From: Cambridge.

Distance: 17 miles round trip.

Summary: Europe’s finest aviation museum on our doorstep.

The map on the left is interactive — you can zoom in, move it around, see a satellite view, etc.

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On a summer day in Cambridge, it is often possible to hear the buzz of vintage planes overhead. Most of these will have taken off at the airfield near Duxford, just to the south of Cambridge. Formerly an RAF fighter station and an important American airbase in the Second World War, Duxford is now home to the impressive air section of the Imperial War Museum, and it’s an interesting place to amble around on a sunny afternoon. The museum is a short cycle ride from Cambridge, but it’s not immediately obvious how best to get there. Here’s my recommended route…

Sometimes it is difficult to find a good cycle route just by the use of a map. The quickest path might involve horrendously busy and narrow roads, and it’s not always easy to spot turns when you’re on the ground. After a morning of trying out different options, I’ve put together a route from Cambridge rail station to Duxford (the purple track on the map), with a slightly different variant on the way back (marked in bright blue).

• Starting at the rail station (position A on the map), turn left onto Hills Road, and then immediately right into Brooklands Avenue. This road interconnects Hills Road and Trumpington Road; at the bottom turn left towards Trumpington itself.
• Continue straight on through the village of Trumpington, until the road branches just after you pass the Bidwells offices, and just before Waitrose (position B). Take the left-hand fork, signed towards “The Shelfords”.



• Continuing down this road for a couple of miles, you will eventually enter Great Shelford. One of the larger of Cambridge’s outlying villages, this was the childhood home of the late children’s author Philippa Pearce (author of Tom’s Midnight Garden) in the 1920s to ’40s. Many of her books were set in a semi-fictionalised version of Cambridgeshire, with Cambridge referred to as Castleford, and the River Cam changing its name to the River Say.
• Now if you only remember one direction in this route, take heed of this: at the village green, turn right (at position C). This is the trick to getting to Duxford along quiet roads, rather than getting lost in a maze of A-roads. So turn right when you see the large cross of the war memorial, so that you’re travelling past a pub called The Plough.



• You’re now travelling down Great Shelford’s High Street, which then bears right alongside the village church. Shortly after you pass over a small white bridge crossing the early stages of the river, the road veers sharply around to the left, with a turn-off to Little Shelford on your right. Follow the road round to the left, where it becomes known as Whittlesford Road (position D).



• Continue along Whittlesford Road for just over two miles. Now here things become a little non-intuitive. The Imperial War Museum isn’t in Duxford itself — it actually lies just outside. So you will come to a junction, just before a large orange house (position E), where the road bends round to the left, signposted towards Duxford and Ickleton. Do not take this road; instead turn right along Middlemoor Road towards Newton and Harston.



• Newton and Harston are also in the wrong direction, so about 100 metres later turn left onto the other section of Middlemoor Road, rather than following the road round to the right.



• Almost there now, and it’s much simpler from here! Continue along the road, which will change name from Middlemoor Road to Whippletree Road (’whippletree’ is the former name for the dogwood tree) and then to Hill Farm Road. The road’s surface suddenly improves, as you pass a site marked with the logos of the Cambridge Assessment examination board and Syngenta agricultural research.
• At the end of the road, turn right along the cycle path that runs beside the busy A505. A little way down you will come to the M11 roundabout. Dismount and walk carefully around this on the footpath — you’re aiming to go straight ahead, towards the large hangars of the air museum. The roundabout footpath continues along the right-hand side of the road, dipping down lower than the road itself.



• Continue down here, and it will lead you to a pedestrian crossing right opposite the main entrance to the museum (position F).



This is not the easiest route to describe, so do shout if it is unclear at any point.

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Duxford IWM really is worth visiting: there are major airshows there on a regular basis, and every day of the year except 24th-26th December you are able to take a look at planes that you would never normally see: including the vast B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ (with a wingspan in excess of 31 metres); the really rather nippy SR-71 Blackbird (with a speed of over 2,200 mph); as well as a prototype of Concorde.

When I was last there, my brother and sister-in-law had kindly given me the opportunity to travel on an original 1930s biplane over Cambridge, Ely and Newmarket — these can sometimes be booked on the day when in Duxford, and allow you to see a spectacular view of the Fens from on high.



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There is an alternative way to reach the museum, and I offer this here as a variant on the route back to Cambridge. This is the bright blue track on the map.

• Once you have followed the directions in reverse, turning left after Great Shelford village green (position C), the road begins to rise up to cross the railway. Just before this, on the right-hand side, is a blue cycling sign pointing towards Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Follow this sign into Granhams Road.
• You will cross over a level-crossing. Just after this is the start of a dedicated cycle path, marked with a giant double helix and colourful stripes on the ground. The building of this path marked a major milestone: 1000 miles of the National Cycle Network. There are 1000 coloured stripes over the first mile of the path, and these themselves also pay homage to Cambridge’s close connection with genetic research. The giant double helices pay tribute to Crick & Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA in Cambridge; and the coloured stripes spell out the bases of the BRCA2 gene, which was decoded by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, just outside the city, as part of important research into the causes of breast cancer.



• Follow the path first alongside the Cambridge–Liverpool Street railway line, and then across a number of fields, with Hobson’s Conduit on your left-hand side. From 1614 to 1849, Hobson’s Conduit brought water from the springs at Nine Wells, through these fields, along Trumpington Road to a water fountain in the marketplace in Cambridge, later moved to Lensfield Road.



• The prominent tower of the hospital will loom ever closer, and this cycle path leads you into the hospital site itself. Turn right at the end, and follow the hospital ring road around to the roundabout with Hills Road. Turn left towards Cambridge, and this road will lead you back towards the town centre and the station.

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If you try this route out, do let me know how you get on!