DISCOVER CAMBRIDGE AND THE FROSTY FENS
Journey east this winter to encounter an elegant city at the brink of an atmospheric lowland, where water is never far away... By Patrick Barkham
From Cambridge’s cosy pubs and classic colleges, venture deep into the crisp, cool wonderland of the Fens. These wild wetlands are buoyant with rare birdlife in winter, says Patrick Barkham
There is an alien land in southern England that is flat, bleak and eerie. The soil is black and the sky is huge. Prairie fields sunk below sea level stretch forever between mighty drainage channels. When Arctic winds whip in, the Fen Blow whisks up the soil and turns the sky black.
Given this forbidding first impression, it is no surprise that the 2,500 square miles of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk known as the Fens are probably less trodden by tourists than any other part of southern England. But a bewitching and unique landscape awaits those who venture where Romans feared to tread. The Fens are one of the sunniest places in Britain and winters are often crisp and dry. It is a watery place, dominated by modern agriculture, but surprisingly rich in bucolic meadows and fascinating history. Within the Fens are also two of England’s most beautiful small cities,
Cambridge and Ely. A gentle but vivid introduction to the Fens, Cambridge is, of course, famous for its university, founded in the 13th century by scholars fleeing Oxford. It has since nurtured the talents of everyone from Lord Byron (allegedly banished for keeping a bear in his room) to John Cleese. Its contribution to human progress is perhaps greater than any other city of 125,000 souls due to its scientists: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, atom-splitting Ernest Rutherford, DNA discoverers Francis Crick and James Watson and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
The beauty of its honey-coloured colleges won’t surprise anyone who has visited Bath or Oxford but these rivals would struggle to surpass Cambridge on a frosty winter morning. Perhaps I’m biased because I was lucky enough to study here, but it is not merely nostalgia when I remember so many dazzling winter days. Now, the city buzzes with chic coffee shops and striking modern architecture but the students look the same: girls with hair and scarves flying as they shoot through town on bikes, bookish boys with long coats and glasses. The place bristles with youth, energy and ideas.
DRIFTING CITY
Cambridge is easily explored on foot but it’s best to begin by boat. A visitor’s first task is to take a punt on The Backs. (A city of arcane colleges and young students is invariably rich in slang so I won’t get started on Fellows, ents and Desmonds.) Punts are open wooden boats propelled by a person (you, if brave) who stands at the back and pushes a long wooden pole into the riverbed. The Backs are the rears of the grandest of Cambridge’s 31 colleges. You won’t find a finer procession of riverside buildings in England, set within pretty water meadows. King’s College Chapel is familiarly famous but Clare, Trinity and St John’s, with its Bridge of Sighs, are achingly beautiful. In winter, drifts of snowdrops and crocuses appear under willows that sprout dazzling yellow in March.
A city of students provides a respectable supply of historic pubs. Many tourists
visit The Eagle for a pint of Eagle’s DNA, which marks Francis Crick interrupting drinkers to announce that he and James Watson had “discovered the secret of life” – the structure of DNA. For a more traditional experience enjoyed by locals and students, head to The Free Press for a real ale, or scoot down an alley beyond St John’s to The Maypole, which, as writer Tim Dee says, remains “inflected with the mood of the old commons, where cows still graze”.
The colleges can be admired from inside if you book a guided tour and the city boasts an unusual wealth of museums: Kettle’s
Yard is known for modern art and there are museums of archeology and anthropology, zoology, history of science and earth sciences. The Fitzwilliam Museum is the best-known for its artistic treasures from illuminated manuscripts to paintings by Hogarth and Gainsborough but two lessheralded places are The Polar Museum and Cambridge University Botanic Garden, a perfectly tranquil spot in winter.
ENTER THE FENS
The Fens beyond Cambridge make sense if you imagine this was once a vast inland sea. Village names (Horningsea, Waterbeach) speak of it. It was an impenetrable waterland for centuries, a hideout for Celtic Iceni rebels and Boudica against the Romans, its meres and marshes populated by herons, otters and a million wildfowl. Before Cambridge was a university town, it was a port, and the only crossing for the Cam and River Great Ouse (an appropriate name for these sluggish, lowland rivers) for more than 50 miles.
It was not a rural backwater, but a trading area every bit as outward-looking as its thriving hi-tech economy today. Goods were shipped via the port of Cambridge to the North Sea – clay from Clayhithe, sedge from Wicken and eels from Ely. One of the last items to be exported by river was ‘gas water’, a nasty-sounding liquid from Cambridge gas works that was used to make fertiliser in Norfolk until trade ceased in 1932.
The Fens became solid ground thanks to
“MARSHES AND MERES POPULATED BY HERONS, OTTERS AND A MILLION WILDFOWL”
Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutchman who built the first sluice and began draining and ‘reclaiming’ the marshes in 1651. Drainage is rarely viewed as a foundation of modern civilisation but a drive north compels us to reconsider. Deep in the heart of the unvisited Fens – full of ramshackle farms and fields traversed by giant tractors driving as if in formation – you’ll find Denver Sluice, the modern iteration of Vermuyden’s work. Brown water swirls below enormous sluicegates: it’s not pretty but just as the dreaming spires of Cambridge are an inspirational embodiment of learning, here is a working monument to ingenuity and engineering. Two Environment Agency members live here still, for the Fens relies on these enormous gates to prevent disastrous flooding: inside them, the freshwater levels are controlled; outside, tidal waters are held at bay.
The draining of the Fens was our gain but it was also a great loss. Astonishingly, more than 99.9% of its marshland disappeared. Last to go was England’s second-largest lake, Whittlesey Mere, which took a decade to be drained of water in 1851. No trace exists today; vanished too are species such as the large copper butterfly, which fell extinct in Britain soon afterwards. RETURN OF THE NATIVES These days, however, we are letting a little water back into the Fens. Call it rewilding, or restoration, but there’s a trio of genuinely thrilling nature reserves within easy reach of Cambridge. Forty minutes east of Cambridge, bleak carrot fields have become reedbeds and a nature reserve – RSPB
Lakenheath – almost overnight, with marsh harriers and bitterns finding them equally quickly. A 50-minute drive north of Cambridge is the Great Fen Project, which aims to link two nature reserves, Holme
Fen and Woodwalton Fen, one of Britain’s oldest nature reserves.
The last of the trio is even older: Wicken,a reserve established in 1899, can be reached from Cambridge on a cycle path (18 miles
“A WINTER WALK IN WICKEN IS FULL OF BEAUTY AND POSSIBILITY”
but very flat). Whether frosty or misty, Wicken in winter is magical. The reserve has expanded from 200 to 800 hectares as surrounding farmland is returned to marsh. Shallow winter lakes fill with wading birds such as redshank, ducks, teal and wigeon, which make a melancholy whistle on the cold air. Around the reserve are shaggy Highland cattle and wild Konik ponies, the colour of wet granite, keeping the open marsh from becoming a wetland jungle.
A winter walk in Wicken is full of beauty and possibility. If winds are favourable, the reserve is filled by migrants such as shorteared owls. A brief stroll from the visitor centre is a spacious bird hide, with fantastic views of the wetland of Baker’s Fen. Wicken has a surprising amount of woodland, where woodcock go roding – a grunting, whistling mating flight – at dusk in late February. Regulars tend to collect a hot soup from the café on a winter’s afternoon and stand outside the visitor centre at dusk, watching hen harriers and marsh harriers coming in to roost. As the sun goes down, mist settles over the sedge and reeds and you can often see a barn owl quartering the marsh.
On Wicken’s northern horizon is the Fens’ most spectacular building: Ely cathedral. The isle of Ely was once an island in the Fens and still feels like one. This tiny Fenland city is dominated by its magnificent cathedral, below which is a picturesque riverside with pubs and interesting boatyards to explore.
Further north, for several thousand square miles, stretches deep Fenland. Places like
Manea, Wisbech, and Littleport have rich, rebellious histories and are equally interesting today. If you desire to escape twee, cosy, comfortable beauty; if you want challenging, untamed and atmospheric human wilderness, then head here. The Fens is everything southern England is not, and all the more compelling for it.