Wimpole Way
The Wimpole Way is a 13-mile walk between Wimpole Hall and Cambridge. It starts where the Clopton Way ends (or vice versa) at Wimpole Hall, and at the other end (Cambridge) we linked up to the point at which we had completed the Fen Rivers Way.
We'd crossed the Wimpole Estate on the Clopton Way on 2nd October 2016, and returned to look around the Hall two weeks later. The Hall has had many owners, most recently Captain George Bambridge and his wife Elsie, who was Rudyard Kipling's daughter. There are the usual grand rooms, including the Yellow Drawing Room. the Long Gallery and the Library. However one of the more memorable features was an exhibition about Wimpole around the time of the First World War, set against powerful cartoons drawn by the propaganda cartoonist Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956). We also walked down to the walled garden and admired the attractive folly in the grounds.
It would be entirely possible to walk the Wimpole Way in one day, but it worked best for us to split it into two short legs which we walked on Sunday afternoons in late October and mid November 2016, on our way from home to the Bedford South Premier Inn, where we spend many Sunday nights. Between Wimpole and Cambridge, the Wimpole Way passes through or very close to the pretty villages of Kingston, Caldecote, Hardwick and Coton, and also through some delightful rolling countryside, with frequent wooded belts. This means that the Wimpole Way is definitely a good path to walk in the autumn; the colours were particularly attractive when we walked the second leg on a lovely sunny day.
We used to live close to Cambridge and we have both worked there. However we don't very often go to the centre, and it has developed hugely and got busier and busier in the past 20 years or so. After crossing the M11, the Wimpole Way passes the modern University buildings which are springing up to the west of the City. It then passes several colleges before heading across "The Backs" to the River Cam, and on to Great St Mary's Church and the Market Place.
We were aiming to link up with the Fen Rivers Way, so we continued on, past shoppers and tourists, to Jesus Green. Back in 2009, we decreed Jesus Lock to be the end of the Fen Rivers Way, so that was where we finished our walk along the Wimpole Way too.
The Wimpole Way lies entirely on Ordnance Survey Explorer Map 209 (Cambridge) and is described in a leaflet here. It is reasonably well signposted, with green metallic signs and little "Wimpole Way" stickers on ordinary footpath signs. Part of the route is shared with the Greenwich Meridian Trail.
For our photographs of the Wimpole Way, click here.
JordanWalks Wimpole Way pages last checked 15th February 2020.