Fry helped to save it when it went broke. Had fantastic Welsh Rarebit with leeks, sooo good.

A bit more wandering in the rain, trying to remember that all the students seem to ride bikes and I'm likely to be run over by one. Then it's time for scones at Bills, this place is gorgeous, the decor for this chain throughout England is so bohemian. It's pouring as I'm about to leave and the waiter gives me one of the umbrellas that has been left by a patron to go home with! "Don't worry about bringing it back, enjoy your time in Cambridge!" he tells me.

I eat at the restaurant at the hotel, it's like Fawlty Towers with surly beautiful Balkan girls who don't want to engage in conversation. Old music playing, multi patterned carpets and curtains that don't match, grey looking older men slurping soup, and the menu of choice seems to be hunks of ham with chips. My meal was edible, wine undrinkable, bit depressing. Missing home which is a first in all my travels.

The next day I walk through the town again, there's a market on and I am freezing. Because I was supposed to be back in Italy, collecting my winter gear, I am not prepared for this chill. I find a beautiful vintage coat at the markets and I head to the river as the sun is out and I'm going on a punt ride. Am a bit unsettled as the reports about Coronavirus are making me feel a bit nervous. I hear from the daughter who is in Paris at the Louvre and it's shut! Because of the virus.

The punt ride is interesting, narrated by a man with the most perfect curliqued moustache I have ever seen. We pass the University where C S Lewis, Newtown, David Attenborough, Charles Darwin's family and Stephen Hawking went. It's truly gothic and beautiful.

Then I'm off by bus to St Ives but it's very small and after a brief wander, I lunch at the River Terrace restaurant, looking out on swans hanging around the old bridge. I get messages from a friend who's stuck in the north of Italy. Reggio Emilia and some of the northern provinces have shut down and she's trying to get back to the US via Milan but she can't get there.

I return to Cambridge and have dinner at the Wild Woods, even the 2 for 1 cocktails are not allaying my fears. The lovely Sardinian waiter wants to go home but he'd have to self isolate in Italy for 2 weeks before going to his island. Things are really heating up. No one is wearing masks yet but the daughter suggests that I do.

Tomorrow I'm on the train to Canterbury and I'll be wearing a mask.