cambridge Archives - Page 6 of 7

Cambridge property going South….

Posted on July 17, 2008May 28, 2019

Cheffins held a property auction in Cambridge yesterday (which i missed 🙁 ). This fine 3 bed semi in Lovell Road CB4 2QW was predicted, prior to the auction, to make £180K to £200K in fact it didn’t reach £118K . Oops it made £179,500

Only 8 of the 15 lots were sold at the auction. So it looks as though the property crash has finally hit Cambridge (again). I wonder if it will take 15 years to recover this time.

Update:

From the excellent Estate angels website I found some historic prices for Lovell Road:

Yesterdays price of £118K £179,500 takes as back in time to 2000! Eight two years of Cambridge property inflation wiped out in one month or so…

Tale of two bridges..

Posted on June 5, 2008April 8, 2021

Today was the official opening of the £3million pound Riverside Bridge in Cambridge, Partially funded by Tesco through a s106 agreement on its Newmarket Road store (All we know is that £1.7million came from 3rd party sources). Isn’t it crazy that the exact amounts are not easily publicly available and that it seems council policy to obfuscate the data.

The bridge is interesting as that it bifurcates into separate lanes for cyclists and pedestrians, although my bet is that pedestrians will use the cycle lane when its wet and slippy. It contains a rather flash and expensive looking seating arrangement. There isa selection of photos on my flickr account.

Here is the Cutter Ferry bridge just upstream of the glittering new landmark, replaced a couple of years ago (including all the bridge supports etc). Precise cost not known but the year that it was included in the County Council (2003/04) budget we know that the TOTAL spend on ALL bridges in the county was £2.6million pounds so its fair to assume that it probably only cost £500K or so. (Although once again were do you find the information?).

So is the new bridge value for money or would the other £2.5m or so been spent on other cycling bridge initiative’s in Cambridge? and when are we going to get meaningful transparency in local government budgets!

Making a splash..

Posted on May 19, 2008August 13, 2008

Today at Noon was the official start to my swimming season here in Cambridge with the Jesus Green pool opening. The water was at a balmy 51°F a couple of degrees warmer than last year.

Geoff making a splash

I managed 2 lengths (Sally did 4). Jordan, the reporter was there from the Cambridge News and he reckons our pictures should hit the presses this Friday.

The cost for the season is £52.50 with my residents leisure card! Full set of pictures are on Flickr

Kings Parade lighting – again

Posted on April 1, 2008March 18, 2017

As a follow on from my December post on Kings Parade lighting. I’m pleased to record a bit of progress.

Whilst doing one of my experimental Cambridge Walks (this mornings was to try and walk from the railway station to the river and back without seeing any modern shops and using all the old passageways and parks) we happened to see one of the first modern street lights on Kings Parade.

Seems a big improvement on this:

All though, it has to be said the lighting, for such an historic street, is still a chaotic mess. Why does Great St. Marys church require 4 huge high intensity lamp standards? Maybe we should go and remove ALL street lighting and silly posts marking the end of parking bays (surely they can be screwed to walls or the kerb?) installed after 1970 thus saving the council large amounts of money and cleaning up the street!