Milton Country Park is a country park created by South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC) in 1993 from old gravel workings just to the east of the village of Milton. Financial difficulties meant that after first threatening to close it and a long campaign to save it SCDC finally decided to hand over the Park to Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust on 31st March 2008.

The Park is on the northern edge of Cambridge and is easy to get to by bike, bus or car. It offers a varied natural habitat interlaced with a network of over two miles of paths around the park. We have two maps online: a basic schematic map and an annotated Google map.

There is a play area for children, a sensory garden for the blind and partially sighted and the main paths are wheelchair and buggy accessible. Dogs are also welcome and can be walked off lead north of the 13th public drain. You must also clean up after your dog using the bins provided.

The park is open at all times. The car park is open every day except Christmas Day, from 8:00am. Closing times vary throughout the year, but can be found on display in the car park. Opening times of the Visitor Centre vary seasonally.

There is also a café serving hot and cold drinks and snacks throughout the year.

fishing

Fishing is available on both the main lakes from a number of easily accessible platforms, however, an annual permit or a day ticket from the Angling Club is required. For information on fishing at Milton Country Park, please contact Cambridge Fish Preservation and Angling Society

history

Formerly farmland, both arable and pasture, Milton Country Park owes much of its present appearance to the extraction of sand and gravel for the building of roads and houses from about 1930 to 1960. However, the first material taken from the site was clay, in much smaller quantities, by Romano British potters about 1800 years previously.

When sand and gravel extraction ceased around 1960, the site became overgrown with thick hawthorn and willow scrub and entered a period of neglect and misuse that ended in 1990 when work started on the Country Park. This work continued until 1993, the year the Park opened to the public.

The Park was formally opened on the 26th of May 1993 by Cllr Roberta Cannon where she unveils the plaque you will find on the wall of the Visitor Centre.

After SCDC was capped in 2005 the council had to look for ways of cutting the cost of running the Park and at a cabinet meeting in December 2006 they decided to close the park on 31st August 2007 if no one could be found to take the Park off their hands by then. After a large public campaign against the closure the Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust eventually emerged as the organisation to take over the Park which they did in the spring of 2008.