Wetland Diaries (eBook)

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The Mists of Time: My Long Road to Wicken

Ouse Valley: Monday, 14 November 2022 (Part One)

Oakley bounds along the farm track a few yards ahead of me. He heads straight to the apple trees, seeking fallen fruit. Next, he forages along the woodland edge for a good stick. We have both come to know this place well over the last few years. I watch the wildlife while he sniffs the scents.

Autumn is a favourite season in the Fens. This one has been particularly mild. Dusk is twenty minutes away, but the temperature is 12°C. I unzip my jacket, feeling warmer than I have all day, sat at my desk, barely moving anything but my fingertips, occasionally lifting an arm to take a sip of tea. Now, blood is circulating as fresh air fills my lungs.

The fog has not lifted all day. Beads of water cling to every blade of grass, transferring to my wellies as I walk briskly behind Oakley. His black, furry legs are wet and shiny from trotting through the taller grass beside the ditch. It doesn’t take him very long to find himself a stick. Looking longingly up at me, I know what he wants me to do. I pick up the brittle branch and throw it along the track ahead. He races after it, overshoots, skids and backtracks to pick up what is now two smaller sticks. I choose the slightly longer of the two and launch it a little further this time. Oakley still overshoots in his enthusiasm, racing off before the stick has even become airborne.

My hands are wet from picking up the dog-stick. And so is my right foot, thanks to a recent split in my boot. Little over a minute later, my left foot also feels soggy. Why does every pair of wellies I own seem to split so quickly? Oakley’s stick is falling apart too, now barely 3in long. But he is still more than happy to play fetch with it.

My attention diverts from Labrador to wildfowl as four grey birds fly overhead. They are in fact white. I heard their honking calls before I saw them, whooper swans (pronounced ‘hooper’). A family group fly in front of us, two adults with two young hatched in Iceland six months ago. The swan calls are both softened and magnified by the damp air. There is hardly a breath of wind. Such silent stillness is rare in the exposed fenland of East Anglia. I treasure days like this. With visibility reduced, your eyes focus on what is near while your ears can tune in to what is further away. I am literally a mile from the nearest person, a farm worker sat inside a tractor, its lights only just visible in the distance. A freight train speeds across the railway bridge, crossing the Ouse Washes towards Ely Cathedral.

The sound of the train fades. My ears tune in to greylag geese on the other side of the riverbank. Their cackles linger in the air, like the water droplets sitting on my waterproof jacket. Not rain, but fog. Even the moisture soaking my socks feels like a friendly extra layer of warmth. I am genuinely happy. And relaxed. At last. No longer thinking about my to-do list, but free in the Fens. Wet feet seem to bind me to my surroundings, the landscape and its history, too.

Before this corner of north-east Cambridgeshire was drained, wet feet would have been a familiar part of life for the Fen folk. Or cleverly avoided by wearing stilts. There are tales of formidable Fen Tigers fighting against drainage and people putting grass in their boots to keep feet cool in summer, especially 12 miles south-east in the Fen-edge villages of Burwell and Wicken. I think about the lives of these stoic Fen people of old and remember how I came to learn about them 20 years ago.

Judy’s Hole: Saturday, 27 April 2002

I hurtle down Toyse Lane on an old blue bicycle, air rushing past as I race along. Barely needing to pedal, I veer right, onto North Street. The ground levels out as the Newmarket chalk hills sink beneath peat and clay. This is the Fen-edge and once upon a prehistoric time would have been the coast. History and geography merge in my 12¾-year-old mind, pondering which way to steer the handlebars. I am free to navigate a village I have visited regularly throughout my childhood, now exploring it solo for the first time.

Do I turn left along towards Factory Road and the river? Or do I continue north? I feel drawn towards the river. But an early memory becomes clear in my mind. The only time I have been this way before was on a family walk one sunny day when I was small. On that riverside ramble, I had developed an intense headache, prompting an abrupt return to Fenview 11, where I lay on the sofa in pain. This memory influences my decision. Today, I will follow North Street, staying in the safety of the village. However, the road soon leads beyond Burwell. Venturing onward, I see a finger-post marking a public footpath to the left.

On this mild and pleasant spring afternoon, the verges are verdant with cow parsley on the cusp of bursting into flower. I follow the track along the edge of a thicket, about an acre in size. Although the ash trees are not yet fully in leaf, their density is enough to reduce the sunlight. Ahead, the trees thin. A battered old caravan stands half in a hedge, it must be some years since its wheels touched the road. Beyond, a narrow footbridge, with yellow handrails, crosses the river to a bungalow. In my childish mind, I decide this is a witch’s house, acknowledging the air of spookiness this remote place evokes.

Enamel flour tin, Judy’s Hole, 27 April 2002. (Ajay Tegala)

At the same time, there is a feeling of calmness. It is peaceful and pretty. Intrigue takes over as I spy a trail leading into the trees. The ground drops 2ft, carpeted in a mat of clinging ivy. On the edge, a thin elder trunk has been sawn off at waist height. Hanging on it, there is a 1930s enamel flour tin with a stick poking out. Creating a story in my mind, I decide this must be a witches’ brew, concocted by the owner of the waterside dwelling. But it merely contains a handful of soil and some dry grass.

I cycle back to Fenview 11 to fetch my sister so I can show her the intriguing, secluded spot I have discovered. Next morning, I feel compelled to visit again, this time with my brother. Neither of my siblings quite share my intense fascination with the place.

The last time I felt such a combination of intense curiosity and subtle unease was at Eden Camp Second World War Museum in North Yorkshire, on a school residential two years before. There, one of the immersive displays recreated the terror of a night-time air raid. Around the corner, a female mannequin, in a green boiler suit, was serving soup. I found her vacant expression as haunting as the Blitz scene. Behind this frightening figure was a 1930s enamel flour tin, identical to the one in the thicket.

Every time we visited my grandparents in Burwell, I would feel lured to the waterside, always checking to see whether the flour tin was still there. It always was. Eventually, the elder trunk was removed, the tin left lying on the ground, becoming increasingly worn and weathered.

A decade passes. I return to the area and wonder whether the old tin could possibly still be there. Heading to the spot to scan the ivy-clad ground, a flash of white catches my eye. There it is. Bent out of shape with one of its handles missing. I feel a rush of nostalgia and a sudden, uncontrollable urge to rescue it, take it home with me. I pick the tin up and carry it to my car, certain that nobody else could possibly have more of a connection to it than I do.

From my first visit, I knew there was something special about this place. It was wild, wonderful and witchy. So intriguing, idyllic and intoxicating. I felt a sense of solace, sanctuary and escapism. There had to be something more to it. And indeed there was. The area is known to locals as Judy’s Hole, named after a long-since infilled pit owned by a wise woman, no less.*

Squatters’ cottages opposite Judy’s Hole, c.1920. (Cambridgeshire Collection)

The Fen People

One of the oldest works on my shelf is a charming and very rare book printed in 1930. The title is embossed on its faded red cover, The Fenman’s World, by Charles Lucas, Burwell doctor and former Fen drainage commissioner. Having lived in the village his whole life, some of his friends thought ‘it would be both interesting and useful’ to document his knowledge and memories of the Fen areas at Burwell and its neighbouring villages of Reach and Wicken. The book includes an account of Judy’s Hole and the Fen people who inhabited six wattle-and-daub squatters’ cottages on the opposite side of the river during the nineteenth century.

The men were ‘rather tall and big, with very black hair, sallow and swarthy complexions, rough in their manners, gruff in speech, tenacious and cunning, independent and lawless’. Their secrecy and self-reliance earned them the nickname Fen Tigers. These were people who lived off the land, catching fish and hunting wildfowl for food as well as keeping livestock. In summer, they would help with the harvest, dig turf and cut sedge. The turf they dug was peat, cut into rectangular blocks, dried and burned as fuel. Sedge could be burned too or used to stuff mattresses, but was mostly cut for thatching. Like reed, it is a grass-like plant that grows in wet ground. Reed has hollow, round stems whereas sedge has a triangular stem....