Early one morning in October 1933, Fred's mother and father, and his twelve-year-old sister Joan, gave the young scholar a hearty send-off. He began the long journey to Cambridge at Bingley railway station. As the local train chugged along the valley, Hoyle looked back at the forest of mill chimneys clouding the air with smoke. On the hillsides the trees were already showing their autumnal colours. His travelling companions included half a dozen of his classmates from the grammar school. At the first stop, Shipley, they hauled their bags and suitcases to another local train, which brought them to Leeds. Here they bought tickets for the express to Peterborough, about thirty-five miles north of Cambridge. From there a local train clattered across the bleak fenland. Hoyle must have found this flat landscape strikingly different from the moors and dales of Yorkshire. From his window seat he could see farmers ploughing with horses, an extensive drainage system of ditches and dykes, and the fourteenth-century octagon tower of Ely Cathedral soaring over the fens. After some eight hours of travel, Fred and a throng of students descended from the packed train at Cambridge, where they found themselves on the longest railway platform in the country.

The returning undergraduates and the freshers dispersed either to colleges or to lodging houses. Emmanuel College had assigned young Fred a room in a shared house about a mile from both the college and the railway station. Of course, he had no money to spare for a cab.