Hi, I'll be passing through Cambridge on my way to York. I want to spend a couple of hours there. Is the park and ride lot the best idea? I'll be there on June 2.

We have been to Cambridge but once and parked in a multi-level garage near the market square. Convenient and quite easy to find.

There seem to be 5 Park and Ride lots and one must be convenient to your route.

How much did it cost, do you remember?

Sorry, aggiegirl, can't remember. You can check the Cambridge website at:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambarea/

It can get quite expensive depending upon the car park and the duration. The Park and Ride is 1.80 GBP for roundtrip which sounds pretty good.

on your way to york from where? if you're coming from london up the M11, the best one is probably trumpington park and ride. i can't remember the junction number that you need now, but i think there should be signs on the motorway for something like "trumpington / cambridge south", and very probably signs to the park and ride. and don't worry if you miss the junction because if you carry on you get to the junction for madingley park and ride which is also absolutely fine.

i can't remember how much it costs i'm afraid, but it's v.convenient - the bus takes you straight into the city centre. i think they go to the main bus stops on drummer st / emmanuel st (just telling you in case you have a map and you want to know!). cambridge is a small city (well, the central bit certainly is) and everything's walkable. on your way back you'll have no trouble finding the buses - they have "PARK AND RIDE" (and which one!) marked on them very clearly.

i personally wouldn't recommend driving into cambridge city centre at all, ever! . i lived there for 4 years and i still wouldn't trust myself to give proper directions to someone, because there are SO many one way streets, barriers that are only raised at certain times of day, streets that only buses and taxis can go down, semi-pedestrianised areas, etc etc. you get the idea. plus there are mad people on bikes.... and the parking is expensive.

just one last thing - i'm not trying to put you off from going (far from it, it's a great city and i wish i was still there!) but just so you know, June 2nd is still very much in the middle of the university exam period. timetables change slightly every year but last year i'm SURE there were still exams going on on June 2nd, because I had one!! and i think they carry on for a week (ish) after that. what that means is that a lot (all, possibly) of the colleges are very reluctant to let visitors in (or just don't let them in at all) in case it disturbs the students' revision. it may seem OTT but believe me, it really does make a difference. you can still get a really good feel of it all just by walking round the town though...

Thanks!

Do use the Trumpington Park and Ride. As the other posters have said it's cheap and convenient. It only takes about 10 minutes to get to the city centre.