Day Eight

Wednesday 13 October – Cambridge to Royston

A world of bicycles! They come at you from all directions, on the road, on the pavement, down alleys and across parks. If a bike dropped from the sky, you wouldn't be terribly surprised. But I'll tell you what is surprising – the cyclists of Cambridge tend to obey the traffic laws, stopping at stop signs and traffic lights, and going the right way along one-way streets. All a bit shocking when you're used to the two-wheeled anarchists of London.

As I had noticed when I walked into the city, most of the road signs seem to relate to cycling; motorists are left to get on with it. And cycling is very democratic here. Students predominate, but persons of a certain age wearing sensible clothing are also well represented.

The Romans found Cambridge a convenient place to build a castle, defending an important crossing point on the River Cam. When the Romans moved out, squatters moved in – Vikings, mostly. The town was a busy trading post by the time the Normans arrived to build their own castle. Then (allegedly), in 1209, some students escaped from the unfriendly townsfolk of Oxford and set up what eventually became Cambridge University.

As my walk into Cambridge had demonstrated, the studenty/touristy heart of the City is surrounded by a ring of real life in the form of housing estates and commercial districts. Beyond that a further ring of high-tech establishments is wittily known as Silicon Fen. Cambridge doesn't have a cathedral, and has only been a city since 1951. All the usual tensions are present – people versus traffic, old versus new, uni versus town and so on, with an added ingredient of bicycle overload.

The road from the station to the city centre is rather horrible, so I wandered down some back streets and across Parker's Piece, which is now just a town park, having had previous lives in various sporting guises. 15,000 people partook of an outdoor feast to celebrate Queen Victoria's coronation here in 1838.

I headed for the river, but avoided the main tourist drag opposite King's College Chapel and the like, crossing the water at a quieter spot and heading out of town in a Southerly direction. A jink away from the Cam is necessary at a district known as Newnham Croft, but after walking along some rather pleasant streets of what probably used to be artisans' cottages, I reached the path to Grantchester.

Cyclists are also permitted to use this path, at the pleasure of the landowner. We're not talking Farmer Giles, though – the land is owned by King's College and managed by Savills! The path, though tarmac, is very attractive, cows peacefully grazing and a mixture of tourists and locals wandering, walking, jogging or cycling (last time I passed this way, one man was even swimming along the Cam, but not today). There was no weather to speak of - it was grey and stayed grey but dry, with almost no wind.

Grantchester is said (who actually says these things?) to have the world's highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners, supposedly current or retired academics. The village was listed in the Domesday Book, and probably goes back much further than that. For a very long time it has been a destination for punting students and tourists, armed with picnics. Rupert Brooke, who went from being an extremely mixed-up young man to revered war poet, lived firstly at Orchard House and then next door to the Old Vicarage, recalled in the eponymous poem. The most quoted couplet, “Stands the Church clock at ten to three? / And is there honey still for tea?” comes right at the end of a very long, very sentimental outpouring of home-sickness. The house is currently the home of scientist Mary Archer and her husband Jeffrey, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare. The village is also the subject of "Grantchester Meadows", a Pink Floyd song. What a cultural soup!

I avoided the lair of the celebrity perjurer, turning off short to walk along the main street, picking up another path heading South West towards the M11, surprisingly quiet on this stretch as it is sunk below the level of the fields. Of course, once I was crossing it on a footbridge, I got the full benefit of the traffic roar. The path soon swung to head South, crossing the line of a former railway line. I had been surprised that it wasn't marked on the map as being a cycle route – they usually are – but in fact it was a cycleway, permissive rather than right of way.

Also using the route is a “travelling radio telescope” belonging to the University. Twin tracks, much further apart than railway tracks, carry a telescope dish backwards and forwards over a distance of more than a mile. Why? No idea.

The path led to a road, quiet except for a Parcel Force Fangio, which took me into Haslingfield. A chicken coop was guarded by a scarecrow and a giant pig pig, constructed – it seemed – from canvas.

Of Haslingfield’s Tudor manor house, only one wing remains. When Elizabeth I stayed there she lost a ring. Apparently they still mount an occasional hunt for it. No luck so far. I spurned the chance to have my own rootle. It's not a particularly interesting village, so I hurried on. But I did pause to eat my lunch, sitting on a bower-like seat in the churchyard.

I had, I reckon, reached the edge of the fenland, climbing gently as I left Haslingfield on to gently-rippling chalk downland. A Westward-bound path skirted a huge lime quarry. A bit perverse, you might think. In an area with so few hills, they demolish one of the ones they've got.

An elongated black shape darted across the path. Its shape was squirrel-like, but it was (in full light) definitely black. A slower-moving example confirmed that I was indeed seeing black squirrels. A day or two later there was an item about them on the TV news. A variant of the greys, they were probably introduced to this country from North America by an enthusiast whose pet(s) then escaped. Cambridgeshire (in which I was now walking), Hertfordshire (which I would enter just before Royston) and Bedfordshire are the collective hot spot for these creatures, which are as welcome (or unwelcome) as their grey cousins.

Turning South, I walked into Barrington. I read that Barrington is “quintessentially English”. This was on the website for Barrington Hall, country house turned wedding venue. They don’t mention the defunct cement works, which used to process the lime from the aforementioned quarry.

Barrington was the first of a necklace of villages a mile or so each from the next, joined by field paths and lanes. Next up was Shepreth, probably best known for Willersmill Wildlife Park, which started as an animal sanctuary, caring for injured and orphaned animals. When this became too costly to run, the owner turned his home in a visitor attraction to fund the rescue work. Exotic refugees from closing zoos (tigers, lions, monkeys… ) have joined the original native species, and the park even participates in breeding programmes for endangered species. I passed “Shepreth Castle”, a pallisaded structure which is in fact a plaything for younger visitors to the Wildlife Park.

Shepreth merges seamlessly with Meldreth. This and near neighbour Melbourn are commuter villages. This is hardly surprising, since they are separated by the Kings Cross to Cambridge railway line (with station) and the A10, so the commuters head in either direction every morning. Before the days of commuting, these villages were centres of fruit growing; nowadays local employment is provided by Melbourn’s science park. While the commuters are away, a small army of workers tidies the gardens and repairs the entry-phones at the gates.

A path past the mill (minus wheel but with water still pouring underneath it) leads to meadows and then to a curious woodland walk, seemingly rural but in fact just the width of the tiny River Mel from a series of back gardens. In one garden, right by the water, was a fake heron. Given the numbers of the real thing to be found by rivers and streams, it had a pathetic air. From near Meldreth station, I picked up a byway which crossed the A10 (dangerous) and then resumed its peaceful course towards the outskirts of Melbourn. Then I had to cross the wretched main road again, joining another byway Westwards, passing under the railway line.

In order to avoid nearly a mile of A-road walking, I zig-zagged along some field margins. These weren't exactly public footpaths, but there was a decent track, and no crops were trampled during this brief illicit incursion. After a bit more traffic-dodging (luckily the drivers were busy getting in each other's way, leaving some big gaps for me) I followed a boring roadside pavement to Royston station.

On the map, Royston looks a bit like on of those crosses which has a semi-circular hood over it, the hood being the by-pass, and the cross formed by modern roads on the lines of the Icknield Way (East-West) and Ermine Street (North South). This meeting point was a big deal for Royston. The Icknield Way may or may not be prehistoric in origin, but it is certainly pre-Roman, and has long been a vital link between the East coast and the South West of England. Ermine Street was built by the Romans to connect London with Lincoln and York. Ever since, Royston has made a living out of being at the crossroads.

It had a priory, dissolved along with the rest, which became a gent’s residence, and it also had lots of inns catering for the coaching trade, mostly between London and York. The coming of the railway, along with nearby Luton and Stansted airports, completed the communications set, and today the town is big enough to have local trade and industry as well as the inevitable commuters.