Taking a Walk Patrick Barkham
Walkers climb peaks, seek summits and bag Munros. We devote enormous effort to elevation, from the humble see-what’sover-the-hill to the grandiose conquering of great mountains. The top is not merely a physical pinnacle; it is the mental highlight of every strenuous walk.
But before the zenith, the nadir. Any fool can follow the well-trodden path up to Britain’s highest point. But far fewer seek the road less travelled to its lowest.
This is New Long Drove, a straight and rather bleak track between treeless, flat fields that leads, ultimately, to Engine Farm, a disused and rather foreboding shed in what was once known as the Huntingdonshire Fens. Somewhere underneath an enormous sky billowing with Dutch Masters’ clouds is the lowest point in Britain. It is, if I’m honest, the lowlight of this walk; there’s no marker, no cairn and nothing much to see in the field apart from the discombobulating sight of a cow’s bloated carcase.
This low point was once the bottom of Whittlesey Mere, which used to be the largest lake in lowland England. Early Victorian paintings depict it as a wonderful place, fringed with great reedbeds and bustling with fishermen, freight and wildfowlers. In the notoriously chilly Fenland winters, the lake would freeze and hundreds of people would congregate on its ice to skate.
In summer, lepidopterists would disembark from the East Coast Main Line to catch the large copper, a fabulous, bog-loving butterfly which fluttered into extinction as soon as the Mere was drained.
Engine Farm is named after the Appold pump which local adventurer William Wells obtained from the Great Exhibition in 1851. With a syndicate of local landowners, he extracted the lake’s water and turned its fertile silt bed over to farming. The engineers knew what this drainage would do, and so buried a very tall, iron pole, reputedly from the Great Exhibition, into the ground at Holme Fen, its top flush with the ground. Today the Holme Fen Posts (a second was added) rise more than four metres up from the earth. Fenland’s peaty soil shrinks when it is dry, while a centimetre or so is whisked away each year by the infamous Fen Blow; the sky turns black with airborne soil which locals swear is like being showered in soot.
There’s less Fen Blow around Whittlesey Mere these days, however, because the onion-farming era has been supplanted by the Great Fen project. This is restoring mere, marsh and woodland, and seeking to join the island-like nature reserves of Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen. The entire former bed of Whittlesey Mere is now managed by the project. Arable fields have been turned back to grazing to lock in the peat, and much smaller meres have been created. Cuckoos sing and bitterns boom by Engine Farm once again.
Holme Fen is the largest silver birch woodland in the lowlands. It is luxurious after all that wind-scoured open space; sheltered, intimate and busy with woodpeckers. It is now linked to Woodwalton by the Fen Edge Trail, a terrific series of short (four-mile or so) walks compiled by the Cambridgeshire Geological Society and other local groups which follow the five-metre contour line around the Fen border. It feels giddy being five metres above sea level.
Every ascent requires refreshment: the Admiral Wells is a proper country pub with a fine garden and a unique proposition. Who can resist downing an ale in Britain’s lowest pub?
Park by Holme Fen Posts north-east of Holme, Cambridgeshire (grid reference: TL203894), to walk through the nature reserve towards Engine Farm. At the north-east corner of the reserve is Rymes Reedbed, with a view over the restored fen. The Fen Edge Trail is publishing downloadable guides to walks, including between Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen: www.fenedgetrail.org; www. greatfen.org.uk/visit/places/holmefen. OS Explorer 227: Peterborough