Punting on the Cam and dinner in the 16th-century dining hall of Corpus Christi College were some of the entertainments laid on for the 50 backbenchers from the Oireachtas and from Westminster at the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body meeting in Cambridge this week.
Punting was such a novelty that some felt they had to try their hand at it. One was FF's Mattie Brennan, who later startled his political colleagues from both houses by calling for immediate British withdrawal from the North and a united Ireland. He handled the punt rather as if rowing a canoe, as a result of which his nine passengers, including TDs Marian McGennis and John Ellis and Michael Mates MP took a distinctly zig-zag route among the hallowed colleges on each side of the leafy banks. But it didn't matter much; each punt was provided with a couple of bottles of champagne and a guide to explain everything.
Afterwards, parliamentarians taking an outdoor drink on one of the city's pedestrian bridges had to step aside to make way for one of the world's greatest brains. Stephen Hawking, in his motorised wheelchair, passed among them.