There is a version of the post-London-Marathon recovery trip that involves no hills whatsoever. Not a single one. If your legs have nothing left and you want to keep moving without anything that could be described as gradient, the flat fenland rail corridor running northeast out of London is your route. Cambridge sits below the chalk escarpment; Norwich rises no more than a gentle swell above the Norfolk plain. Between them, the train passes through some of the most determinedly horizontal landscape in Britain.
This is the correct choice if Saturday evening's brave talk about an easy Tuesday run has given way to Sunday evening's more honest conversation with your legs.
Night One: Cambridge
Direct trains from London King's Cross to Cambridge take around 50 minutes; London Liverpool Street to Cambridge takes approximately 1 hour via the Stansted route. Both routes run frequent services throughout the day. The cheapest advance fares are around £10 to 15 single.
Cambridge station sits about a mile south of the historic centre: far enough to make a taxi sensible if you have luggage and objections to walking. A five-minute ride to a hotel near the river or the market square costs around £8. Book accommodation in the central area: the quarter mile between King's College and the River Cam is where you want to be.
Cambridge is, on the face of it, designed for cyclists: approximately 30% of the city commutes by bike and the infrastructure reflects this. For a runner with 26.2 miles in their recent history, the relevant fact is that the historic core is exceptionally level. The streets between the market square and the river, the college fronts along King's Parade and Trinity Street, and the riverside path known as The Backs, where the rear gardens of eight colleges meet the River Cam, are all flat, paved, and conducive to the kind of slow, aimless walking that qualifies as active recovery.
King's College Chapel, built between 1446 and 1515 and still arguably the finest example of English Perpendicular Gothic in existence, is visible from the river. Entry costs around £12 and includes the Chapel interior, where the fan vaulting is one of those pieces of medieval engineering that makes you want to sit down and look at it for a while, which is also good for your legs.
Punting
The non-negotiable Cambridge activity on post-marathon legs is chauffeured punting. Do not rent a self-drive punt: standing at the stern of a flat-bottomed wooden boat trying to extract a ten-foot pole from riverbed mud is not suitable activity for someone whose core has just endured four to six hours of sustained effort. The chauffeur-guided option, where a professional punter poles the boat while you recline on cushions, covers the full length of the Backs between Magdalene Bridge and the Granta, passing under the Bridge of Sighs at St John's College, Wren Library, and the Mathematical Bridge at Queens'. Operators including Cambridge Chauffeur Punts operate from Silver Street Bridge and the Quayside; morning slots in April are the least crowded and can be cold: bring a layer. Trips run 45 to 60 minutes and cost approximately £20 to 25 per person.
April in Cambridge: Typically 9 to 14°C, with the university in full term (the Easter term begins in mid-April). The city feels purposeful and populated, which is pleasant.
Where to eat: The Midsummer House on Midsummer Common (two Michelin stars, booking essential months in advance) represents one end of the scale. More practically: The Anchor pub on Silver Street, right on the river, serves reasonable food in a riverside setting that is exactly right for a recovery dinner. The Fitzbillies bakery on Trumpington Street has been producing Chelsea buns since 1921 and the queue on a Monday morning in April is the correct problem to have.
Night Two: Norwich
On Tuesday morning, do not turn back toward London. Board the direct, hourly cross-country service from Cambridge to Norwich. The journey takes one hour and nineteen minutes across the flat Norfolk and Suffolk countryside: the rail line passes through Ely (visible from the window, the 12th-century cathedral on its small hill above the fens, looking improbably grand over the surrounding flatness) before continuing north to Norwich.
Norwich has a claim that it asserts quietly and accurately: it was, for much of the medieval period, the second city of England after London. The wool trade that built the great churches of East Anglia ran through here, and the evidence of that prosperity is visible in the extraordinary concentration of medieval buildings: 36 pre-Reformation churches still stand within the old city walls, more than any comparable city in northern Europe.
From Norwich station, a level walk across the Wensum bridges and up through the lanes reaches Elm Hill in about fifteen minutes. This cobblestoned, medieval lane, genuinely uneven underfoot but not steep, is lined with timber-framed Tudor houses, independent bookshops, and cafes. It was saved from demolition in the 1920s by a single councillor's casting vote and now represents about the most complete surviving late-medieval streetscape in Britain.
From Elm Hill, the Norwich Cathedral is a three-minute walk across flat ground. The nave is Norman, the spire 15th-century, and the cloisters: the largest surviving monastic cloisters in Britain, vaulted in carved stone with over a thousand carved bosses, each one individually different. You can spend an hour in there at a slow pace and still not have seen all of them. Chairs are provided throughout. Entry is free, though a donation is welcomed.
What to avoid: The climb up to Norwich Castle involves a notable gradient from the city centre. Interesting if your legs permit; skippable if they do not.
April in Norwich: The city is quieter than in summer and the countryside around it (the Norfolk Broads are 30 minutes northeast by bus) is in early spring growth. Hotels are available and reasonably priced compared to Cambridge.
Where to eat: Farmyard on St Benedicts Street is the current benchmark for Norfolk produce: modern British cooking using local meat, fish from the Norfolk coast, and vegetables from the county's market gardens. Book ahead. For something more casual, the Adam and Eve pub near the cathedral claims to be Norwich's oldest (records from 1249) and serves food and local ales in a setting that has not changed recognisably since the 14th century.
Getting Home
Direct trains from Norwich to London Liverpool Street run every hour and take 1 hour 50 minutes. You arrive at Liverpool Street, which connects directly to the Central, Circle, Hammersmith, and Metropolitan lines.
For international travellers: Norwich Airport (NWI) sits 5 kilometres north of the city centre, accessible by taxi in 15 minutes. It operates flights to Amsterdam Schiphol (KLM) with onward connections to North America, Asia, and beyond. This is a genuinely stress-free exit for anyone flying long-haul via a European hub: Norwich Airport is small enough that check-in takes minutes and the security queue is not a thing that exists in any meaningful sense.