Norman Cross

Between Peterborough and Wansford, on a stretch of the old Great North Road, lies one of Britain's most overlooked historical sites. Norman Cross is where, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British held over 7,000 French prisoners of war in what was effectively a vast open-air camp. Today it's a humble memorial - a stone obelisk marks the spot where thousands endured years of confinement on this bleak Cambridgeshire plain.

You won't find much here in the traditional sense. There's no visitor centre, no tea room, just the monument itself and some explanatory plaques if you look hard enough. But that's rather the point. Standing there, reading how men carved tiny bone models and scratched their names into the ground during captivity, you get a proper sense of what happened in a way that no museum display quite manages. It's quiet, a bit lonely even, which somehow makes it more affecting.

History buffs and anyone interested in the Napoleonic period will find it worthwhile, though you'd want to pair it with other attractions rather than making a special trip just for this. The obelisk itself takes five minutes to see. Allow an hour if you want to sit and absorb the atmosphere, maybe photograph it in different light.

If you're based at Ferry Meadows or Castle Farm nearby, it's a decent morning stop before heading into Peterborough proper. Not a destination in itself, but a genuinely moving waypoint that deserves more visitors than it gets.