🥾 Walking route
Houghton Mill and Houghton Meadows Walk, Houghton Mill
Cambridgeshire
- 📏 4.7 km · 2.9 mi
- ⛰ +28 m
- ⏱ 1 hr
- 🐕 On lead
Walk stats
- Distance4.7 km · 2.9 mi
- Elevation+28 m
- Duration1 hr
- DifficultyEasy
- Route typeCircular
- TerrainFlat meadow paths and riverside tracks
- Best seasonLate spring to early autumn
- DogsDog-friendly on leads through meadows and grazing land
About this walk
This gentle circular walk begins at Houghton Mill, a striking timber-built watermill on an island in the River Great Ouse, and heads out into the water meadows that surround the village. The route follows quiet paths beside the Old Mill Stream and Back Brook, with the broad, slow-moving Great Ouse never far away.
Beyond the mill, the walk crosses Houghton Meadows Nature Reserve, part of a designated SSSI known for its traditional floodplain grassland and summer wildflowers. Brown's Meadow adds another stretch of open pasture, while views across the river take in the low, watery landscape typical of this corner of Cambridgeshire.
The return leg passes close to a weathered stump cross and offers the option to detour towards Hemingford Grey Manor, one of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in the country. With only 28 metres of ascent across 4.7 kilometres, it is an easy hour's walking on level ground, ideal for a relaxed afternoon along the Ouse.
Route map
Route line drawn from OpenStreetMap footpath data. Numbered markers are waypoints on the route; amber star markers are points of interest a short detour away.
Waypoints along the route
4 waypoints along the way
- 1
Houghton Mill
- 2
Back Brook
- 3
River Great Ouse
- 4
Old Mill Stream
Worth a short detour
Points of interest just off the route, look for the amber markers on the map.
Hemingford Grey Manor
~238 m off the route
stump cross
~258 m off the route
Brown's Meadow
~250 m off the route
Houghton Meadows Nature Reserve
~347 m off the route
Houghton Meadows (SSSI)
~411 m off the route
Route & waypoint data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).