Pity the poor tourists, but not too much

THE four likely lads bowling down the road seem pleasant enough. Students probably, this being very much a university city. They're bound to have local knowledge, especially about where the pubs are.

But when asked for directions they shrug their shoulders and speak in what sounds like Serbo-Croat.

They're tourists after all.

They don't know where the Old Bath House Inn can be found, either. In fact they don't appear to have a clue as to what I'm talking about.

Now I know what visitors to York must feel like.

For this is Cambridge. A city not unlike our own, with a fine university, beautiful buildings, smart shops, book stores, a vibrant waterfront. And a bewildering array of side streets and passages and yards.... impossible to navigate without chart and compass.

Just as in York, it's hard to find a local. Every second stranger on the street is Chinese, Japanese, German, Dutch, African or American.

Cosmopolitan doesn't come into it.

Finally I find someone who speaks English, someone who actually lives in Cambridge. I join the queue. He should get paid for being a tour guide. The world and his wife are asking him the way to King's, Queens and, when it gets to my turn, the Old Bath House Inn.

"Up there, turn left, turn right, down for a hundred yards, big building, you can't miss it," he rattles out.

And I thought Scousers talked fast. Could you just repeat that, please? He rolls his eyes and fixes me with a vexed look. I can see a word bubble coming out of his head that says: "You obviously haven't come for a university interview, have you, you thick northern pillock."

I follow his instructions. The big building is not the Old Bath House Inn.

It's the Tourist Information Centre.

I sigh. Serves me jolly well right. I reflect on the number of times that, similarly frustrated by the demands of tourists in York, I have sent them in entirely the opposite direction to the one they want.

It's always tempting. Not, you understand from any sense of malicious purpose. Well, perhaps a little. But mostly because you can get so fed up of troublesome tourists asking you the way to the Yorkshire Museum or the Viking Centre or the Art Gallery or to McDonalds.

You get fed up waiting in shop queues while they translate £21.50 into francs, marks, yen, dollars, or Serbo-Croatian whatevers.

You get fed up of them having no idea of what a queue is. You get fed up of them making you feel guilty for walking in front of them while they are taking pictures.

Most of all you get fed up of them for just being there.

Well. Now I know different. Now I know just how they feel. Just how frustrating it can be walking around a beautiful city with a host of hidden treasures and not being able to find any of them.

I promise, as I wander the streets of Cambridge, I will be more helpful. In fact I will carry maps of York on my person and give them out for free.

I will be a goodwill ambassador. I will be the perfect host.

All this I promise myself while I wend my way through winding twists and turns, with the aid of my new map, to the Old Bath House Inn. Where I find my four Serbo-Croat friends drinking beer and discussing in distinctly half-way-to-London accents what the prospects are for an Arsenal victory and whether Glenn Hoddle should get the sack. I glower over my beer. Ambassador be blowed!

I just hope I run across you four in York.

04/11/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.