The Cambridge Map Project Episode 2: C6, Trinity Conduit Head and Eddington (slight return)

 

Preamble

The random number generator selected square C6. Once again out to the edges of West Cambridge, this time to the North and a bit West of the previous walk. The square was bisected horizontally by Madingley Road. To the South the area known as ‘High Cross’ is shown as containing a British Antarctic Survey building, a laboratory and the University School of Veterinary Medicine. To the North mostly fields, belonging to the University Farm and criss-crossed with drains.

But it was the body of water depicted on the Eastern edge of these fields, located between two streets, that caught my imagination.  The map indicated this was  the site of ‘Trinity Conduit Head’, and one of the streets also bore its name. The other street being Landsdowne Road. These streets and the conduit head were places I'd never heard of and completely off of my mental map.

 

Amble

I walked from home, via Newtown, Fen Causeway and Queens Road (‘The Backs’). Then the length of Madingley Road towards the boundary of square C6 and Conduit Head Road just beyond. Well before this boundary, I passed the turning into Storeys Way, a place I will always associate with Thursday afternoon visits to the dentist (that was my Dads half day). Back then the six-monthly interval between appointments seemed a long time, as did the time spent in the dentists waiting room before being called to the chair. If ever I pass this turning, which has been a rare event ever since, the feeling of nervousness and mild fear I used to get as we approached it return briefly, along with a vision and smell of the dentists waiting room. Its antique mustiness mixed with the aroma of disinfectant and red mouthwash re-emerge in my mind. For a fraction of a second I’m back amongst the dark brown antique furniture, adverts for Dunhill cigarettes on the back of high-end magazines and a framed drawing hung on one of the walls depicting the face of a youthful looking but very hirsute man. His hair took up most of the picture (no beard). I recall my mum telling me the hair was a punishment for taking up smoking, as if the picture was designed to warn of the dangers of tobacco along with an inbuilt assumption that smoking makes your hair grow uncontrollably to the point of a social leprosy. I believed her at the time, although it was only a few years later I had developed my own fairly impressive barnet and enthusiastically taken up smoking. By then I had forgotten any real or imagined connection between the two. The Storeys Way dentist had retired by then so I had no cause to visit the area anymore.

Churchill College grounds on one side of the road and large houses on the other soon gave way to the University’s West Cambridge Site. Once I had passed Madingley Rise, which makes up a bit of this on the North side, I had crossed into square C6 and reached Conduit Head Road.

There was no sign of life as I headed down Conduit Head Road towards where I hoped I might find access to the body of water I imagined was the location of the Conduit Head. The street had a very neighbourhood watch, almost private feel, large houses and an extensive woody looking area on the left side. I felt self-conscious, although I saw no one.  I didn’t take any photographs because of this, feeling that I ought to appear to be moving with purpose to avoid any misconception that I was a suspicious character. The sense of this was heightened due to the lockdown. My reasonable excuse for being out was for exercise which is not something done standing still. I felt like to loiter would be to risk unwanted attention in this street even in normal times. This feeling also prevented me from carrying on where a branch of the street took a turn left where it was marked as a private road and pointed towards the direction of the water shown on the map. Carrying on past this turning, I soon reached a dead end and was forced to turn back onto Madingley Road.

I turned into Landsdowne Road, where a sign warned no access was available to the North West Cambridge Development. In the hope that it was just there to deter construction traffic and that a throughway to the conduit head might be available to the pedestrian I carried on.  The large houses that lined each side of the road were undoubtedly occupied by people in lockdown, but there was no sign of life from within or on the street itself. The neighbourhood watch feel was tangible. The footpath was green with large patches of well-established moss and small weeds, indicating it was seldom used for pedestrian activity.

Again, I felt the need to walk with purpose and to give the impression I knew exactly where I was going. Evenso, to anyone observing it would probably have been obvious I didn’t. I soon reached the end of the road, where instead of the through road or pathway hoped for, was instead a driveway leading to a large modern dwelling named Illyria.

I conceded that if the conduit head still existed, it was inaccessible from both streets but maybe I would find another route if I carried further along and arched back, after exploring the remaining part of the square North of High Cross.

Back on Madingely Road, on the other side a road sign gave a skeleton explanation of the surroundings. To the South is High Cross which is an area now much built up since its depiction in the 1980 map, with additional University related development. To the North, the Park and Ride site and the Eddington development with its superstore (Sainsburys). To the West the road carries on across the M11 and soon after this it crosses the city boundary in the direction of Bedford.

Just beyond the sign, a large tent like structure reminded me of the millennium dome. Later research revealed this to be the Schlumberger Gould Research Centre where research into oil drilling is carried out. The building, known as ‘The Tent, dates from 1980.  A few years ago, was given grade 2 listed status. If I had known these facts, I don’t think it would have altered the feeling that I was walking past an almost alien construction, resembling something from a 1980s science fiction TV programme. The overarching lockdown atmosphere only enhanced this feeling. Maybe the building had been used as a a set in a 1980s TV programme, I’d seen the programme at the time and these thoughts were looping back from a dormant memory as I walked past.

I decided I would not cross to the South side of the road for now, and possibly leave it for a future walk should the random number generator pick this square again. I was more intent on making sure I had covered all avenues that might lead to the conduit head and that would mean sticking North of Madingley Road.

I decided to keep going to the M11, where the map showed what looked like a large telecommunications tower and where I wondered if a path of some kind would loop back through Eddington. Beyond the entrance to the Park and Ride, a new development, the previously mentioned 'North West Cambridge' was in its early stages. Fencing and CCTV was up, and the site entrance had a sentry box (unoccupied when I passed but it was a Sunday).

At the entrnce to the site the ‘project charter’ was displayed as part of a large panel hoarding. This was a tract largely made up of the sort of language you normally see in internal management documents designed to motivate staff or in company annual reports. It spoke of ‘our vision, our purpose, our values’ and was peppered with phrases like ‘can do culture’, ‘stakeholder’, ‘positive attitude’, ‘targets’ and ‘delivering’. This reminded me of going to a pub once where a notice proudly displayed the values and objectives of the management using similar jargon. I felt then that this had no place on display to the general public, for whom the main objective when visiting the pub was to escape from any thoughts of work, personal development plans and staff appraisals. When out walking, free of the imposition of any sort of formal objective, purpose or vision of any kind for the duration of the perambulation at least, a temporary escape from these things ought to be possible. Alas, it seems corporate jargon and work-speak is no longer confined to the realm of the workplace or in communications to 'stakeholders', where it is irritating enough. It has been allowed to permeate into the public sphere, intruding on space used for respite and leisure.

One hint the charter did give about the development was that it would be ‘centred around a mixed academic and urban community’. I wondered what this meant. Were the academics obliged to be urban, or was this a new way of saying ‘town and gown’ and referring to a mixed community where professors would rub shoulders with the hoi polloi? Was anybody who considered themselves ‘rural’ to be shunned? I came to the conclusion the phrase was probably meaningless marketing speak and that the development appeared to really be an extension of Eddington.

I reached the M11 bridge, where I passed a surprising number of people walking in the opposite direction. The communications mast from the 1980 map was nowhere to be seen Instead there was a modern lamppost type grey mobile phone mast which was less impressive than what I had been expecting. There was also no way through to loop back to Eddington so I had to double back to the park and ride.

The park and ride site was desolate. I saw two other people walking across, a handful of parked cars and a bus with the driver waiting, possibly in vain, for any passengers. The building at the centre, which may or may not have had facilities (loo, vending machine etc) was devoid of people. I decided not to investigate further to avoid looking conspicuous.

I approached Eddington, which from this angle appeared unchanged since my last visit. A crane was up in the foreground and development was still taking place. In the background, a mysterious black tower loomed up from behind one of the blocks of flats.  The scene still reminded of the film ‘Panel Story’ as it did on my last visit, but this time with shades of ‘The Black Tower’ mixed in.  But passing a hoarding for some new “beautiful” and “spacious” five + bedroom l houses yet to be built, the comparison with 70s Czech communist housing estates was clearly only very superficial. The hoarding bore the branding ‘Athena’ and ‘The Villas’ but I guessed any connection to classical antiquity would end there and the houses would be generic 21^st century, but a bit larger than normal.

I headed towards the ‘black tower’ that loomed above Eddington, wondering what it might be. Not far into the development, I soon found it. The modern looking ‘chimney’ was attached to a windowless building. Close up, it looked much less like the paranoia inducing black tower featured in the short film. I’ve since discovered is building is the ‘energy centre’ which provides heating and hot water for the homes in Eddington through a district heating network and means the homes have no need for their own boiler.

Eddington also boasts a largest rainwater recycling scheme in the UK using two purpose-built lakes linked to a sustainable drainage system. There is also an underground waste and recycling system which is designed to reduce the carbon footprint.  While I was unaware of this while I drifted through, I felt that I had experienced a shift in time and space to somewhere not quite ready to exist. Somewhere just a little way off in the future where, at least some aspects of living were a bit better than the present, but with something not quite right. It was as if the place was not quite ready to emerge from a computer-generated developers noticeboard marketing image into a less digitally enhanced reality.

As I emerged into the market square, I was suddenly confronted by the most people I’d seen all day. There was a big que for the new patisserie that had recently opened where people were emerging clutching cardboard cups of coffee. A couple of blokes were playing table tennis outside on a table provided. More people were out walking near the Storeys Field Centre and beyond into a green space, which is where I was heading to try and get around the back of the Trinity Conduit Head and see if it was accessible.

The expansive green space, and Eddington itself, are located in the ghost fields of the University Farm as depicted on the 1980 map. I followed the main path across the greenspace that headed East, which was wide enough to be dualled for pedestrians and cyclists and provided a green route into town.

After I passed a playground and sports area, both being well used, a fence separated the ‘new’ greenspace and what appeared to be the abandoned remnants of the farm. Other than the long grass, the only feature was a large dilapidated barn.

Beyond the barn, the path carried on towards town past another dilapidated building set further back, this time looking like an office or a laboratory. It emanated a sort of Blakes 7/Dr Who atmosphere while at the same time somehow a reminder that I was traversing a Sunday afternoon in the covid-era. The pandemic had felt more remote in the digital unreality of Eddington and its apparently young and healthy population. If a TV science fiction metaphor needed applying to the atmosphere there, it would instead be Logans Run rather than John Pertwee or Tom Baker. It occurred to me that I had seen nobody that looked over thirty. The dilapidated building existed outside the boundary of Eddington and was a reminder of a previous age. Maybe Peter Ustinov was inside, surrounded by cats and blissfully unaware of 21^st century developments across the field.

Another path headed behind the barn. I followed it, not knowing if it was private. It headed towards a couple of houses so initially I thought it might just be a drive. But there was a possibility it led to a legitimate cut through that might lead to the conduit. I was the only one to deviate from the main path to head in this direction. The other Sunday afternoon strollers stuck to the main path, but nobody appeared to take any notice of me and I felt, inexplicably, reassuringly invisible. I passed through a sort of farmyard, before passing by the houses where I saw a small faded green plastic sign depicting the outline of a walker and the word ‘footpath’. The narrow path took me close to the dilapidated building.

The building was fenced of and festooned with ‘unsafe structure’ warning notices. It was clearly earmarked for demolition, looking too far gone for refurbishment. Carrying on I emerged at an opening with CCTV warning notices on the fence. Across the way was something called the ‘Colin Forbes Building’. I hesitated, wondering if it was permitted to continue. But I saw somebody else walking and it soon dawned on me that I had reached the area known as Madingley Rise, which contained various University related buildings but was accessible to the public. I realised that I had slipped out of square C6 slightly and overshot the location of Trinity Conduit Head as depicted in 1980. There was no other way other than to go back so I continued, in the vain hope that there might still be a way through.

A little further along a turning back West led to the entrance of Gravel Hill Farm. The sign confirmed this as the base for the North West Cambridge development, with access to staff and visitors to the office. The map showed a possible path along a tree lined route which seemed to head to the back of Conduit Head Road, but I couldn’t be certain. The notice suggested access was not permitted but it might have just been referring to vehicles. But I couldn’t be sure about this and given the current restrictions it seemed prudent not to risk it. A look on google earth was inconclusive, hindered by the remote sensing having been done when the trees in the area were in full leaf, obscuring both the path, its destination and the area where the water of Trinity Conduit Head was located on the 1980 map. I admitted defeat and headed home.

Post-amble

Wikipedia indicates that the conduit head is a stone structure dating from 1327. It was the source of the water supply for a Franciscan friary in the centre of Cambridge, which flowed along wooden pipes. Trinity College became owners of the conduit head and water supply in the 16^th century and used it to supply one of their fountains. The water source is thought to have been some sort of holy well used for ritual purposes in pre-Roman times. The stone conduit head is apparently still there, in the woods behind the house that also bears its name. The current OS maps confirms the body of water is still there too.  But, like Bolton’s Pit Lake in the last walk, it is apparently on private land and inaccessible. The one preview image I have found of the stone conduit head links to the local authority website but is blocked as unsafe by my browser. Thus, sight of the trinity conduit head remains elusive, digitally as well as physically.

The Cambridge Map Project Episode 1: D4, Newnham

 

The Cambridge Map and Lockdown 3

Lockdown three has brought back almost identical restrictions to the first lockdown in March last year. The message on leaving the house for exercise, similar to before, is to ‘stay local’. ‘Local’ is not clearly defined in statute but in the guidance somewhere it talks about staying within your town, village or the part of the City you live in. Any clarity this might have provided was muddied when Boris Johnson was seen cycling seven miles from Downing Street in the Olympic Park. It was not made clear if he actually cycled there or if he was driven or if it mattered either way. Stratford and Westminster are not usually considered the same part of London, but Boris was deemed not to have broken any rules. Meanwhile, in the same week two women from Ashby-De-La-Zouch were found to have breached the regulations and fined after driving 5 miles from where they lived, to go for a walk at a (possibly) local beauty spot. They had brought coffee which they were told was not allowed because it was classed as a ‘picnic’. I’m not sure if their crime was the driving to the beauty spot, the coffee or because they were judged, League of Gentlemen style, as ‘not local’ to the location.

During the weeks leading up to and through Christmas I had been feeling an increasing sense of lethargy and dis-interestedness, which was magnified by the onset of Lockdown three. In a belated start to the New Year, I decided that I needed a new method to get out and walk within the permitted boundaries of ‘local’.

A rummage in the map draw and I ‘rediscovered’ a 1980 Ordinance Survey map of Cambridge, from the same series as the Ipswich Town Map that I used as the basis for a walk a while ago. The only other map in the series as far as I know is of Southampton, a place definitely not local and I don’t (yet) have the map anyway. The covers of all three maps in the series feature ‘posterised’ images of local landmarks on their front covers.  The Cambridge one has a closeup angular view of Kings College chapel, apparently from the perspective of somebody laying on the grass outside and seeing the building through the prism of 1970s special effects from Beat Club or Top of The Pops.

The scale of the map is ideal for my purposes. Each grid square covers a large enough area to contain sufficient things of interest but one small enough to be do-able easily in an afternoon or morning. All are within reasonable walking or cycling distance from where I live, at least at the weekend when work won’t get in the way. The plan is to select a grid square using random number generators before setting out. A more local but similar idea to the Barnett’s Map project that I started around this time last year but was swiftly halted due to Covid, using the idea of a ‘catapult’ to randomly determine the vicinity of the walk.

Whilst Cambridge is technically a City, I reckon since it is smaller than some towns, let alone any major city, anywhere within its boundary can be considered local to me. The 1980s map will be used as a guide, identifying points of interest that may or may not still exist within the grid square boundary of the walk. New points of interest or possibly disinterest that have appeared since the point in time of the map will certainly be encountered given the level of development and change in the intervening years in parts of the City. The walking, in order to qualify as permitted exercise and not attract attention of the police or others, will have to involve minimal stopping or prolonged loitering at any point of interest. How regular, in both timing and content these walks turn out to be is not predetermined.

Preamble

The random number generator for the first walk selected map square D4. This covers an area bifurcated by Barton Road, with part the suburb of ‘Newnham Croft’ on the South side and part of the University dominated area around Grange Road to the North. The whole area is within the council ward of Newnham, the term also used for the immediate surrounding area in the local vernacular.

The suburb of Newnham Croft is one of the most well-off parts of a well-off but particularly un-equal city. I always think of it as Cambridge’s equivalent of Hampstead or Highgate. As well as being well off, it is also a conservation area. I wasn’t sure if the streets within my map square strictly as part of Newnham Croft, being a bit cut off from the main residential area located in the adjacent square, or if they were simply part of ‘Newnham’. Maybe this would become apparent.

Amble

I began at the corner of Barton Road and Kings Road outside a building that used to be the Hat and Feathers Pub until about 2010. It is not easily recognisable as a former pub, having been completely striped of any external paraphernalia hinting at its former life. I only recall visiting it once, as a teenager, when a friend living around the corner on Selwyn Road had a party. We were ordered to contribute to the swear box several times soon after our arrival. Other than that, I remember very little about the pub. Still, any pub lost to flats, even one with puritanical views on the use of language, is to be mourned and I stood for a few seconds to pay my respects

Across the street, a laminated advert for a mattress sale was attached to a telegraph pole. These are currently prolific throughout Cambridge. They seem to have superseded a previous epidemic of similar notices offering outdoor benches of the type normally found in pub gardens. Maybe these items have become excess due to a downturn in sales of mattresses to hotels and benches to pubs during Covid and there is cheap surplus stock to be had. I imagined a dodgy bloke in a lock-up full of these items, waiting for his mobile to ring after a morning stapling notices to posts around town, a low-level disaster capitalist spawned by Corona Virus.

I turned into Selwyn Road, a street I was only vaguely familiar with from the previously mentioned party and couple of other visits to the same friend’s house around the same time. The street was devoid of people. There seemed to be a clear divide between sides of the road, one made up of modest sized terraced houses but ones which were in keeping with the general ambience found in the main bit if Newnham Croft. The houses on other side of the road by contrast, while not exactly resembling the one depicted in the ‘22 Shit Street’ ceramic ornament Viz used to sell, were much less in keeping with a middle-class conservation area. It more resembled part of a decent post war council estate. A taxi was parked in one drive, and on another house the front door window was boarded up with plywood. The front gardens were lived in, not twee. The contrast between both sides of the street was subtle, but marked and an indicator of a more sensible era when council housing was widespread enough even to appear in posher parts of town.

At the end of the street, I turned into Grantchester Road. This, by no surprise, eventually takes you to the village of Grantchester, famous for the poet Rupert Brooke and less impressively, Jeffrey Archer. Rupert Brooke had a pub named after him in the village and is also associated with the tea orchard which is a big tourist draw. Archer, by contrast, is conspicuous in his absence in any tourist narrative the village uses to attract visitors. I recalled him coming to my secondary school and giving a talk where he extolled the virtue of hard work and competition. The reception he got from the assembled was polite but lukewarm. Any visitors are much more likely to associate the village with Brooke or Robson Green from the ITV drama series ‘Grantchester’ than Archer. Grantchester, the television program, is set in a fictionalised version of the village during the 1950s and partially at least filmed locally. The programme is a formula ITV drama and not of huge interest, other than to spot the difference between real and non-real local references and locations. The village was at least two map squares away from where I was at this point, possibly off the map. It would almost certainly be full of lockdown walkers and joggers, so I was glad I had not been randomly catapulted there today.

I passed the Rugby Stadium, home of the Cambridge Rugby Union Football Club and the University Rugby League club. This was a place I couldn’t ever recall seeing before, although I have cycled this route at least once. That was in the dark after a couple of pints at the Blue Ball in Grantchester, so maybe I didn’t notice it. It is mostly field after all.  The ground is called Volac Park due to a sponsoring deal with Volac, a company based in Royston, Herts and who are ‘world leaders in dairy nutrition’ according to their website. Previously the club was named after Wests Renault Garage a formerly well-established local business across town on Newmarket Road, since gone to make way for the ‘Anglia House’ student flats development.

 

 

On the other side of the road were a couple of University College Sports Grounds. The one belonging to Pembroke College had an impressive brown flat roofed modernist building, presumably the changing rooms and clubhouse. The land being private it was not accessible and I could only view from a distance.

I took a left turned off Grantchester road into ‘The Baulk’ permissive byway, just in time to avoid the point where the narrow, unmarked and in places windy road reached the national speed limit. The Baulk, by contrast, had a far more agreeable 5mph limit, presumably for tractors and people using it to get to the ‘Cocks and Hens’ tennis club for which there was also a sign here. The name seemed fitting for a location in a terrible 1970s ‘sex comedy, starring Robin Askwith rather than the University imbued edgelands of the 21st century city. After I looked at the map, it made more sense. Nearby, at least in 1980, were some Poultry Houses located behind the rugby club. The Baulk, meanwhile, is a historic footpath linking Grantchester and Barton, and also according to the sign, Coton and Maddingley. A path I had previously unaware of until today.

The sign for the Baulk featured the logo for something called’ QTSQ Quarter to Six Quadrant’, which sounded like the name of a mysterious University drinking club. On return google confirmed this referred to the area of Cambridge bordered by a straight line from Maddingley Road South to Grantchester and another from the same point running East to Coton, thus resembling the hands on a clock at a quarter to six. South Cambridgeshire District Council has designated this area a ‘Major Green Infrastructure Target Area’.The name QTSQ has also been adopted by a local association who have their own vision for the area and want to preserve it. They and have managed to get South Cambridgeshire District council to consider this vision as a material planning consideration. Their other activities include an oil club (the domestic fuel type), as well as promoting walks and local pubs in the area. This corner of the Cambridge edge is one hitherto largely untouched by major development unlike most other parts. If any local area is likely to be spared to sort of development seen elsewhere, it’s here. It will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few years in this area – or ‘Quadrant’.

The path took a 45 degree turn to follow the edge of the ‘Cocks and Hens’ Tennis club, at a  point marked by a second world war pillbox. Not something I had expected to find, but I suppose this was a sort of edgeland, albeit one without the usual connotations of abandoned industry and dilapidation. This was more the edgeland of Cambridge University.

The track within the private grounds of the tennis club was dry and would have been easily walkable. The public track parallel to it, which ran alongside a brook, made me rebuke myself for coming out in footwear only really suitable for urban walking. I’d assumed I wouldn’t encounter the sort of muddy paths I’d inadvertently found myself on the day before across the saturated Stourbridge Common, but would be walking in an area where it was easy to stay on the dry land of asphalt and concrete. I was wrong! The path in front of me was something of a quagmire, but I managed to negotiate it in my unsuitable slip-on DM type boots by sticking to the relatively grassy bit near the brook, managing not to slip and fall in.

Safely on the other side, opposite the beer barrels stacked at the back of the Rugby Stadium, I noticed a gate led to a model railway. This was on the 1980 map, but somewhere I had never known existed and I had wondered if it would have disappeared. This is the home of the Cambridge Model Engineering Society who open the railway for public visits once a month (usually). Through the gate I could see what looked like a level crossing and a few other bits of railway paraphernalia but had I not known it was there, I could easily have missed it due to the prolific number of trees in the site. Further up another gate bore a notice confirming Covid-19 had curtailed public visits, in front of a muddy path that led somewhere but without the notice, again, there was no obvious sign of a model railway, with the place easily resembling a farm with chicken sheds as shown on the 1980 map.

As I approached the end of the section of path, with a small but impressive allotment site on one side and Fulbrooke Road on the other, I realised I hadn’t seen a single person along the Baulk. This place virgin territory for me, which in a city you have lived all your life Is always produces a mixture of mild euphoria and dreamlike unreality, particularly in places that are devoid of other people and out of the way of things. I felt this most keenly at the confluence of the path with Fulbrooke Road, The Allotments and the entrance to Kings College and Selwyn College Sports Ground (private property). Everything seemed to pause momentarily.

This was not just a metaphorical pause, though. I stopped to consult the map and saw two points of interest, things I’d never previously heard of or seen. ‘Stone Bridge’ was shown on the other side of the playing field where what looked like a continuation of the path met Barton Road. Before that, to the left of this path was what appeared to be a large lake, but which was not named or marked otherwise. This was located on land between houses on Fulbrooke Road and Barton Road. I considered going into the sports ground but could see no apparent pathway following the brook as shown on the map. Besides, the notice clearly stated the land was private, so regardless of the gate being wide open, I decided going in was a bad idea, path or no path. I was attempting to stick to the rules and didn’t want any unwanted attention from neighbours or the police.

Instead, I diverted down Fulbrooke Road, where also marking the confluence of paths was an impressive stinkpipe. This contributed to the sort of unchanged and just off the edge of town but not quite village atmosphere of the deserted street, which was very agreeable.

Back on Barton Road I headed towards the location of the Stone Bridge, on the 1980 map. One of the unnecessarily large houses that line the road, and at this point back onto the lake, had a large arched stained-glass window, above which a stone was engraved with ‘2000AD’. Maybe the part of the building above the garage was devoted to some sort of dystopian comic book judgement based religion, that made offerings to whatever dwelt in the lake to appease the deity. 

It soon became apparent there was no access to the lake from any point on Barton Road either and I gave up hope of seeing it. On return, from what I could gather, it is on private land and indeed not accessible to the public. It is known as Bolton’s Pit after George Bolton, who used to quarry bricks there in the 19^th century the quarry later becoming the lake. I did manage to view it via a video on an estate agent’s website, as part of the sales pitch for ‘The Lake House’, a new house on Barton Road with the lake at the end, or possibly in, its back garden. Apologies for the ‘estate agency-ness of the video which I have included purely for illustrative and educational purposes.

https://youtu.be/reJ3bHMZeQ4

Stone Bridge was marked on the map at the point of the sign marking the city limit. It occurred to me that what I thought was a path on the map following the brook through the sports field was in fact the line of the city boundary. I could see just beyond the sign a layby which normally accommodates resting truckers and a burger van, but it was devoid of either. I crossed the road to where a brook emerged. I couldn’t work out if this was the same brook I had been walking along and if this had crossed under the road, or if this was different one. The map was vague on this and looking at the current OS map didn’t help either. There was no sign of a stone bridge either side of the road. But the emerging brook was wider, fuller and flowing much more rapidly here as it turned through a pronounced meander. From the map, I identified this as part of the Bin Brook, a watercourse I had heard of and seen on maps but which had otherwise remained off my radar previously.

A short distance along the brook I reached ‘Gough Way Culvert’ which took the brook underground beneath the Gough Way Estate. Another channel went off at right angles and later investigation revealed this as a relief channel for the Bin Brook. I followed the course of the brook via a passage into Gough Way Estate, which was another part of Cambridge I had no memory of ever visiting  or even being aware of. Most of the houses were built between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. Houses on the estate suffered flooding in 1978 and again in 2001 and despite the culvert and relief channel there are concerns that the area is still at risk from this happening again. Today, this seemed more than possible.

I brief and uneventful walk among the typical suburban 60s/70s middle class houses soon led to another passage following the direction of the brook. A notice said the footpath was private and would close at 4.30. I can’t recall if there was a gate. Maybe this closure just happened on trust. I decided to take the path since 4.30 was two hours away and despite the sign it didn’t really look private.

I soon emerged at a small recreation ground surrounded by houses on three sides. On the left side the Bin Brook had re-emerged and the footpath followed its course. A handful of young people were on the rec and I soon passed a trio of elderly(ish) women with small dogs, who said hello and didn’t appear to regard me as suspicious. That, in my mind, validated my right to walk the path. The path and brook separated the estate on one side and Corpus Christi College Sports Ground on the other, the latter hidden behind trees but clear on the 1980 map.

I noticed the path featured lights in the floor which are sometimes found on cycle paths. The path seemed a bit narrow to accommodate cycling, but a sign advising people to slow down in advance of a sharp blind bend suggested the route was used to cycle into town. As I took the bend, I saw no cyclists. My attention was momentarily diverted into the field which suddenly appeared on the estate side of the path as the houses ran out. It looked at first glance like a normal agricultural field but there were two people standing in the middle having a chat among whatever was growing. They didn’t strike me as farmers and I wondered if the field was connected with the West Cambridge site nearby which is an amalgam of University linked science based institutions. Was the field was used for conventional agriculture or some sort of experimentation? Given the strangeness of the last year and the weird times we are living in, the second option felt like something that now would probably be regarded as more normal and run of the mill than perhaps it ought to be . Of course, they could have quietly been plotting to sell the land for housing, although being in the Quarter to Six Quadrant this would have been a bit optimistic on their part.

I only encountered one other person along the remaining section of the path. A jogger, who showed no sign of intending to deviate from a straight trajectory in the middle of the narrow path, presented an awkward social distancing challenge. I had to force myself into a hedge in order to try and move myself two metres away. While mildly irritating, the narrow path was never going to allow much leeway when meeting anybody coming the other way. I reflected that while not an ideal place to go for a run, anybody living 'local' who did not have access to the vast green spaces of the various University sports fields in the vicinity, had little choice but to make do with the limited space available in between them.

I emerged into Cranmere Road which I realised was out of the map square. But there had been no other route given that much of the land this side of Barton Road in square D4 was inaccessible University or College land. This road led to Grange Road where I headed back into D4. Grange Road was at the Eastern edge of the map square. Along it I passed a mixture of college and University buildings, mostly residential. Nothing immediately struck me and the lack of sideroads to explore and the beginning of aching legs indicated it was time to depart square D4. I decided to turn back and exit the grid square to the North where just beyond was the Cambridge University Rugby Union Club. I briefly stood outside to look at and pay homage to the Red Lion statue, which was unceremoniously half hidden behind a skip. After bidding farewell to the former Town Centre icon I walked home.