St. Ives and The Hemingfords Walk

Today we had a lovely circular walk starting from St. Ives...

...taking in some of the annual Hemingfords' Regatta.

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Saturday July 8th  Nick and I are going to St Ives, Cambs  to walk one of our favourite circular walks. We will park/meet for free at 10am at Meadow Lane, Park n Ride, St Ives PE27 4LG. There are toilets here. We will make our way , through the town centre, to Houghton Mill for a coffee stop at The National Trust café. After wandering through Hemingford Abbotts we will find the local Regatta and stop for lunch here. There will be some food stations but bring a picnic if you wish. Then after watching some races we will walk the final stretch to our cars. The route is about 8 miles and it’s very picturesque. We are aiming to be back at our cars by 3.30pm/4pm"

This was our route.

It is very similar to the walk we did on the day of the regatta in 2019 (see here). Here are some of my photos from today.

Going into St. Ives.

We walked through the town centre past Oliver Cromwell's statue.

At The Waits we admired the herb garden.

Nick pointed out the rabbits on the Parish  Church door to the rest of us.

Holt Island was open but we didn't visit it today.

Our path took us alongside the river for a stretch. Here we saw a rower.

Some great mushrooms.

We passed Hattie Windsor, a member of the original Hemingford Abbots WI Scarecrow Calendar Girls Team.

Houghton village is very pretty

We had had a light shower, but it wasn't heavy enough to reach for the waterproofs.

We liked the family of ducks topping this thatched cottage.

Our drinks stop was at Houghton Mill.

You can hire boats here.

We crossed part of the river at the lock....

...where we watched a boat pass through.

After traversing Hemingford Abbots Meadow  we crossed the rest of the river by the Black Bridge.

We walked through the delightful village of Hemingford Abbots.

Returning to the river we came to the Hemingfords Regatta.

The beer tent was also serving Pimms, much to Dawn and William's delight.

This was our lunch stop.

After the morning races finished at about 1pm, we carried on so as to get back before the threatened thundery showers could catch us. On the way, at Waterways house, Joyce and William found some peacock feathers.

We walked through Hemingfors Grey Meadow along the edge of the river.

We got a view of St. Ives bridge from quite a distance.

A great crested grebe.

We crossed the bridge....

...and passed the Cromwell Inn.

Back in the town centre we parted ways here....

...with some returning to the Park & Ride via the antiques centre. All done before the rains came. A great day out. Thank-you Joyce for leading us round and to the rest for their company too. 

You can see more details of our 7 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Other related walks on my blog include:

• St Ives and Hemingfords Walk (Jul 2019)
• St Ives Walk  (Jun 2021)
• St Ives Houghton and Hemingfords Walk (Aug 2021)