A hike in the Cambridgeshire hills
November 1, 2013
Cambridgeshire may well be one of the flattest counties in the UK but it does contain some hills, small hill but hills nevertheless.
Not far from Cambridge we have the Gog Magog hills, see the contours below, pretty impressive eh?
So one sunny morning, the first true Autumn morning of the year, I set out for the town of Great Shelford, just to the south of Cambridge.
Pleasant paths and quiet roads led me through the village and finally towards the hills themselves.
On the way I passed a lonely copse and was tempted to commit TRESPASS to investigate, but the wide open fields left me feeling a little exposed so I chickened out.
I ascended Gog Magog and enjoyed the views from the summit. Writer Iman Jacob Wilkens claims that ‘Troy was situated on the Gog Magog Hills near Cambridge’.
Troy! Just fancy that. I’m prepared to fully support this theory based solely on the grounds that it sounds like a grand idea.
There’s a little wood on the summit of Gog Magog, it has a fence around it.
Someone had built a camp in that wood….
It’s a rather pretty little wood, I loved this green carpet.
I descend the hills and made my way to Wandlebury Country Park where I planned to pick up the Roman Road trail.
The Roman Road Walk is a 40km (25 mile) way-marked route which I’m hoping to complete one day, it would be a long day but fun, I think.
The Roman roads were glorious in the Cambridgeshire afternoon. Lush, green and very straight.
On the return walk back to Great Shelford I passed over the River Granta, a tributary of the River Cam.
I arrived in Great Shelford hoping for a pint in the pub by the station but alas, the pub was boarded up, probably to be turned into flats or something.
Yes, the Peaks, Lakes, Wales and Scotland have all the big, sexy hills but we have Gog Magog, we have TROY and…we have ROMANS.
Comments
These posts were first published on my old WordPress site, where family, friends and passing strangers would sometimes leave comments. I’ve decided to keep a few from much loved people who are no longer with us, especially my mother, Maggie, and my father-in-law, Bob. Both were keen walkers and always took an interest in my adventures.
Bob