Cambridge Self-Guided Walking Tour

Welcome to Helen’s self-guided tour around Cambridge, a city renowned for its architecture and prestigious universities and museums. I am a Chartered Geographer with over 25 years’ experience of teaching secondary school students and leading fieldwork. Cambridge is a fascinating city steeped in history and it contains over 1,100 individually listed buildings. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the number of sights to see, so allow me to lead you through some of the best. During the tour, you'll discover the rich heritage of Cambridge, from the ancient colleges nestled along the River Cam to the bustling market square. We begin our tour at Christ’s Piece, a beautiful green space close to the heart of the city. We’ll walk through the meandering streets, taking in historic sites, such as the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Round Church, to more natural sights such as Parker’s Piece and the common grazing land along The Backs, which is where we’ll end our tour. It isn’t possible to visit Cambridge without seeing buildings or land owned by the University of Cambridge. Many of the sites along this tour visit the various buildings and grounds of the 31 different colleges that make up the university. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world and some of its colleges date back to Medieval times, in the 13th century. Whilst I’ll refer to many of the colleges, the University restricts access to most, so I’ll also point out lots of other places of interest that you can get into. The route is around 2.5 miles in length. It should take around 2 to 3 hours to complete, unless you decide to stop at the various pubs, restaurants and attractions that I’ll recommend along the way. Cambridge is a flat city and so there are no hills to climb. All routes are paved or cobbled, and I’ll give an alternative route where there are steps. Whilst the route is linear in nature, it winds its way through the streets of the city centre, so it isn’t that far from start to finish. Cambridge is a cycling city, so do take care as the bikes sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere.