Cambridge from London: The Day Trip, Priced and Timed

In this guide

An Off-Peak return from King’s Cross to Cambridge is £32.40, and the fast train does it in 49 minutes. That is closer than most people think, and it is the reason Cambridge works as a day trip in a way that needs no planning beyond one decision: which college you are paying to go into.

Contactless does not work. That trips people up at the gate, and it also costs them the 2FOR1 discount, which needs a paper or e-ticket from National Rail.

💡 The Short Version: King’s Cross, 49 minutes, Off-Peak return £32.40, Advance singles from £15.20. Liverpool Street is cheaper at £27.50 but takes 1h25. Oyster and contactless are not valid. King’s College £16.75 booked early, St John’s £17 but summer only, Queens’ £5, and Trinity does not admit the public to its courts — £10 for a Porter-led tour. The Fitzwilliam Museum is free, the Botanic Garden £7.74 in advance, the Round Church £3.50. Punting is £28.50 an hour for a whole self-hire punt, or from £41 chauffeured. Never buy punting from someone on King’s Parade — touting is a criminal offence in Cambridge and those sellers are unlicensed. Last direct train back 23:51.

Not one of those includes King’s College at the price on the card. Day tours that include Cambridge, compared is further down, with what each one actually buys you.

King’s College Chapel, the £16.75 ticket that most visitors buy. Photo: The IOP, Pexels.

Getting there

The train, and the 49-minute one

Two London termini serve Cambridge and they are not equivalent.

The 49-minute service is the one to aim for, and it runs roughly hourly alongside the slow one. Out of King’s Cross the 09:35 and the 09:24 leave eleven minutes apart and arrive 52 minutes apart.

⚠️ The cheap return is not valid on the earliest fast trains. On the Tuesday we checked, the 09:24 fast departure was quoted at £48.10 return while the 10:54 — the same journey, an hour and a half later — was £32.40. If you want the cheap fare and the fast train, leave after 10:00.

Advance singles beat the walk-up return. A month out, singles from King’s Cross were £15.20 each, so £30.40 for the day against £32.40 bought three days before. It is a small saving on this route, because the off-peak walk-up fare is already cheap. From Liverpool Street, Greater Anglia advertises Advance singles from £8.00 each way.

⚠️ Oyster and contactless are not accepted. Greater Anglia’s own Cambridge station page states it outright: Oyster cards are not valid at this station. Cambridge is far outside the pay as you go area, which stops just beyond Zone 9.

Cambridge station is about a mile from the centre, a 20 to 25 minute walk. Stagecoach Citi 1, 3 and 7 run in, and PLUSBUS can be added to a rail ticket. The ticket office is open 05:10 to 23:00 Monday to Saturday and from 07:00 on Sundays.

The coach, which is cheap but awkward

National Express runs from £6.20 one way, and the fastest service is 1 hour 15 minutes from London Stratford to Cambridge Trumpington — which is the park and ride site on the southern edge, not the centre.

⚠️ The Victoria coach is no use for a day trip. Service 491 runs from Victoria Coach Station to Cambridge (Parkside) up to once a day, and the first and last daily departure from Victoria is listed as 15:00. If you want a coach there and back in a day, it is the Stratford services or nothing.

Driving, and why park and ride wins

Cambridge is about 106km by road, off the M11 at Junction 13 for Madingley Road. Then the arithmetic decides it for you.

The five park and ride sites are Babraham Road, Madingley Road, Milton, Newmarket Road and Trumpington. Bus tickets are bought from the driver with cash or contactless; a £10 small group ticket covers up to three people all day, £15 covers up to five. Stay past 18 hours and parking costs £10, paid through RingGo within the first hour of arrival.

The colleges

The Bridge of Sighs at St John’s. Photo: Jean-Luc Benazet, Pexels.

This is the part worth getting right, because the colleges are not a set of equivalent tickets and two of the famous four are shut for large parts of the year.

Trinity’s tour meets at the Great Gate on Trinity Street, under-12s go free, and the Dining Hall is not included at the moment while work goes on. No bicycles, no dogs, no picnics, and nobody walks on the grass.

King’s prices move with the week, not the season. The early bird price for a given week ends on the Sunday night before it: a Saturday slot booked early was £16.75 adult and £14.25 for a student or a child aged 5 to 17, with family passes at £43.25 for one adult and up to three children, or £59.00 for two adults and up to three children. Arrival slots ran 09:30 to 16:00 in 30-minute steps, and individual afternoon slots were marked closed to visitors. Tickets are non-refundable, and there are no public toilets in the college.

St John’s is cheaper for almost everyone except full-price adults. Over-66s, students and National Disability Card holders pay £10; children aged 12 to 16 pay £10, dropping to £8 between 25 June and 1 September. Card only, no Amex, and no re-entry once you are in.

Queens’ is the bargain and the most restricted. £5, under-12s free, 10:00 to 16:00, in through the Visitors’ Gate on Queens’ Lane. Groups of six or more must be led by a Cambridge Blue Badge Guide and are turned away without one.

⚠️ Queens’ closes for the whole exam term — 19 April to 4 July in 2026. It also shuts for MA Graduation on 28 February, General Admission on 2 July, Open Days on 9 and 10 July, a Degree Congregation on 23 July, private functions on 12 April, 11 July, 8 and 15 August, an Open Day on 11 September, Bridge the Gap on 13 September, and Freshers’ week from 29 September to 6 October.

St John’s has the same problem from the other direction: paid general entry exists only between 6 July and 30 September. Outside that window the free list — alumni, University and CAMCard holders with guests, Cambridge residents with a CB postcode, prospective students, and anyone going to a chapel service — is the only way in.

The free alternative at King’s is a service. Chapel services are free and open to visitors. You will not be let in once one has begun, so arrive early; allow up to an hour for Evensong and an hour and a quarter for Holy Communion. No bags bigger than airline hand luggage, and no photography.

Punting, and the men on King’s Parade

Photo: Merve Aktas Yalman, Pexels.

Punting is the thing people get ripped off on, and the mechanism is specific. The Conservators of the River Cam licence exactly six punting stations: La Mimosa on the corner of Jesus Green, Quayside, Trinity College, the Mill Pond on Silver Street, Mill Lane, and the Granta mill pond near Sheep’s Green. Licensed companies trade at their own station and nowhere else.

⚠️ Anyone selling you a punt trip on King’s Parade or Market Square is unlicensed. Cambridge City Council has a Public Spaces Protection Order prohibiting touting for punt custom anywhere in the city. Breaching it is a criminal offence carrying a £100 fixed penalty notice or prosecution, and uniformed enforcement officers and police patrol for it. Buy at a punting station, where the price is posted and the boat is the company’s own.

Scudamore’s has been going since 1910 and runs the Mill Lane station at Granta Place and the Quayside station at Magdalene Bridge.

Self-hire is per boat, not per person — up to six, five seated and one punting. You need to be 16 to hire without an adult, arrive 15 minutes early, leave a contactless card deposit and sign the conditions. Overtime is £3.50 per six minutes. On-the-day kiosk prices match the online prices for self-hire, but not for the chauffeured tours, where the kiosk can differ.

The shared chauffeured tour is sold by the row or the section, not by the head: a row of up to two, a row of up to three, a section of four or a section of six, on a punt carrying twelve across four benches. It lasts 45 minutes and finishes where it started.

💡 College Backs hires cannot go upriver. If you want Grantchester and the meadows, book the Grantchester boats from the Granta station — a College Backs punt is not allowed up there.

Day tours that include Cambridge, compared

A coach from London earns nothing here. Cambridge is 49 minutes and £32.40 return, so the useful question is not how to get there — it is what to book for the hours once you arrive. GetYourGuide lists nine day trips from London that stop at Cambridge, against dozens for Windsor, and the products that matter are mostly sold in Cambridge itself.

We read the includes and excludes lists on twelve product pages on 12 September 2026. Every walking tour that puts King’s College in its title makes the £16.75 entry an upgrade, and two of the three punting prices are per boat, not per head. Links below are affiliate links; the price is the same either way.

The walking tours, and the King’s upgrade

Cambridge Walking Tour by Alumni is £23, 1½ to 2½ hours, 4.7 from 1,427 reviews, and led by a current student or graduate. Its excludes list is unusually honest: “Entry to King’s College Chapel (unless upgrade selected)”, along with any indoor access beyond public areas. The Footprints Tours version is £40, two hours, 4.7 from 1,410 reviews, and does the same thing from the other side — “Entrance to King’s College (if option selected)” sits in its includes list with a tick beside it.

£23 plus £16.75 at the King’s desk is £39.75. That is the number to beat before you pay £40 for a walk that still does not include the chapel.

Punting: a seat, a row, or the whole boat

⚠️ Check the unit before you check the price. GetYourGuide shows “per person” or “per group up to 3” in small type under the fare, and the cheapest headline is not the cheapest trip.

• Shared Punting Tour with Guide — £15 per person, 50 minutes, 4.8 from 752 reviews. Seven colleges and nine bridges on the College Backs, with a punter, raised seats, blankets and umbrellas. The one to book on your own.
• Chauffeured Punting Tour — £25 per group up to 2, 50 minutes, 4.8 from 136 reviews. A row on a twelve-seat punt, sold exactly the way the Scudamore’s kiosk sells it. Cheaper than the £15 seat once there are two of you.
• Guided River Cam Punting Tour — £55 per group up to 3, 45 minutes, 4.7 from 1,552 reviews and the most-booked punt in Cambridge, run by Scholars Punting. At three people that is £18.33 each; at one it is £55.
• Self-Rental Punting — £38 per punt up to 6 for an hour from Granta Moorings, with tuition and buoyancy aids and an ID deposit. Scudamore’s charges £28.50 for the same hour booked direct, so this one only makes sense if you want the Granta station, which is the one allowed upriver to Grantchester.

The Walk and Punt Tour by Alumni puts both together — £55 per person, 2¾ to 3¾ hours, the alumni walking tour plus a 45-minute chauffeured punt, which is listed flat with no clause. King’s Chapel is still “if option selected”.

Oxford and Cambridge in one day

Two trains beat the coach. A Cambridge Off-Peak return is £32.40 and Oxford from London is £37.70 — £70.10 for both days, against £119 for one day split between them.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities Tour is that £119, ten hours, 4.2 from 326 reviews, with a guided walk in each city, a coach and audio headsets. Its excludes list reads “Entry to King’s College and Christ Church College (if selecting the option excluding college entries)” — so the £119 is the option without either. The Golden Tours day is £99 and 3.9 from 222 reviews, with both colleges “if selected”.

The £85 University Town Tour is the cheapest and the only one carrying an entry with no conditions — the tower of Great St Mary’s in Cambridge. It is 11½ hours, 4.2 from 78 reviews, and Cambridge is free time rather than a guided walk.

Cambridge with the villages, and the private day

Cambridge and Medieval England is Rabbie’s, £84, 9½ hours, 4.5 from 36 reviews, in a 16-seat Mercedes minibus. It adds Thaxted, the timber-framed Essex wool town, before Cambridge. Entrance fees and lunch are excluded outright. It leaves from Stance 3, Greenline Coach Station, Bulleid Way SW1W 9SH — not Victoria Coach Station.

Cambridge University and King’s College Day Trip is £130 from Gloucester Road station, ten hours, and the only London-departure product whose includes list says “Visit to King’s College” with no clause attached. It has three reviews.

The private history tour to Audley End and Cambridge is £886.28 per group up to six, ten hours door to door in a V-Class, taking in Duxford and Audley End with Ely Cathedral as an optional extra stop. Every entrance fee is excluded, and it has no reviews yet.

What to actually book

• A guided walk: the £23 alumni walking tour, and buy King’s separately at the door for £16.75 if the upgrade costs more than that.
• Punting: £15 a head shared on your own, £25 a row for two, and Scudamore’s direct at £28.50 if you want to punt yourself.
• Both universities: do them on separate days by train. If you will not, the £85 tour is the least bad, and the £119 is £48.90 more than both return fares combined.

What costs nothing, and what costs almost nothing

Photo: Cara Denison, Pexels.

The Fitzwilliam is the single best free thing in Cambridge and it is closed on Mondays, which is the most common wasted trip. Ticketed exhibitions are free for under-18s, pay what you can on the first Sunday of the month, and free for 18 to 25s and students who join the Fitz List. Groups of ten or more pay £5 a head.

The Botanic Garden is five minutes’ walk from the station, through the Station Road Gate on Hills Road, which makes it the obvious first or last stop of the day. Children up to 16 are free. Booking a day ahead takes 10% off — though not on event days like Apple Day or Cambridge Botanic Lights. The price shown first on its site is £9.50, which includes an optional 10% donation; £8.60 is the actual standard admission.

The Round Church is not free, despite how often it is listed that way. £3.50 standard, £1 for teenagers and students, free for Cambridge residents in CB1 to CB5 and under-13s. It is a 12th-century round church, founded between 1114 and 1131, one of only four medieval round churches left in England, and the visit is an exhibition plus a 23-minute film narrated by Sir David Suchet. Its own guided walks are £16, £14 for students and 13 to 18s, and include entry.

Grantchester

Grantchester is the walk out of Cambridge along the Cam, and the Orchard Tea Garden at 47 Mill Way, CB3 9ND has been the point of it for over 125 years. Tea and scones are served under the fruit trees in summer and indoors in the Rupert Brooke Room when the weather turns. It takes no bookings for lunch — walk in, unless you are ten or more. Its published winter timetable is Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 16:00, weather permitting.

The Orchard publishes three of its own walks once you are there: a 1km circular, a 2km route to Byron’s Pool past the Rupert Brooke statue at The Old Vicarage, and a 3.5km loop through Grantchester Meadows on the river path, back past the Red Lion and the Green Man.

Does 2FOR1 work in Cambridge?

Yes, on less than you would hope, and on nothing academic.

• Rutherford’s Punting, shared punting experience — 2FOR1
• Museum of Cambridge — 2FOR1
• Scholars Punting — 20% off
• Cambridge Bike Tour — discounted

No college is in the scheme, and neither is Scudamore’s. The offer needs a valid National Rail ticket, which is another reason the contactless question matters here: there is no way to qualify without buying a real train ticket.

⚡ National Rail 2FOR1: how to actually get it — the rules, the eVouchers, and the attractions that are only a third off.

How long the day takes

Seven hours in Cambridge is plenty and five is enough. The centre is small, the colleges are a ten-minute walk apart, and the only thing that eats time is the river.

A working shape: leave King’s Cross at 10:54 for the fast train, in at 11:43. Walk or bus into the centre. One paying college, lunch at the market, punting mid-afternoon, the Fitzwilliam before it closes at 17:00, the Botanic Garden on the way back to the station if you still have light.

After the 22:48 to Liverpool Street you are into journeys with a change — the 23:51 gets in at 01:40.

What people get wrong

• Tapping in with contactless. It is not valid, and it also forfeits 2FOR1.
• Taking the 09:24 to save time and paying £48.10 instead of £32.40.
• Buying punting from someone on King’s Parade. Unlicensed, and illegal for them to be selling it there.
• Turning up at Trinity expecting to walk into Great Court. The courts are closed to the public. The Backs and the Wren Library are free; everything else is a booked tour.
• Planning around St John’s in May. It does not take paying visitors until 6 July.
• Planning around Queens’ in June. It is shut for exams until 4 July.
• Arriving at the Fitzwilliam on a Monday.
• Driving in and parking at Grand Arcade. Over five hours on a weekday is £33.50, against free parking and a £4.50 bus at any park and ride.
• Booking the Victoria coach and finding it leaves once a day, at 15:00.

All prices checked 12 September 2026.

Continue planning your day out

• 🎓 Oxford from London — the other one, priced and timed the same way.
• 🏰 Windsor from London — the shortest of the big three day trips.
• 🚇 London transport costs and fares — where contactless does work, and how capping behaves.
• 🎟️ National Rail 2FOR1 — the discount this trip unlocks.
• 🗺️ Day trips from London — what the others cost, how long they take, and which days they are shut.

Common questions

How do you get from London to Cambridge, and what does it cost?

The fast Great Northern train from King's Cross takes 49 minutes. An Off-Peak return was £32.40 and Advance singles £15.20 each when we checked. Greater Anglia from Liverpool Street is cheaper at £27.50 return but takes 1 hour 25 minutes direct. National Express coaches start at £6.20 one way, though the Victoria departure runs only once a day at 15:00.

Can you use contactless or Oyster to get to Cambridge?

No. Greater Anglia's own station page for Cambridge says plainly that Oyster cards are not valid there, and Cambridge sits well outside the TfL pay as you go area. Buy a National Rail ticket — which is also what unlocks 2FOR1.

Which Cambridge colleges charge, and how much?

King's is £16.75 for an adult booked early, £17 to £18 otherwise. St John's is £17, but only opens to paying visitors from 6 July to 30 September. Queens' is £5. Trinity does not let the public into its courts at all — you pay £10 for a Porter-led tour instead, though the Backs and the Wren Library are free. All prices checked 12 September 2026.

When are the Cambridge colleges closed to visitors?

Queens' shuts for the whole examination period, 19 April to 4 July in 2026, plus graduations, open days and Freshers' week. St John's only charges for general entry between 6 July and 30 September. Both were shut or part-shut on 11 and 13 September 2026. King's sells tickets all year but marks individual afternoon slots closed.

How much does punting in Cambridge cost?

Self-hire from Scudamore's is £28.50 for an hour, £35.50 for 90 minutes or £54.00 for three hours — that is for the whole punt, up to six people. A shared chauffeured 45-minute tour starts at £41.00 for a row of two, and a private punt starts at £115.

What is the last train back to London from Cambridge?

On a weekday the last direct train to King's Cross leaves Cambridge at 23:51 and arrives 01:04; the last fast one is 22:42, in at 23:32. The last direct to Liverpool Street is 22:48, arriving 00:18.