Cambridge Audio Tour: Bedders, Bargees and Booksellers

Explore Cambridge at your own pace

Cambridge is famous as a university town. This walk is about the other Cambridge - the carriers who delivered the post, the watermen who poled coal up from King's Lynn, the binders who stitched the books, the women who lit the staircases at dawn, the brewers who tied the inns, the masons who cut the stone, the printers who set the type, and the market traders who fed the lot. From the working wharves of Quayside, through the bookbinders' alleys and gown-makers' shopfronts of Trinity Street and King's Parade, into the chapel that was Corpus's parish before Corpus had a chapel, past the only galleried coaching-inn yard left in town, across the open market that has traded continuously for a thousand years, past the gates where Thomas Hobson the carrier kept forty horses, to the world's oldest publishing house and finally to the Mill Pond where the Bishop's and King's Mills ground Cambridge's grain - a couple of miles, a couple of hours, and most of a working town hiding inside a famous one.

Photo: Jean-Luc Benazet, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 14 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 2.7 km (1.7 miles)
• Stops: 15 landmarks, including Corpus Christi College, Old Court, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, The Mill, Mill Lane, Cambridge, Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
• Audio: up to 38 minutes of narration
• Starts at: Corpus Christi College, Old Court, Trumpington Street, Cambridge

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Where you will stop

• Corpus Christi College, Old Court, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
• The Mill, Mill Lane, Cambridge
• Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
• St Catharine's College Main Gate, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
• King's Parade, Cambridge
• Senate House Passage, Cambridge
• Trinity College Great Gate, Cambridge
• Heffers Bookshop, 20 Trinity Street, Cambridge
• Round Church, Bridge Street, Cambridge
• Magdalene Bridge, Cambridge
• The Pickerel Inn, 30 Magdalene Street, Cambridge
• All Saints Passage, Cambridge
• Market Square, Cambridge
• The Eagle, Cambridge
• St Bene't's Church, Bene't Street, Cambridge

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Adil Sattarov, Jean-Luc Benazet, Malgorzata Bujalska (Unsplash).