A mile east is St Ives, a charming old town made up of narrow winding streets lined with Georgian and Victorian architecture. The best way to approach it is across the six arched bridge of 1415, with its rare bridge chapel. A couple of Miles downstream, The Olde Ferry Boat has been serving drinks since – it claims – 560AD, making it a contender for England’s oldest inn.

Upstream from Huntingdon, St Neots is a collection of delightful streets clustered around one of England’s biggest market squares, where the Battle of St Neots was fought in 1648, one of the last clashes of the Civil War.

A few miles to the north are two noble villages associated with Henry VIII’s tragic Queen, Catherine of Aragon. Buckden, all ancient coaching inns and brick cottages, was the site of a vast palace to which Catherine was exiled in 1533. An impressive red-brick Great Tower of 1475 is the best of what remains. 

A year later Catherine was sent to Kimbolton Castle, six miles west, amid gorgeous parkland, where she died in 1536. Kimbolton has one of the loveliest high streets imaginable, with crooked Tudor cottages and shops tucked in between stately Georgian houses, and a fine church with a window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of Tiffany’s in New York.