Bomb Scare brings Cambridge to a standstill.

It's not every day that you're just going about your business in the city centre and literally turn a corner and find yourself in the middle of a full scale bomb scare, but that's exactly what happened to me yesterday afternoon.

This seemed like an interesting turn of events (and smelling a very good photo story), I hung about and watched it all unfold before me, although initially I was in a hurry and inadvertently 'trespassed' into the exclusion zone of the park beside the Zion Church, and a cop was quick to intercept me as I did!

I pointed out to them that perhaps they should have made it a lot clearer that this area was closed off, as I found out later there was only one discrete cordon across the bollarded entrance (see picture) and not much else, which, due to my approaching from another direction hadn't seen.

East Road was completely closed down by a police road block at the Newmarket Road end (see pictures), and up to the front of Anglia Ruskin's Helmore Building (see pictures), meaning this was the first time I'd seen this road so utterly devoid of traffic for a very long time. An eerie sight indeed, but at the same time it was liberating to be able to stroll right up the middle of what is usualy a congested and dangerous road during daylight hours.

It transpires that this road was closed for up to seven hours, although contrary to other reports I've seen, I noticed the road was open and traffic flowing again by 7:12pm that night, as I walked back that way after doing an errand off Mill Road.

Anglia Ruskin was partially closed down and evacuated at the front of the campus (mainly the Helmore), although I took a short cut through the new courtyard behind it and saw a couple of hundred people sitting around, and the new Cafe seemed to be doing a roaring trade as it was completely packed!

As for the 'bomb disposal' operation itself, it comprised about a hundred metre cordoned off area between the top of Dover Street (where The Tram Depot pub is) and the East Road/Mill Road intersection, which the police tightly controlled the flow of traffic on (see pictures).

In the middle of this No-Man's Land was positioned a Royal Air Force Bomb Disposal truck, replete with 'sniffer' robot (see picture), and numerous squaddies, forensic officers (in their distinctive white suits), and briefly, a Fire Brigade crew, who appeared to be flushing out a drain underneath East Road (see picture).

The police on the beat were predictably reticent (or maybe just ill informed) about the whole operation, and in the absence of hard facts, many rumours were flying around as to what was happening, most of them not worth reporting here.

It was an odd but calm atmosphere at the cordons, with many people standing around watching and waiting to see what might happen, including several TV news reporters and some media students from Anglia Ruskin. Some people amused themselves by recording wildly untrue 'news' stories of the event on their mobile 'phones, pretending they were TV news reporters. I did tell them they should work for The Sun, as they were making stuff up as they went along!

One passerby told me that as they cycled around town, the queues of traffic were backed up at least a mile from the cordons, although I have little sympathy for anyone who drives around a city that is small enough to walk (or cycle) from one place to another.

Sprawling London this is not.

It was reported today in local paper, the Cambridge News that this alert was triggered by a student from Anglia Ruskin itself making a hoax call about a bomb.

They have of course been arrested for doing this, and it may prove to be a prank call they'll never ever forget making.

What price a joke..?