THE LEGENDARY GIANTS OF CAMBRIDGE
The Gog Magogs, Cambridge
It’s funny to think of a heap of land that summons just 75 metres to its cause as a ‘hill’. But all things are proportional, and when all that surrounds you is contourless arable land for miles in all directions, then you can definitely say ‘this is a hill’. Such is the case with the Gog Magog Hills, just south of Cambridge. These gentle chalky uplands have just enough elevation to look down on everything around them – including the spires and turrets of Cambridge University, whose scholars have found contemplative escape up in the Gogs for centuries. A latter-day Cambridge luminary, author Robert Macfarlane, loves the Gogs dearly and has written about them in two of his books. “The old joke goes that Cambridgeshire is a county so flat you could fax it,” he once told Country Walking. “So when you find a landscape rising out of the flatness, it feels like an Alp.” Up here he has spotted grey partridge, sparrowhawk, goldfinch and peregrine; scabious, cowslips and orchids. And what of that name? Legends of Gog and Magog recur the world over; but here it’s that of a single giant – Gogmagog – who lay down after being spurned by the water-nymph Granta. Around him grew the hills that bear his name. Legend, wildlife and big views: in our book, the Gogs aren’t just hills; they’re mountains.