No lunchtime walk today. On the way home I needed to be somewhere in North Cambridge, so got off the train one stop early at the new Cambridge North station. From there a walk along the busway would compensatory.
This was the first time I'd alighted at Cambridge North and crossed the bridge between platforms. This and the rest of the station, built in a bizarre patterned white material, brought to mind places recalled from 70s Sci-fi TV. Blake's 7, Space 1999, Logan's Run, Dr Who and the like. From the outside even moreso.
The station sits in a sort of liminal zone. The immediate vicinity is about to be developed by Brookgate, the same people responsible for the surroundings of the main Cambridge Station. A hotel, coffee shops, eateries are all promised. The advertising boards featuring the usual plethora of marketing slogans. As well as a representation of a bearded but eyeless hipster character. Maybe personifying the blind acceptance and even enthusiasm for more gentrification and questionable development. At least that's what the marketers are hoping, presumably.
The lack of any development yet means you can't get anything to drink or eat at Cambridge North. The dirth of facilities only added to the feeling of being somewhere transitory and slightly other (as well as being a bit inconvenient).
I considered catching a bus but decided to walk along the Busway for a bit, which itself has something of an edgeland quality about it, a continuation or extension of the atmosphere around Cambridge North. The first stretch passes by a fairly sterile looking business park. Part of this was the building below. Bright orangy-brown in the low sun, it's grey central tower seemed to oscillate. I didn't dare look for long for fear of developing a migraine.
The other side of the Busway on this stretch is so far less developed, and featured some bizarre looking (in this light at least) plant life in front of older looking ramshackle light industrial buildings. The habitat of discarded energy drink cans and chattering magpies. For the time being anyway.
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