The map below shows our venues for Watersprite 2012. Please see the events schedule for more details of what is happening where.

The venue for our opening night will be the Cambridge Guildhall, right on Cambridge’s market square. The address is The Guildhall, Market Square, Cambridge, CB2 3QJ.

Our central venue for Watersprite 2012 will once again be Emmanuel College, St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge, CB2 3AP. The college is a wonderful mix of old and new and will give visitors an insight into the history and tradition associated with Cambridge, while offering a modern, fully-equipped auditorium.

Our 2012 Watersprite Awards Ceremony will be held in Queens’ College, a beautiful, traditional college on the banks of the River Cam, and home to the famous Mathematical Bridge.

Our closing event will take place at Cripp’s Court, part of Magdalene College to the north of the town centre. Cripp’s Court is located on Chesterton Road, 1-3 Chesterton Road, Cambridge, CB4 3AD.

View Watersprite 2012 in a larger map

Cambridge is centrally located and within easy reach of London, the Midlands and the North, by direct motorway and trunk routes. There are comprehensive rail services to and from London, the Midlands and the North; direct coach services link Cambridge with London, Birmingham, the West Country, Oxford and London’s Airports.

By road

The RAC website offers up-to-date traffic information and a route-planner. The AA website provides similar information. From London and its airports, the London Orbital (M25) links with the M11 Motorway, the direct route to Cambridge. From the Midlands or the North, the A1 trunk road and the new A14 cross country route provide direct links with Cambridge. From other areas there are easy motorway and trunk road links to these direct routes.

By air

London Stansted (STN) is the nearest airport, less than an hour’s drive from Cambridge. It is well served by several European low-cost airlines (Ryanair, easyJet, Air Berlin, etc.). From there you can get to Cambridge directly by hourly National Express coach or direct rail connections. Other nearby airports are + London Luton (LTN, 1 hour away), + London City (LCY, 1.5 hours), + London Heathrow (LHR, 2 hours), + London Gatwick (LGW, 3 hours). Good roads and regular coach services link Cambridge with all these airports.

By train

First Capital Connect Railways provide frequent direct services from London King’s Cross to Cambridge (50 min duration, every 30 min). National Express East Anglia runs a slower but cheaper service from London Liverpool Street station. Other companies provide regular services from Birmingham, The Midlands, East Anglia and the North West. Connections from Scotland and the North East are available with a change of train at Peterborough. Timetable information is available at the National Rail website. Visitors from Paris or Brussels can use the high-speed Eurostar service directly to London.

Parking

Parking is expensive in Cambridge, so we would always suggest public transport in the first instance. However, some hotels have their own car parks, and there are details of the pay car parks here.

We’ve tried to source information on accommodation in different budget brackets here, but it’s not an exhaustive list: availability and prices will change regularly. Disclaimer over, here goes:

General info

All of our events take place within about 1/2 a mile radius of the town centre, so obviously the nearer you can get to that the better, although that increases the overnight costs. Look at the ‘Transport in Cambridge’ tab to see what the options are and how far away from the centre you’re happy to stay.

Budget – £0

Couchsurfing.com - one of the first sites, and currently the largest, for lovely people who are happy to open their homes up to visitors. Have a look at the site, search for those offering a couch to surf on in Cambridge and if you’re happy with the whole process (it’s not for everyone) get in touch! We did try to get together a pool of people but unfortunately the site admins wouldn’t let us send a message to the Cambridge group inviting them to the festival. So grrr to them. But yay to the site in general.

There are a growing number of alternatives to Couchsurfing.com but they generally have a greater presence in larger cities. Here’s a link with some information on some of these alternatives. Even if it’s not useful for visiting Cambridge, it might be useful if you’re filming on location on a budget!

Budget – £1-50

Cherry Hinton Caravan & Camp Site - if you’re bringing a caravan (?) then this is the option for you! But also if you fancy camping. In February? Really? Fair enough. Not the option for everyone, but for the intrepid, fur-lined or simply drunk this might work for you.

Camp In My Garden - a kind of hybrid of couchsurfing.com and a camping site, this is only just starting to take off so there’s not a load of options in Cambridge yet, but we’ve put it here in case that changes!

www.hostelbookers.com will show you any, well, hostels. We can’t vouch for any of them unfortunately, but if you have questions about distances, locations etc please get in touch and we’ll try to help.

Some B&Bs (bed and breakfasts for those unfamiliar with the term)  fall within this bracket, although they tend to be a bit further away from town. If you’re planning to stay in a B&B, it’s always worth checking whether the owners have strict hours – some of them aren’t accessible 24 hours a day like hotels so if you’re planning on partying the night away, keep an eye out.

The best places to find B&Bs are still the aggregator websites like booking.com and laterooms.com. There is more specific, and more regularly updated, information about Cambridge accommodation at this Visit Cambridge web page.

Budget – £50-100

Here you are looking at B&Bs and budget hotels. Again, the best sites are booking.com, laterooms.com and Visit Cambridge.

Budget – £100+

At this budget you should be able to get a mid-top range hotel, using the links above. As you near £150-200 you are looking at the top end hotels in Cambridge, including our lovely accommodation partner, The Hilton Doubletree.

Cambridge is a fairly small city, and all of our events take place within around a 1/2 mile of the city centre. These distances are all walkable and it will take longer in a car/taxi/bus than strolling. For getting around the rest of the city you have these options:

Hiring a bike – Cambridge is renowned for being swamped with bikes which means there are lots of cycle hire places (details here). It’s small enough that you can cycle to most places fairly easily and quickly so if you’re happy on two wheels, this is the option for you.

The bus network is not vast, but there is a reasonable amount of coverage and you can check travel options from your potential accommodation to the centre here (use CB2 3AP as the destination postcode for Emmanuel College, the location for all the daytime events).  To get from the train station to the town centre take the Citi 1, 3, 7 or 8, or the Busway A or B. A day ticket for the buses costs around £3.50.

Cars – Cambridge city centre isn’t really made for cars as it’s largely one way systems or pedestrianised. Parking is also pretty expensive (c. £24 per day) so if you do drive up and your accommodation doesn’t have a parking space, another option would be to park at one of the many Park & Ride stations on the outskirts of the city and get the bus in. Buses stop running at 8pm so this isn’t an option for an evening visit.

Otherwise you can try to find parking away from the city centre but as Cambridge is a pretty crowded city, much of the parking is residents or permit holders only, or metered with a maximum stay.

Taxis – there are a few taxi companies in Cambridge (full details here) and taxis are generally readily available either at cab ranks or by phone. It’s difficult to estimate exact costs, but a ride from the station to the town centre will be around £6-10 depending on the time of day and traffic.

The colleges – there are 31 colleges in the University, and many of them are central and accessible for a small fee. If you know somebody from the uni they can get you around them free with their university card. There’s a whole heap of history piled into a very small space in the town centre, and it’s well worth a look.

Fitzwilliam Museum – a great museum, housing both art and antiquities, about 5 mins walk from the town centre.

Cambridge University Botanic Gardens – if the weather is nice, these are a pretty and peaceful way to spend a couple of hours. Around a 15 minute walk from the town centre.

Grantchester Meadows – again, slightly weather dependent but the meadows are about as English as you can get. There’s an orchard where people like Rupert Brook, Virginia Woolf, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes used to meet. Now you can get a cream tea (a scone with jam and clotted cream, with a cup of tea) and look out onto the orchard garden (you can sit in it if you don’t mind February weather). You can leave the orchard via cow-filled meadows that slope down to the River Cam, have a stroll along a way and then make your way back up the meadow paths to a local pub. There’s a few nearby, and Grantchester itself is a very pretty little English village.

Punting – these are boats that glide up and down the River Cam with a chauffeur on the back guiding the boat with a large pole and filling you in on the history and legends of Cambridge. Or, they’re the boats that bump up and down the river, with people falling off the back and into the river, or getting stuck in a corner. That’s how you tell the difference between the chauffeured ones and the self-hire. In winter the punting companies provide blankets so if you wrap up warm it should be fun rather than freezing!