Fulbourn Tesco

This article was published in 2000, in Newsletter 33.

Map of proposed route


Image as described adjacent
The Cherry Hinton end of the new path is expected to emerge in place of these trees, which have grown to near maturity in the time it has taken to get to this stage, close to the level crossing on Yarrow Road

It has been a long time coming: the news that Tesco and the County Council have agreed funding for a link between Fulbourn and Tesco alongside the railway just missed our deadline for the last newsletter. This link can replace the railway crossing and the need to use the unsurfaced Fulbourn Old Drift. This should have happened three years ago, but there was a dispute about what had been agreed at the time the store was built, that has taken the lawyers until now to sort out.

Though the link will be useful, in many ways it has lost its window of opportunity. During the delay

  • a cycle track has been built alongside the parallel Fulbourn Road,
  • the hospital has all but closed and patient profile is quite different (which means the main objective, to make it harder for disturbed patients to get onto the railway line, is now much less needed)
  • the Old Drift has been given a much better quality surface

However, access from Cherry Hinton and the city to a new business park being constructed in the hospital grounds will be greatly improved. It will also cut a fair amount off the journey to Tesco for Fulbourn residents. It will pass between Tesco car park and the railway to join Yarrow Road by the existing level crossing.

Construction will not be easy though – there is a steep bank alongside the railway where the path has to go, there are possibly some unmarked graves in the hospital grounds and, during the delay, trees have matured in the corridor reserved for the path. It will also have become more expensive, when even the earlier estimates doubted that a tarmac surface could be provided.

David Earl