Cambridgeshire - Crossing the Fens
4:50 am, my Fitbit vibrates and its time to get up, Shirl’s warning the night before not to wake her at such a ridiculous hour is still in the forefront of my thoughts. Quietly does it, everything is ready to go in the spare room, I will be out without waking a soul I think. Well, that was the theory and all was going to plan until I got in the van and went to program google maps to get me to Trumpington Park and ride – no glasses! Unfortunately with them being on my bedside locker I would have to creep back into the bedroom and retrieve them. It goes without saying that in the dark I bumped into the vacuum on the landing and knocked most of the detritus that calls the top of my bedside locker home crashing to the floor in the process, but I think I may just have got away with it!
My planned start time of 8am was successfully achieved following an incident free journey down to Trumpington (I kept thinking of Trumpton a kids favourite TV program from the late 60’s and early 70’s all the way down to the start point).
The park and ride for Cambridge which allows 18 hours free parking would set the tone for the whole ride as it was thronging with people unloading bikes, many of them little folders from their cars and heading off into Cambridge city centre. A common theme I have set for these rides is to explore the towns and cities of the various counties, utilising the cycleways wherever possible to gauge which counties if any, have actually got a decent handle on how to build a network of cycle paths. It would be fair to say closer to home I’m guilty of being one of those cyclists that gets motorists complaining about us not using the cycle paths, but that is for good reason, they are shockingly designed and go generally nowhere useful!
Cambridge is undoubtedly the leader in this respect of the 9 counties I have visited so far, their cycle paths are not all perfect but what they have got is a critical mass of them actually serving the city from nearby towns and villages. The result? Riders use them. Cambridge was thronging with cyclists going about their daily business by bike, I actually stood out as a rider in lycra most were just in ordinary clothes using a bike as their transport of choice. Build the infrastructure and cycling will become mainstream transport. Yes, Cambridge is flat which helps but the fact I managed to complete half of my century ride traffic free is the key to why so many people ride in Cambridge.
The cycleway from the park and ride soon brought me into the city centre and to the curiously named Parkers Piece an open area of common land used since the 1800’s for fairs and feasts but perhaps most famous for being the place where the Cambridge University football club laws were first used and were subsequently adopted by the Football Association in 1863 as the laws of the game because “They embrace the true principles of the game, with the greatest simplicity”.
With such an early start I planned to grab an early coffee but I was too early for Benet’s which trip advisor had recommended so settled for a Caffe Nero opposite King’s College Chapel instead.
With my caffeine reserves topped up to acceptable levels I pottered off through the backstreets to Market Square in search of my selected sculpture of the ride, surprisingly it was easy to find in a corner of the Square which was rapidly coming to life.
The sculpture is a memorial to local eccentric Walter “Snowy” Farr MBE who was a charity fundraiser for guide dogs for the blind and many others, he was usually seen in eccentric clothing. The memorial designed by Gary Webb resembles a combination of Farr’s tame cat and mice whereby the cat was trained to sit on top of his hat and the mice to run around it’s rim!!
The river Cam is in many respects the focal point of the city and the cyclepath along it is an ideal way to get a good view of the many impressive university buildings that line it.
Heading North I followed the river path before ducking off to the village of Horningsea and on into the Fens where I traded the asphalt cycle paths for a mix of compacted gravel trails and the dirt trails at the edge of expansive arable fields that thankfully had not been turned into quagmires. The local radio news on my journey down to Cambridge had left me somewhat in trepidation of the state these tracks would be in as reportedly Cambridge had been subjected to a months rainfall (52mm) in just 24 hours the day before my ride. It was evidence of how dry the area must have been beforehand that barring the odd puddle filled hole the tracks were still firm and my gravel tyres coped admirably.
Having passed through Burwell Fen I took advantage of a pleasant coffee stop at the Docky Hut cafe part of the National Trust centre on Sedge Fen and refuelled with a slice of Apricot flapjack.
I happily passed a few minutes watching the teachers trying to keep an eye on a cohort of primary school kids doing a little bit of geography fieldwork – herding cats as they say!
The extensive network of tracks and different surfaces to ride on, all of which I had had pretty much to myself made for a grin inducing 30km’s of Fenland fun as I headed Northwards towards Ely. Ely is the the 3rd smallest city in England and hosts an impressive Cathedral. Ely is also famous for Oliver Cromwell’s house which has been refurbished to show how it would have looked during his lifetime.
Ely was the most Northerly location on this tour and as I turned South West I did wonder if I was going to pick up a serious headwind to make the trip back down towards Cambridge a little tougher but no, I was lucky, a headwind there was but only very tame, the Fens would indeed be a much tougher ride whenever it’s blowing a hooley!
As I devoured my very special Rocky road complete with chunks of crunchy perched atop it I could hear a hissing from my bike behind me! Inspection revealed a large thorn poking out from my front tyre. Tubeless to the rescue again, I pulled out the thorn, spun the front wheel and hey presto my puncture was gone! Ironically I had topped up my Stan’s No Tubes sealant the night before and had said to Conor “I hope I’m not tempting fate”
Babraham research campus supports a number of start-up companies pioneering research into bioscience and is an extremely impressive looking setup in rich parkland and again was served by a quality cycle route into Cambridge.
Whilst passing by Duxford Aerodrome, now owned by the Imperial War Museum but formerly RAF Duxford I enjoyed a fleeting glimpse of a couple of bi-planes going through their paces in the skies above. The last few kilometres saw me take on the highest point of Cambridgeshire at Great Chisill, topping out at 146m it will not be a climb to brag about but the Great Chisill windmill is worth a quick photo stop.
The last 24km gently dropped down back into Cambridge to complete a fine days riding far more enjoyable than I expected a day in the Fens would be, undoubtedly the virtually deserted off-road sections, traffic free cycle paths and impressive historic buildings compensated for the lack of lungbusting climbs and stunning scenic views.
Once again Komoot made route planning simple and effective. The route can be found here
The ride in numbers
161.83km Distance – approximately 88km traffic free
766m Elevation gain
6hrs 54 min moving time (23.4 km/h)
4 Torq Rhubarb and Custard gels
1 Apricot Flapjack
1 Rocky Road
3 coffee stops
5 bottles of water
0 beer – But I will be sourcing a Cambridgeshire brewery for a home delivery!
1 puncture – successfully re-sealed
1 categorised climbs – Really!!!
14 level crossings – 2 stops
1 Torn Stolen Goat Mitt
2 Bi-Planes
Finally if you got a spare quid in your pocket my justgiving page to raise vital funds for the Midlands Air Ambulance is now live Keith Jones is fundraising for Midlands Air Ambulance Charity (justgiving.com)
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