Cambridge gondola rides
There are no gondolas in Cambridge. If you have seen photos of long wooden boats drifting past college lawns with someone standing at one end, those are punts, and a punt tour along the Backs is the nearest thing to a gondola ride you will find in the city. Apologies if you think this is false advertising.
Venice has around 400 gondolas, almost all of them now hired out to visitors. Cambridge has hundreds of punts, and the stretch of the River Cam behind the colleges known as the Backs is where you will find most of them.
Visitors often mistake punts for gondolas and the occasional one will even have a go at singing the song from the Cornetto advert when they are on a punt, but that’s as close as you’ll get.
Punt or gondola?
In photos they look alike: both are long, both are wooden & both are propelled by one person standing at the back. That is about where the similarity ends.
A gondolier rows. The single oar rests in a carved oarlock called a forcola and is worked back and forth, which also steers the boat. Venice’s canals are too deep for anything else. The boats are up to 11 metres long and all of them are black, because a Venetian law once required it.
A punt is poled. The person at the back pushes off the river bed with a pole around 15 foot long, which only works because the Cam is shallow and slow (most of the time). Punts are flat bottomed and square at both ends.
Whether you need to be able to sing to drive either one is covered on our what is punting page.
Cambridge has its own Bridge of Sighs
St John’s College has a Bridge of Sighs, a covered stone footbridge built in 1831 to a design by Henry Hutchinson and named after the one in Venice. It doesn’t really look a lot like the Venetian one, but the punt tours go under it. More on that and the other eight on our Cambridge bridges page.
The punt tour
Tours last 45 minutes and run along the Backs, past eight colleges and under nine bridges, including the Mathematical Bridge at Queens’. From the river you see King’s College Chapel, the Wren Library and Trinity College, where Isaac Newton studied. You sit, and the chauffeur does the punting and tells you what you are looking at.
Most tours leave from the La Mimosa punt station on Thompson’s Lane (CB5 8AQ), a short walk along the boardwalk from Quayside. There is no parking at the punt station. Getting here has directions, car parks and bus stops.
Booking a punt tour
Shared tours sell tickets per person, up to 9 per booking, and you share the punt with other passengers. Book your shared tour below.
Pre book punting Cambridge using the options below.
We only have limited availability each day at these prices. Prices vary by date and departure time. A private section on a shared tour is part of a shared boat; a private tour gives your party the whole boat.
- Select your passenger numbers from the drop-down below. Include everyone over the age of 1.
- Choose your tour date.
- Select a standard ticket or a ticket with cancellation included
- Choose a departure time to see the total price for your party.
- Click Continue to enter your details and complete your booking.
Private tours give you a punt to yourselves, up to 12 passengers per boat. For groups of 7 or more adults a private tour usually works out the better deal. Book a private punt tour.
Current prices are on the punting prices page. If the shared tours have sold out on your date, more Cambridge punt tours cost more and can have space on dates the shared tours have gone.