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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 16 July 2016

Saturday Third Walk - Book 1 Walk 26 Shelford to Cambridge

4 pubs to choose from, a lovely tea room, the River Cam and the Cambridge Colleges
                  
Length: 23.5 km (14.6 mi)
Ascent/Descent: 90m; Net Walking Time: 5 hours
Toughness:  3/10

Take the 09.28 Cambridge train from Liverpool Street, arrives Shelford 10.44.
Return trains are up to 6 per hour, journey time from 48 mins to KGX, and from 70 mins to LST.
Buy a Cambridge Return (any route permitted, to retain the flexibility to return on a fast train).

A much neglected Book 1 walk (last posted June 13, apparently). As always with Book 1 walks: use the directions from the website, not the book.

This walk is long and flat and gets better as the day progresses after a somewhat dull morning: the route into Cambridge is lovely, particularly after Grantchester.
Near the start, to lessen the amount of road walking, you may take what is now a “Permissive Path” along a farm track besides the River Cam, from Little Shelford to Hauxton Church: you no longer need the farmer’s written permission in advance to walk along this path, as in bygone times. The route then passes through the village of Hauxton, with its interesting church, then on to Haslingfield for lunch. From there you head to Grantchester and tea in the Orchard tearooms before walking besides the River Cam into Cambridge. The walk finishes with a tour through Cambridge colleges. Your tarmac count will be high, you may prefer to wear well cushioned trainers instead of walking boots.

The early lunch stop is The Little Rose in Haslingfield (8.3 km/5.2 mi), as of 07/14 under new management and a Freehouse.
A late lunch is possible in Grantchester (14.3 km/9.0 mi) at either The Rupert Brooke (food to 14.30) or The Red Lion (food all day) or The Green Man (food to 15.00). 
The highly recommended tea stop in Grantchester is The Orchard Tea Gardens (14.9 km/9.3 mi).
Lots of choice in Cambridge City Centre, plus some kiosks on Cambridge Station selling coffee and tea.
For summary, map, height profile, photos, walk directions and gpx/kml files click here.
T=1.26

5 comments:

Walker said...

The Orchard Tea Rooms are an absolute must, if you can get into them. They are set in a lovely orchard, with deck chairs under the trees and there is a lot of literary history attached (Rupert Brooks and all that WW1 lot). In the distant past, when there were only book one walks, we used to reckon this was the best tea stop (or joint first with the tea room in Exceat, anyway).

Pia said...

Great walk. There is another travel option for Notherners/Northern Liners: take the fast 9.14 at Kings Cross to Cambridge, arr 10.02 , have a coffee and then the 10.21 to Shelford arr. 10.26 and wait or have a head start. At least you can only walk one way!

Kelda said...

Or 09:40 from Tottenham Hale...

Anonymous said...

Anyone do this walk?

Bill S said...

n=8 , w=warm-and-humid. A fine walk with good company and much discussion of Britex. Good beer at the Little Rose Inn but so-so food: edible but not somewhere you would want to go out of your way to experience. Apart from two men sat at the bar, who disappeared soon after we arrived, we were the only customers. On the plus side we did get the garden to ourselves. Having stayed together more or less up to lunchtime the group fragmented somewhat in the afternoon. Most of us came together again at the Orchard Café, but it was very busy and one look at the queue persuaded us to give it a miss, which is a shame. After a short, unplanned detour in Cambridge (we went astray) those of us leading the pack headed straight for the station for an early-ish train back to the big city.