Start: Sainsbury's supermarket, Eddington, CB3 1SE

• With Sainsbury's behind you, cross Eddington Ave. at the bus stop. You will see the architecture award winning Storey's Field Centre on your left. Your route is up Storey’s Way, towards the trees on Madingley Rise.

Who was Edward Storey? He owned what was possibly the first bookstore in Cambridge and died in 1692.  The Edward Story Foundation history.

Continuing along Storey’s Way, you will see a couple of large fields on your left. 

Look out for muntjac and red foxes mornings and evenings. The fields are known as Traveller's Rest Pit, an "SSSI", or Site of Special Scientific Interest. For hundreds of years, people quarried the ice age gravel deposits in the area. Archaeologists discovered that 450,000 years ago this was an important site where people lived in round houses and farmed.

The site also has the most extensive collection of stone tools in Cambridgeshire.

A Roman settlement in this area, including a very large Roman villa recently excavated next to what is now Park and Ride, was discovered. Interesting and beautiful items found are in the museum at Girton College. 

With old Gravel Hill Farm on your right turn left at the junction and follow the tree lined path to Huntingdon Road.

Turn left to follow the road until you reach the entrance for Ascension Parish Burial Grounds.

Enter the wonderful burial ground. Here, you may find a letter-cutter's workshop and “many graves of University of Cambridge academics and non-conformists”. The grounds are also a thriving wildlife habitat.

The burial ground contains 3 Nobel Prize winners, seven Members of the Order of Merit, eight college masters, fifteen knights of the realm and thirty nine people with entries in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Retrace your steps back to Huntingdon Road, turn right and right again onto Storey’s Way. until you reach a junction. Take the right fork with the White house in front of you and continue until you see a path on the left just before the wooden traffic restrictors.

• Turn right at the end of the path, following the wooden slatted fence on your right. In spring, note the wildflower garden behind the gate.

• At the end, choose the leftmost path at the intersection, where you see the sign for Astronomy. Note the very large, grand beech tree on your left.

• Just after this tree-lined path turns right, you will see (and smell!) an enormous, stately old redwood tree. This was brought from northern California in the 1850s, at the same time as those found in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens. If you walk around it to see it from the lawn, you will find a charming bench with the word "Listen" carved into its seat. The lawn is a good place for a picnic or playing ball with children. 

• On your right is the Astronomy building, with its entrance framed by two palm trees. Passing in front of the Astronomy building, you will see a path ahead with signs describing various planets. Walk along the narrow path to see a variety of telescopes, some of which are sometimes open to the public for star-gazing.

• Follow the winding path alongside the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, go over the first road to reach Madingley Rise Road.

• On your left you see the Department of Earth Sciences Bullard Laboratories in the BP Institute. This is just before the gate to Gravel Hill Farm (also owned by the University). 

• The Lebanon cedars are fragrant, and there is almost always a chorus of birdsong here. The grounds are lovely and well worth walking through, but you should return the way you came in.

To end your adventure:

• Go back to Madingley Rise and turn sharp left (Blue and white signpost to Dept of Earth Sciences).

• Continue along Madingley Rise and visit the enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex skull by peeking in the window of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences Collection Store. This was built in 2019 to house extensive geological treasures, including the Harker, Dawson, and Svalbard collections.

• To exit, take the pretty path on your left through the trees, avoiding the abandoned lab on your right.

• Follow the path, turning left along the rosemary bushes and old house to reach the road by Gravel Hill Farm. Turn right here, then left onto Storey’s Way and back to Eddington.