Lucy Grewcock - Cambridgeshire & The Fens (Slow Travel)

GOING SLOW IN

Around 8.2 million visitors flock to the city of Cambridge each year but only a fraction stay overnight and very few venture beyond the city centre, let alone explore the rest of the county. Most are day trippers who arrive by the coachload and swarm around the citys historic core before departing a few hours later. To assist these visitors are countless guidebooks and blog posts dedicated to the countys capital, yet there are none I know of (other than this book) that give a comprehensive guide to Cambridgeshire as a whole. For Slow travellers, this makes things easy by merely reading this book, seeking out a backstreet pub or venturing beyond the countys capital, youll experience a side to Cambridgeshire that most visitors (and many residents, for that matter) never see. If youre fully committed to the Slow ethos, theres far more to discover: linger longer or travel a little further and youll find Anglo-Saxon earthworks, wildlife-filled wetlands and historic villages that tell stories of the hermits and horse knockers, earls and adventurers, monks and millers, ice skaters and innovators that make this county so fascinating.

Shaped like a rough-edged diamond, every corner of Cambridgeshire exudes a different identity. In the west, the former county of Huntingdonshire (which has kept its old name) is distinct in its riverside mills and market towns while, north of here, the city of Peterborough has a grand cathedral and is bordered by rolling countryside and honey-coloured villages that line the River Nene. In northeast Cambridgeshire, the pancake-flat fields, vast orchards and remote villages of the Fens feel a world away from the green hills and affluent settlements of southern Cambridgeshire, or the busy streets and grand university buildings of Cambridge itself. It is this diversity that makes the county so appealing to Slow travellers, who can experience vastly different landscapes, architecture and attitudes within just a few miles.

Peterhouse College, Cambridge (SS)

THE SLOW MINDSET

Hilary Bradt, Founder, Bradt Travel Guides

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T S Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets

This series evolved, slowly, from a Bradt editorial meeting when we started to explore ideas for guides to our favourite country Great Britain. We wanted to get away from the usual top sights formula and encourage our authors to bring out the nuances and local differences that make up a sense of place such things as food, building styles, nature, geology or local people and what makes them tick. Our aim was to create a series that celebrates the present, focusing on sustainable tourism, rather than taking a nostalgic wallow in the past.

So without our realising it at the time, we had defined Slow Travel, or at least our concept of it. For the beauty of the Slow Movement is that there is no fixed definition; we adapt the philosophy to fit our individual needs and aspirations. Thus Carl Honor, author of In Praise of Slow, writes: The Slow Movement is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. Its not about doing everything at a snails pace, its about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savouring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. Its about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting. And travel.

So take time to explore. Dont rush it, get to know an area and the people who live there and youll be as delighted as the authors by what you find.

There is one resounding feature, however, which has shaped this county for centuries. Waterways, both natural and manmade, have defined Cambridgeshire since its earliest days. The city of Cambridge began life as a settlement by the River Cam, while the rivers Nene and Great Ouse were some of the most important transport routes in medieval England. The Fens, meanwhile, were once a drowned world of swamps and marshes, with isolated settlements built on island-like nodules of higher ground. This all changed in the 17th century, when the Great Ouse and Nene were diverted and canalised to drain the fenland swamps and reveal the fertile farmland beneath. Today, the countys network of rivers and drainage channels can be explored by boat or on countryside walks beside their banks that lead to waterside pubs and historic settlements like St Ives, Wisbech and Ely.

Despite being part of Cambridgeshire, the Fens have always been viewed as different.