People in Cambridge can now enjoy an extra 30 acres of wonderful countryside. An opening event took place on 26 May 2022 for two new expansions to Wandlebury Country Park, which is owned and cared for by local charity Cambridge Past, Present & Future.

One of the new areas is called The Gallops and was used for training racehorses when Wandlebury was a stables during the 1800s. It is a lovely meadow with a new viewing area which has a wonderful vista over Cambridge.

The other area is 25 acres which was previously farmland. Over winter, volunteers planted 2,000 trees and the remaining land is being cultivated to be sown with a meadow seed mix to create rare chalk grassland, which is a priority habitat for nature conservation. A new path has been created around this area so that visitors can enjoy the views and watch nature colonise the new habitat. This area doesn’t yet have a name and Cambridge Past, Present & Future is offering donors the opportunity to help name it.

Ros Aveling, Chair of the charity, is delighted to be expanding the park:

Thanks to generous supporters and the hard work of our team, this wonderful countryside is now open for the public to enjoy. What is also great, is that this project is helping to restore nature, absorb carbon and improve our environment, not just for us but for future generations. This is part of our collaborative effort to deliver the Cambridge Nature Network, which is a large-scale initiative to enable nature to recover in the Cambridge area.

Writer, Robert Macfarlane, helped to support the project and cut the ribbon at the opening

Wandlebury is a wonder: a place where the city comes to breathe. It’s thrilling to see it grow; two new areas of land opened for people and nature now and in the future.

The new land was purchased by the charity thanks to support from donors and supporters and the work to improve the habitats has been supported by grants for the Cambridge Nature Network from the government’s Green Recovery Fund and Natural England’s Nature Recovery Programme.

The new areas of land are shown on the diagram below: