That's a rather long and fittingly twisty way of introducing the Fens, which are the salt-watery low-lying marshland biome here in East Anglia where eels used to be so numerous that people used them in lieu of money. Cambridge is situated in the outer reaches of the Fens.
The Fens used to be about as strange as those aptly-named sisters. In olden times, the people who lived in the Fens were a breed apart who made their living by harvesting peat for fuel and sedge and reeds for thatch, coppicing willows and other marsh trees, making baskets, and catching a variety of waterfowl, fish, and the previously mentioned eels that lived in this unique floating habitat - all without paying taxes to any of the powers that were. Fenland was known as a desolate and somewhat forbidding area where, Venice-like, people used wooden pilings to artificially build up the scattered clay hillocks - little islands on nests of wood amidst the meres, marshes, and creeks. There's a history of solitary religious types in search of soul-purifying hardship duty ending up in waterlogged outposts throughout the Fens and starting monasteries (as in Ely - Eel Isle - and Peterborough). In short, it was a lifestyle defined by the environment and suited to flippers.
Even as far back as the Romans, however, the relentless human drive to control nature led to serial attempts at draining the fens of all that water and turning the area into arable farmland. The Romans eventually gave up, but by the 17th and 18th centuries, advances in technology, much of it imported from similarly-spongy Holland, got the job mostly done, and the Fen way of life (having nothing to do with that OTHER tradition across the drink involving fanatical fan-dom afloat on rivers of beer) essentially dried up. In the process, the Fen geography, habitat for a diverse array of plants and animals, was homogenized into endless fields of grain and pasture land, devastating both the fragile ecosystem and the unique economy of the local folk. Nowadays, hints of the former Fennish life remain: it's still laced with numerous creeks, rivers, and marshes - hence punting still survives as a viable way to get around - and still busy with thatched-roof houses, but it's nothing like it used to be.
Thankfully, some prescient conservationists had the foresight to set aside the last .1 % of fenland at Wicken Fen in 1899 before the whole thing was entirely destroyed, and now the area is owned and managed by the National Trust, which currently is engaged in an ambitious expansion project to try to get the Fens BACK!
I've been interested in the Fens since Aunt Sally loaned me the book Waterland, by Graham Swift, which is set here - and which I recommend. We didn't get around to it the last time we were in Cambridge, so this time we just had to go.
Wicken Fen is 17 miles north east of Cambridge, but getting there without a car means riding a bus and then walking a few miles, so it took at least 2 hours to get there! No worries - it was a beautiful sunny day during the only hot dry (relatively speaking) spell we've had.
First views of the Fen:
As you can see , it is wide open, riddled with water ways, and reedy. These reeds, most of which is called sedge, are used in the creation of wattle and daub walls, and in thatching.
Windmills were used to pump water out of the marshes:
Wicken Fen has numerous paths with occasional hides, where you can climb up and scout for birds of prey, wild ponies, and highland (?) cattle:
We didn't see the ponies, and we didn't see the march harrier (nor the fenny snake, thank god!), but we did see a very beautiful mama cow with her two offspring:
Aren't they adorable? There are several sets of cows and babies, all named and all carefully nurtured in the Fen fields.
The flora at Wicken Fen are equally diverse, and many are equally endangered. The yellow flowers you see below, which are some sort of wort, are carnivorous! They daily consume whole nations of the tiny insects which crowd the humid fen air. Needless to say, we loved this plant!
Did I mention that it was a beautiful but hot day?
Therefore, we were happy that Wicken Fen also has some cool glades....
Below is a tree that gives a rough idea of coppicing - that is, cut down so that shoots of thin, flexible wood grow from the trunk, to be harvested for basketry, kindling, eel traps, stakes...you name it.
We spent hours walking the paths and enjoying the Fens, and then returned to the Nature Center, which was full of informative displays about the wildlife, much of it endangered, and the folk crafts which have fallen out of sway in tandem with the decline of the fens. Carter was particularly fascinated by the information about the renovation of ancient fen houses, from walls of wattle and daub to roofs of thatch. We then navigated our way back through the town of Wicken and across fields to get our bus in nearby (relatively speaking) Soham. Due perhaps to the prevalence of sedge in the area, the tradition of thatched-roof houses is alive and well in the town of Wicken. Here's a sampling of the elaborate and well-tended thatched houses we saw on our return journey:
This is the Wicken Fen cottage, which is being renovated:
These were sprinkled throughout the town:
Here's Carter in his protective Tilley walking back to Soham:
We left with the hope that we will be able to return in the next few years and find that Wicken Fen has successfully expanded and reclaimed more of this rare and rich water world.
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