Small Village West of Cambridge?

Are you driving or traveling by train?

the more authentic the better!

by that, what do you want to see?

and how far west do you want to be? As far west as the American Cemetery and Memorial?

Would the fact that Grantchester has been made the subject of a TV show make it too inauthentic?

Have you considered Madingley?

Are you using buses, busways and trains? Or driving?

Why west? If you had considered east, you might have looked at somewhere like Stow cum Quay...

can you help me help you?

We're traveling by car from the Cotswald area headed to Cambridge.

We're interested in staying in a small village as a stopover ( versus as a destination ).

Prefer to stay west of the city for ease of travel.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Still very little information to go on here. I still don't know what makes a village "authentic" or not.

For the day in Cambridge are you going to insist on driving into the city, or do the sensible thing and use park and ride.

Although it is more a small town than a village you could stay in St Ives (Cambridgeshire, not the better known one in Cornwall), and use the guided busway into the city. A rare bridge chapel there, and an early planned town so a spacious and attractive market town for instance.

It is a medieval market town, so pretty "authentic"

Thanks for this info.

Said differently - we're looking for a town or village not overrun with tourists.

Any experience with Bedford? We'll be in town for an evening (dinner/pub ) & relaxed breakfast & walking around before heading into Cambridge.

Thanks so much!

I'm trying to get my head around your route.

You've said to Stuart that you are coming from the Cotswolds to Cambridge by car. I've never done that in one shot because I live in Northamptonshire, but I frequently go one way or the other. Family and I grew up in the Cotswolds, the north Cotswolds, where most people exploring the area go, and we have a number of reasons for our regular trips to Cambridge, several times a month.

So I'm pretty familiar with the driving routes in and out of them.

Probably the fastest and easiest driving is by the fast A46 from Stratford upon Avon bypassing the lovely Warwick and Coventry to the A46 around the east of Coventry up to the M6 to it's end at the A14 and the A14 straight into Cambridge.

But then you ask about Blenheim and Woodstock. That's quite a long way from the Cotswolds and I wouldn't consider it that - much more a suburb of Oxford really.

So if you want a route from there to Cambridge I think the fastest would likely be A34 (beware all the road works between Woodstock and the A34) to the M40 junction 9 northbound one junction to junction 10 onto the A43 towards Towcester and Northampton, circling round Brackley where the Formula 1 Mercedes team is based, bypassing the famous town of Towcester (pronounced like the kitchen appliance that makes your toast) up to the M1. One very short bit of the M1 just one junction from 15A to junction 15 onto the A45 until it links up with the A14 at Thrapston then east on the A14 to Cambridge.

But you have asked about Bedford. That puts a different spin on things, and probably means that you will take a very cross country route on many A roads but narrow single carriageway A roads which are quite winding but which link the county towns of several counties, and in the country towns the route goes through the centre of those so gets busy and slow. If I were plotting a route like that (I wouldn't because I prefer to keep moving and I dislike stop and start) I would probably head for the A34 as before but straight over the M40 where it changes to the A41 for Bicester (pronounced like bister - blister without the "l"), and then either through or loop around Bicester, following signs for Buckingham (county town of Buckinghamshire) on the A4421 until it T's into the A421. Turn right and go through Buckingham and towards Bletchley (home of Bletchley Park, home of the codebreakers) and Milton Keynes (where the Formula 1 Red Bull team is based, and a new City) still following the A421 (also known as Standing Way) through Milton Keynes which is the land of roundabouts with 60 or 70 mph between them for a few hundred yards, hope you like roundabouts towards the M1 southbound. The A421 parallels the M1, when there an opportunity to follow the A421 over the M1 follow it towards Bedford. Be careful around that junction turning left over the M1 because most of the traffic goes onto the M1 at that junction. It is somewhat complicated so read the signs carefully. Bedford is the country town of Bedfordshire. It has the river and a fairly large Italian population, many of whom used to work nearby at the Stewartby London Brick Works (now demolished) and many Ukrainian refugees. A small village it is not at all like. Then the A428 into Cambridge.

I want to commend Nigel and encourage others in the England forums to follow his lead when it comes to providing pronunciation hints for anything with a proper noun name.

I wish that Antiques Roadshow would similarly add subtitles to their intros and outros for those of us abroad who would like to follow along.

all of the places mentioned above have few tourists, other than locals from nearby towns, except for Oxford and Cambridge.

On a nice day the riverside area of Bedford gets very busy.

thanks avirosemail, I think it important to give folks a leg up on impenetrable pronunciations. This country is full to the Plimsoll line with them. Somebody else can do the Principality of Wales.

reading between the lines, are you trying to visit Cambridge without being in Cambridge overnight?

Thank you Nigel for providing such a detailed response. I would like to add that driving is not for the faint of heart in England and while the distance may seem short (by American standards) it will take the better part of the day. Bedford looks like it would be an ideal place to stay on the map, but I would not choose it as a possible overnight stay. (In all honestly, it has been a long time since I have been through Bedford but It's not usually a place I think of tourists visiting especially from overseas). You will have lots of small village experiences around the Cotswolds, so why not just stay in Cambridge?

I've just been looking these routes up in the road atlas as I'm not really familiar with cross country routes in that area.

You asked originally for a village, The population of Bedford in 2011 was 107,000. That is larger than Carlisle, the largest city in my own county of Cumberland.

St Ives, from what Nigel implies, is much better roads, and is certainly closer to Cambridge on a fast road. And has a population of 16,000. I purposely identified it as NOT being the St Ives everyone knows of as a tourist mecca.

If you want pronunciations here are 3 from Cumbria- Keswick I very often get asked for directions to Kes-wick, and cringe. The w is actually very soft and it is far more like Kes-sick. Some folk miss out the w entirely, some leave it in but very soft, and some as kezz-ick. I'll take any of the last 3, but Kes-wick marks you out as a tourist.

Out west there is a village called Torpenhow- but it is pronounced as Trepenna. Because Tor, Pen and How all basically mean hill in different languages (as a local I disagree with the tortuous reasoning on Wikipedia) so Tre-penna essentially means 3 hills.

Nearby is a town called Aspatria, but locally it is called Spatri. There was an old joke in the days of 3 class steam trains at the then junction station that the porter would go down the platform- at first class saying Aspatria, change here, second class Speatri change 'ere, and third class Spatri, git oot [get out]. Whether true or not is unclear, but it does reflect local useage and variation in pronunciation, and the Viking derivation of the name.

And the one we see most often here on the forum- Edinburg [Texas] for Edinburgh [Scotland]- no, no, no.

That Aspatria seems to parallel the southern Italian situation with Puglia/Apulia --
I wonder if there's an underlying trend. Must look for more data points. ha.

By the way I was just reading in a local facebook feed about the shop Myers of Keswick in New York City.

It is apparently a mecca for UK ex-pat food (at a price), and is so called because the founder had indeed moved from Keswick, Cumbria, England.

The Cumberland sausage which is sold there is the real deal- it is the same recipe as the founder sold in his butcher's shop in England. After he moved the butchers was sold to another family, and the sausage is still made, used for breakfasts in a number of the town's bed and breakfasts and cafes, and also sold in the Kingfisher fish and chip shop in Keswick.

since we are looking for a village west of Cambridge, New York City is certainly west, but perhaps too far and too big.

hcj444, andything further?

thanks to all ! This is very helpful.

The good news is our plans have flexibility so these ideas & tips will be incorporated into our plans.

Our trip starts with 3 days in Bath to start the week - then we have 2 days to fill before needing to be back in London beginning Thursday.

** Appreciate the insight on driving in England - we come from an area in the US with big highways, fast speeds & big vehicles!

Will review all notes in depth this afternoon.

HCJ444

I had a veggie Cumberland sausage at a B&B in Brighton that was so tasty it sticks in my memory years later --
this B&B was trying to be welcoming to visitors who didn't eat pigs or cows for religious reasons, and it occurred to me that they could have claimed whatever they wanted about how real Cumberland sausage tastes because these visitors wouldn't have known one way or the other, innit?

@ avirosemail- if the sausage was that good it sounds like you had the real deal. It should have a high meat content (in original form), ideally be cut from a giant spiral (although I will forgive it in links) and be subtly but cleverly spiced with the huge range of spices from the Caribbean which were imported into Whitehaven in huge quantity in the port's heyday.
Every butcher's secret recipe is in the spice blend which they use.
Those in the know can tell their Haigh's from their Woodall's or their Higginson's- to name but three of the better known butchers in the County.
I am actually impressed that somewhere that far south took the trouble not only to do a regional sausage, but in veggie version.

Whitehaven is best known as a coal port, but originally was a port for the tobacco and timber trade from Virginia, then the trade in all things exotic from the Caribbean (including rum, distilled here for over 200 years), and even steel exports to almost any country you can think of. Whitehaven built ships can still be found as far afield as Stockholm and the Falkland Islands. And the record time for a UK to Seattle sailing (with steel rails) via the bottom of South America was set by a ship from the neighbouring port of Workington.
There is a tall ship currently based in Whitehaven (admittedly a fairly modern one) as a reminder of those glory days.
Whitehaven's last cargo ships were phosphate rock from Africa for the soap powder works in town- now closed.

All of which is a long, long way from Cambridge, sorry OP.

My thanks to all who've replied.

Based on this & other input we've changed our plans. Cambridge is out, replaced with focusing our energies & time in the Cotswolds. ( think the geo encompassing Bath to Oxford & upto Chipping Campden.).

The local perspective helps (anyone need help navigating Texas let me know! ) & is appreciated.

In a tip of the hat to recent posters - it's interesting to see how the sausage is made when building an itinerary ;-)

HCJ444

Good choice to change itinerary. Catch Cambridge next trip!

Glad to see you're changing your itinerary.

May I suggest two places from a sentence Nigel wrote....
"Probably the fastest and easiest driving is by the fast A46 from Stratford upon Avon bypassing the lovely Warwick...."

We love Stratford-Upon-Avon. Good Shakespeare sights, good walk around town by the river, excellent restaurants in town. There are a couple of bike rental places in town. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is there in case you wish to catch a performance.

Will be glad to provide hotel and restaurant suggestions if you want them.

Nearby Warwick--barely a stone's throw away--has a medieval castle and plenty of medieval buildings to see.

Please do not remove your thread, as others reading this forum may find all the information on it useful.

Even though you will not be using the information from Nigel, isn31c and others on this trip, someone else may come along who needs it.

I didn't see isn31c 's comment until just now and want to extend my belated thanks and a firm 🤝 for your valuable input.
Some time back we had a great and lengthy discussion of sausages here on the Forum and your earlier note would be a fine addition to same.