Holiday Cottages In Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire has around 100 self-catering cottages on selfcatering.co.uk, spread across the wide, flat Fenland north of Cambridge and the villages around it. This is big-sky country of straight drains and droves, with the university city and Ely's cathedral as the great draws, and more than 60 of these cottages take dogs while over 30 have a hot tub.

Best areas and towns in Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire's cottages are thinly and widely spread, most of them out in the Fens, the drained, dead-level farmland that fills the north of the county. The famous draws are the university city of Cambridge in the south and the cathedral city of Ely on its low island, but the cottages themselves sit mostly in the Fen towns and villages around them.

In the Fens and the Isle of Ely:

• Ely: a small cathedral city on a rise above the Fens, its great church visible for miles across the flat land
• Littleport: a Fenland town on the Great Ouse just north of Ely
• the market town of Wisbech, a Georgian inland port in the far north, with the Fen villages of Tydd St Giles, Guyhirn and Christchurch nearby
• Wicken, beside one of the oldest nature reserves in the country, with Lode and Fordham on the southern edge of the Fens

West and south of the city:

• the small town of Kimbolton in old Huntingdonshire, with its castle and handsome high street
• the villages of Bourn and Wansford, the latter straddling the River Nene near Peterborough

The city of Cambridge itself has few self-catering cottages within it, so most visitors base in the surrounding villages and drive or take the train in.

Cambridgeshire countryside and the Fens

Cambridgeshire is flat almost everywhere, and that flatness is the point. Most of the county is Fenland, a vast plain of black peat and rich silt reclaimed from marsh and mere over centuries, criss-crossed by dead-straight drainage channels and grazed droves under enormous skies. A few fragments of the old undrained fen survive as nature reserves, the best known being Wicken Fen, one of the oldest reserves in Britain and a haven for dragonflies, marsh birds and rare plants. Near Cambridge, the gardens at Anglesey Abbey and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden show the gentler, planted side of the county, while Milton Country Park offers lakes and easy trails on the city's edge. There are no hills to speak of, but the walking and cycling are flat and easy, the waterways invite a boat, and the light over the Fens is like nowhere else in England.

Things to do in Cambridgeshire

Cambridge is the obvious day out, with the Fitzwilliam Museum and its galleries of art and antiquities, the colleges along the Backs, and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden a short walk from the centre. North of the city, Ely Cathedral rises over the Fens as the Ship of the Fens, one of the finest medieval churches in the country. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford is among the great aviation collections of the world, with historic aircraft and air shows through the year. For grand houses and gardens there is Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge and the Wimpole Estate, a sweeping National Trust hall and farm in the south of the county. Families head for Hamerton Zoo Park near Huntingdon, while Peterborough Cathedral and the lakes of Ferry Meadows at Nene Park anchor a day in the north.

When to visit Cambridgeshire

Late spring and summer are the easiest months here, when the gardens at Anglesey Abbey and the Botanic Garden are at their best and the Fen paths and waterways are dry and inviting. Cambridge is busy with visitors year round, but the colleges and the river are loveliest in early summer before the peak holiday crowds. Autumn brings colour to the parkland and migrating birds to Wicken Fen and the washes, and the big Fenland skies are at their most dramatic. Winter is quiet and atmospheric, good for cathedral cities and museums, with Ely and Peterborough at their most peaceful out of season.

Dog-friendly and hot-tub cottages in Cambridgeshire

More than 60 of the cottages in Cambridgeshire take dogs, and more than 30 have a hot tub. Browse the dog-friendly cottages or those with a hot tub to narrow your search.

Getting to Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire sits in the East of England, well connected by both road and rail. The M11 runs up from London to Cambridge, the A1 crosses the west of the county past Peterborough, and the A14 links the two across the middle. Trains are quick: Cambridge is under an hour from London King's Cross and Liverpool Street, and Peterborough sits on the East Coast Main Line, with Ely a junction for lines across the Fens. The nearest large airport is Stansted, around forty minutes south of Cambridge, with Luton also within easy reach.

Useful links

• Visit Cambridge
• Cambridgeshire County Council
• Visit Peterborough

Cambridgeshire is a county in the East of England, part of the historic region of East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk and Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. Predominantly rural and very low-lying, it is one of the flattest counties in the country, and much of it lies barely above sea level.

The defining landscape is the Fens, a vast expanse of drained marsh and former mere that covers the north of the county. Over centuries this peat and silt land was reclaimed by a network of dykes, drains and pumping engines, creating some of the richest arable soil in Britain, worked under famously wide skies. The cathedral city of Ely stands on a low island of higher ground in the middle of the Fens, while the market town of Wisbech serves the silt fens of the far north. To the south the land rises a little into gentle chalk and clay country around Cambridge, the historic university city on the River Cam that gives the county its name. Peterborough, with its own great cathedral, lies in the north-west, and the old county of Huntingdonshire makes up the west.

The county has a long and notable history. Roman roads and the great drainage works of the seventeenth century shaped the Fens, while Cambridge grew from a medieval market town into one of the world's leading universities. Ely Cathedral, the Ship of the Fens, has dominated the eastern skyline since Norman times. Today farming, science and tourism define a county of quiet villages, ancient churches and unmistakable open horizons.