The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond wild swimming walks the famous on Hampstead Heath has leads you on 28 adventures into the swimming ladies been a women’s swimming beautiful countryside of southern of London’s Hampstead pond since 1926. World England. Discover swimming meadows ponds share their favourite famous for its history and along the Thames, secret coves of the walks with a dip. Leave the idyllic setting, it has become Sussex seashore and hidden islands of car at home this summer a magnet for London the Essex coast. with 28 days out across residents and visitors alike. southern and eastern England. Margaret Dickinson (editor) All the walking routes are accessible is a year-round wild swimmer, by train and each comes with ideas for Featuring secret lakes, river documentary film-maker and places to visit and refreshments along meadows and sandy seaside writer who campaigned to the route. Includes suggestions for beaches, Wild Swimming save swimming on the Heath. longer weekends away as well. Walks is rich with stories, photos and natural history. Complete with detailed directions, maps and practical inspiration, this book is perfect for families, If you like Wild Swimming walkers and swimmers alike. Walks you might also like these other titles from Includes downloadable WildThingsPublishing.com: route information to print out, or take with you on your phone or tablet.

£14.99 9 781910 636015 The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond wild swimming walks the famous on Hampstead Heath has leads you on 28 adventures into the swimming ladies been a women’s swimming beautiful countryside of southern of London’s Hampstead pond since 1926. World England. Discover swimming meadows ponds share their favourite famous for its history and along the Thames, secret coves of the walks with a dip. Leave the idyllic setting, it has become Sussex seashore and hidden islands of car at home this summer a magnet for London the Essex coast. with 28 days out across residents and visitors alike. southern and eastern England. Margaret Dickinson (editor) All the walking routes are accessible is a year-round wild swimmer, by train and each comes with ideas for Featuring secret lakes, river documentary film-maker and places to visit and refreshments along meadows and sandy seaside writer who campaigned to the route. Includes suggestions for beaches, Wild Swimming save swimming on the Heath. longer weekends away as well. Walks is rich with stories, photos and natural history. Complete with detailed directions, maps and practical inspiration, this book is perfect for families, If you like Wild Swimming walkers and swimmers alike. Walks you might also like these other titles from Includes downloadable WildThingsPublishing.com: route information to print out, or take with you on your phone or tablet.

£14.99 9 781910 636015 Walk 7 SHEPRETH TO CAMBRIDGE, cambridgeshire

A moderately long walk across stretches of INFORMATION East Anglian farmland, passing through several attractive villages with traditional thatched Distance: 9.5 miles. Time: 4 to 5 hours. cottages, via Grantchester to Cambridge. Maps: OS Landranger 154 (Cambridge & Newmarket) or OS his is a very pleasant outing in spring or early Explorer 209 (Cambridge). autumn with scope for short or long swims and an Start point: Shepreth Station. End point: Cambridge Station. extended picnic on the open meadows 10 near the Public transport: By train historic village of Grantchester. Expect crowds on from King’s Cross or Finsbury the river in high summer, especially at weekends, and biting Park. Purchase a day return ticket winds in late autumn or winter. The walk can also be combined to Cambridge but take care to withT punting, useful to accommodate a party including people catch the stopping train on the averse to a long walk. The end of this route passes Scudamore’s outward journey. Swimming: In the River Cam boat station 13b above the weir below Silver Street Bridge, the (or Granta, to use the archaic traditional location for hiring a punt to go to Grantchester. name), a clear river with a A punting group could stay on the train to Cambridge, walk modest current. from the railway station to Scudamore’s, collect a punt and Places of interest: rendezvous with the walkers at Grantchester. Barrington church; Haslingfield Not surprisingly for a charming village very near to church; the Mullard Radio Cambridge, Grantchester can claim an unusual number of Astronomy Observatory; Grantchester riverside village; famous residents, past and present, many of whom enjoy, or Cambridge colleges, museums and enjoyed, swimming in the Cam. Rupert Brooke spent his days Botanic Garden. here studying literature, swimming naked and commuting Refreshments: Village shops in into Cambridge by canoe. Virginia Woolf and EM Forster, Barrington and Haslingfield; The philosophers Betrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Red Lion gastropub (CB3 9NF, tel economist John Maynard Keynes and artist Augustus John 01223 840121) and the Orchard Tea Gardens (CB3 9N,D tel all joined him, and were keen swimmers too, forming the 01223 551125) in Grantchester. neo-Pagan contingent of the emerging Bloomsbury Group. Byron’s Pool, under a weir just upstream, was supposedly the poet’s favourite swimming spot and his ghost is invoked by Rupert Brooke in the poem The Old Vicarage, Grantch- ester, written when Brooke was in Germany, nostalgic for life in Cambridge:

67 Walk 7 SHEPRETH TO CAMBRIDGE, EAST ANGLIA

‘…The stream mysterious glides beneath, The water is often deep enough to dive into but Green as a dream and deep as death. take care to check. – Oh damn! I know it! and I know Only the fastest of walkers could expect to How the May fields all golden show, combine the walk with serious sightseeing but And when the day is young and sweet, it is worth pausing at Barrington church 3 Gild gloriously the bare feet and Haslingfield church 5 , both fine medieval That run to bathe . . . buildings, and noting in the distance the Mullard Du lieber Gott! Radio Astronomy Observatory 6 . At the end Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, of the walk there is the option of going into And there the shadowed waters fresh Cambridge 13a where there is, of course, plenty Lean up to embrace the naked flesh…’ to explore. The Fitzwilliam Museum closes at 5pm but is free so worth popping into, even for Today the flesh is less likely to be naked, except half an hour. Choral evensong in King’s College perhaps by moonlight or at dawn, and Byron’s chapel is at 5.30pm Monday to Saturday, but Pool is too close to the M11, and too blighted by whatever the time it can be pleasant just to its new concrete weir, to feel in any way romantic. wander round the college area. The University But there are better places to linger further along, Botanic Gardens are on the direct route to the and the river offers scope to do a long swim station 13a and from April to September are open downstream from Grantchester all the way to until 6pm (4.30 or 5pm the rest of the year), but Newnham, if you have companions to carry bags. there is an entry charge.

Directions

1 Shepreth Cross the bridge over the stream field, where a line of telegraph Turn left as you get off the train but veer to the left following a sign poles marches diagonally across and follow the platform out of for the footpath to Barrington. the field, veer to your right, a Shepreth station. Turn left over signed footpath following the line the tracks of the level crossing and 2 To Barrington of the poles. Turn left at the other towards the village taking Continue down this side street side of the field and go around the exceptional care (if the gates are until it runs out at the railway line. field edge, ignoring the bridge on still down another train is coming). Cross over the gated level crossing your right over a drainage channel. Walk past the village hall and the with care. Follow the public Cross a newly made marked old telephone box (now home to footpath along the side of two footbridge on the right over a the Shepreth Book Exchange). fields. Halfway along the second channel, and shortly afterwards

69 Directions Walk 7 SHEPRETH TO CAMBRIDGE, EAST ANGLIA a metal bridge painted green over beside the church on the public bridleway over the wooden opposite bank. This stretch is an to visit the 40-acre Cambridge along the bank (opposite the large the main sluice. Continue up the western edge of Harston village. bridge and up the path that runs ideal place to get into the river. University Botanic Garden. hotel) and walk until you reach alley between a high yew hedge on Turn immediately left in front of through the patch of woodland on Alternatively, half a mile from Alternatively, continue along Scudamore’s boat station and the the left and high beech hedge on the sign for Church Street and the the other side. Watch out for Grantchester, there are places with Bateman Street. At Hills Road weir below Silver Street Bridge. the right to Boot Lane and towards white cottages, following the sign cyclists here. As you leave this good cover for changing. cross straight over and turn right, From here Mill Lane leads towards the thatched roofs at the top. This for a footpath to Haslingfield. woodland the path forks. take the first exit left at the the centre of town. Alternatively, brings you to Barrington village high Follow this road (Button End) to 11 As you get closer towards roundabout, Station Road, and to walk along The Backs (a scenic street and the shop. Turn right out the dead end. Here the footpath 8 Go right here, round the field Cambridge, the path along the follow it to the station. walk behind King’s, Trinity and St of Boot Lane into the high street goes across the field beside a edge and up over the raised bank merges at a narrow point John’s), turn left after the and go past the soccer field towards hedge, joining a bridleway where footbridge across the motorway. with the paved bike path, after a 13b Into Cambridge footbridge over the weir at the church. you turn left at a T-junction. Cross The motorway noise disappears kissing gate. The last meadow Turn left immediately after the Scudamore’s and head up the alley 1.5 miles the stream and follow the path, remarkably quickly as you leave before this is a good place to swim tubular bridge and follow the path beside the University Sports and ignoring a large gate on the right the bridge behind you and cross at any time of year. beside the culvert to Fen Social Club (and bike hire place) to 3 B arrington signposted to the Trumpington the next field. At a three-way turn, 8.5 miles Causeway. Cross on the diagonal Silver Street. Turn left over Silver to Harston Estate. At a fork in the path, take the right-hand path, leaving pedestrian crossing and continue Street Bridge andOOrchardrc harightrd after 100 PParkark Take a right turn at the crossroads take the right hand fork. At the church on your left. At the 12 Leaving and to the Mill Pond. Turn right but metres to pick up the footpath MaMadingleydingley just before the church into Challis the bungalows on the edge of back of the farmyard with a ‘No rejoining the Cam then take the left fork immediately that runs along The Backs.ChestertonCheste rton am C FeFenn D Diittoonn e r Green. Follow the road round the Haslingfield, turn left for the entry’ sign, follow the path to the As you start walking through after this to head diagonally R i v playground to a disused phone box. shop and church, or turn right left of the laurel hedge. At the Newnham village (on a street still toward the main river. Turn left Hannah Pearce, Liz Valentine BBarnwellarnwell

Turn left into Glebe Road and past the bungalows for the route road a large orchard is largely called Grantchester Meadows) veer HHardwickardwick continue past the end of the village, to Grantchester. hidden behind the high brick and to the right, leaving a small repair CCotonoton CCAMBRIDGEAMBRIDGE picking up the footpath to Harston 4 miles flint wall directly opposite. garage (GP Motors) on the left. Tevevershamrsham across the fields. 6.75 miles Turn right at the end of this street, 13 6 Fields with views and follow the posts marked with 4 Cross the disused railway spur Pass a field on the left after the 9 Grantchester. red rings. This will bring you into 12 that used to serve the cement houses containing chicken coops. To visit Grantchester church and the Paradise Nature Reserve. CCombertonomberton 11 works, following the path to a farm The path continues straight the pub turn left. To find the Follow the footpath on through the BartonBarton 10 building, with two large fuel tanks between fields, giving a view of the Orchard Tea Gardens turn right. To trees here to regain the riverbank. GGrantchesterrantchester outside it, where the path veers off chimney and blocky buildings of swim and continue the walk turn 9 8 to the right (the sign for this is bent Addenbrooke’s Hospital on the far left, then right at the first bend, 13 Cambridge but still visible), running along the horizon to the right (on the edge of down the lane/public footpath Beside a large municipal paddling pool 7 dyke and round a field beside a Cambridge) and on the left a line of towards the river. There are a and public toilets, cross the tubular narrow sluice drain. The path takes radio telescope saucers. Beside an couple of kissing gates and small bridge over the river, but pause here 6 an abrupt right turn over a small outbuilding with another large black fields before the path reaches the because you have a choice. HHarltonarlton HHaslingfieldaslingfield HHauxtonauxton footbridge and through a small oil tank the path divides again. Veer riverbank proper. 9.5 miles GreatGreat ShelfordShelford SStaplefordtapleford kissing gate, through the tunnel cut left here. Ignore the right-hand fork. 7 miles LLitittle SShelfordhelford in this hedgerow, between two 5 miles 13a To the station 5 HHarstonarston hedges through another kissing gate, 10 Beside the Cam. You now Continue on the right-hand path and past a paddock beside a long 7 Over the M11 enter Grantchester Meadows from over a second bridge, along the 4 line of old, large chestnut trees. At a large electronic farm gate with the village end. At this location the edge of Sheep’s Green and behind BBaarriingtonngton 3 NNewtonewton 3 miles a sign to Cantelupe Farm the track water may not look inviting, and the Leys School along the path k o o r B surface changes to concrete. there is little by way of vegetation beside Vicar’s Brook until the n d e i l u G 1 5 To Haslingfield Continue straight on, noticing a sign where you might hide a bag. About Trumpington Road. Turn left and FFoxtonoxton SSheprethhepreth WWhihittleesfordsford Turn right at the road, cross the for Grantchester a mile and a half 200 metres on, however, there are then almost immediately right into 2 PPaampiisfordsford river bridge, and take the first left further on. Continue straight up the some large pools with ropes on the Bateman Street. You can opt here WestWest HillHill

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