Three walks:
The first three walks on the Trail between Cambridge and Isleham (the Suffolk border).
1 (22) Cambridge (Sedgwick Museum) to Fen Ditton – published
Download Walk Guide below
2 (23) Fen Ditton to Stow cum Quy via Horningsea – due 2026
3 (24) Fulbourn to Stow cum Quy via the Wilbrahams – being developed, provisional route shown
WALK 1 (22): Cambridge to Fen Ditton
DOWNLOAD WALK GUIDE
‘I love the mix on this walk…..the history, the landscape, especially the river’
The route: ‘from revolutionary science to riverside meadows’
4.1 miles (6.6 km) Walking guide time 2hrs 40 mins plus stops
This walk, on the southern limit of the Fen Edge, takes you from the centre of Cambridge, one of England’s most iconic cities, through characteristic water meadows to the riverside village of Fen Ditton. Starting at the famous Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences and with a short visit to the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology, you pass the buildings that have witnessed some of the most remarkable work in the history of science from Darwin’s studies to Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA.
Both museums hold internationally important specimens and are worth extended visits themselves and the Sedgwick has published a Geology Trail featuring many of the building stones in the city.
One of the other highlights of this walk to Fen Ditton is the journey along the River Cam. Rising from chalk springs in the hills to the south of the city, this important river flows north to join the River Ouse on its course to the Wash. The river has been the life-blood of Cambridge since its first settlements, providing food and transport and acting as a military boundary. Trade with the outside world via the North Sea allowed this ’fenland town’ to grow and flourish. Today the wharves and jetties have been replaced with beautiful gardens, punt stations and boathouses but the river is just as vital to the life of the city as ever, winding between historic college buildings and famous for its rowing and punting.
This walk, on the southern limit of the Fen Edge, takes you from the centre of Cambridge, one of England’s most iconic cities, through characteristic water meadows to the riverside village of Fen Ditton. Starting at the famous Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences and with a short visit to the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology, you pass the buildings that have witnessed some of the most remarkable work in the history of science from Darwin’s studies to Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA.
Both museums hold internationally important specimens and are worth extended visits themselves and the Sedgwick has published a Geology Trail featuring many of the building stones in the city.
One of the other highlights of this walk to Fen Ditton is the journey along the River Cam. Rising from chalk springs in the hills to the south of the city, this important river flows north to join the River Ouse on its course to the Wash. The river has been the life-blood of Cambridge since its first settlements, providing food and transport and acting as a military boundary. Trade with the outside world via the North Sea allowed this ’fenland town’ to grow and flourish. Today the wharves and jetties have been replaced with beautiful gardens, punt stations and boathouses but the river is just as vital to the life of the city as ever, winding between historic college buildings and famous for its rowing and punting.
WALK 2 (23): Fen Ditton to Stow cum Quy
via Horningsea
Due 2026
and
WALK 3 (24): Fulbourn to Stow cum Quy
via the Wilbrahams
Being developed
The routes shown are provisional only. There are a number of landscape features and places of historical interest in the area and many of these will be included on the walks. Unfortunately, currently there is no good walking route on the south east of the city from Fen Ditton to Fulbourn; our route, therefore, turns north to reach Stow cum Quy via Horningsea and Stow cum Quy Fen. There will be another walk from Fulbourn to Stow cum Quy to take in features such as Fulbourn Fen and the Little Wilbraham River. On the first walk you are below 5 metres above sea level from Horningsea until near to Stow but the second walk is all above 5 metres.
Most of the area is on the West Melbury Marly Chalk, which is very clay-rich and has led to the land being called ‘gault’ due to its similarity to the true Gault Clay which occurs further north and west. In Fulbourn, the geology changes to a younger part of the Chalk Formation, the Zig Zag Chalk. There are also gravels of the River Terraces of the Cam and patches of Peat in the south, such as at Teversham Fen. There are chalk springs around Fulbourn and a few small water channels, such as Caudle Ditch, the Little Wilbraham River and Quy Water, flow across the area, on their way to join, eventually, the River Cam to the north. You pass near to Fleam Dyke and to Fulbourn Fen Nature Reserve, both of which can be visited by a short detour.
Landscape and Geology
The bedrock here is the Chalk, known for forming the hills to the south-east of Cambridge but it also underlies the south eastern fen edge and the eastern most slopes of the high plateau to the west of the city. This sedimentary rock formed from deposits on the seabed in warm shallow seas in the Cretaceous Period, when sea level was high and the climate was much warmer. The Chalk remains on the east side of the Cam, whilst on the western side it has mostly been eroded by the river as it cuts down, particularly into the soft rock of the West Melbury Marly Chalk, the lowest stratum of the Chalk. This marly (clayey) Chalk is relatively impermeable and Peat has developed on it in some places. At the base of the Chalk, above the Gault Clay, is a fossil-rich layer known as the Cambridge Greensand, exploited in the past for its abundant phosphate (coprolites).
Over the last c.480,000 years, during the latter part of the Pleistocene ‘Ice Age’, climatic conditions have modified the surface of the bedrock by glacial and periglacial activity, particularly by the forces of ice and water (including erosion by freeze-thaw’. There has also been a gradually deepening of the river valley with an often-changing pattern of channels and migration of the main course eastwards. This has resulted in the deposition of a complex collection of, mostly, sands and gravels that can generally be regarded as forming a series of River Terraces. At present four terraces of the Cam have been identified, representing different stages in the river’s history, of which three occur in this area. During the Holocene (the last 11,700 years), Peat formed in lower areas when waterlogging occurred in the freshwater marshes of the fenland and in pockets of low-lying land on the fen edge.
© Cambridgeshire Geological Society