Into the Fens: Exploring England’s wetlands
I’m a reluctant ‘Fenny’. When I moved to this area of Cambridgeshire, the flat, open Fenland felt stark and particularly bleak in winter. The land is completely flat and regimented, with straight drainage channels and hedgerows, largely used for agriculture. Roads run along drainage channels and rivers, looking out over an expanse of sameness, and when the wind blows or the snow falls, there’s no shelter.
But the skies here are big and give you a feeling of your place in the world. I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of this unique Fenland I call home. I was inspired to write this post following a walk on New Years Day 2023 which epitomised how these vast, flat, wet marshes can be seen in a beautiful light, which hopefully I can showcase to you all.
What are Fens?
The Fens are an area in eastern England, ranging roughly from north Cambridgeshire up to Lincoln, an area of 3,800 square KM.
Most of the Fens lie within a few metres of sea level. Much like in the Netherlands (many Dutch came over to England to develop our Fens back in the 16-1700s), much of the Fenland originally consisted of fresh or saltwater wetlands. With the support of their drainage system, the Fenland has become a major agricultural region for grains and vegetables and are particularly fertile, containing around 50% of the grade I agricultural land in England – but at a cost. Once this area was 99.9% wetland, and today it is only 0.1%.
The city at the heart of the fens is Ely (literally the Isle of Eels) which was built on this marshland. Whilst draining these lands made them habitable, there have been so many unintended consequences – firstly because they’ve been drained, the peat shrinks at a rate of 2cm a year and not enough alkalinity gets in to the water anymore. This means that plants and wildlife living here are starting to change and we’re losing a lot of species.
Another consequence is the constant flooding. Of course, The Fens are literally designed to flood – having drained the low lying land there are still two major rivers running through the Fens – The River Ouse and River Nene. The banks of these rivers often overflow and the Fenlands are natural flood plains. However, with all the rain we’ve had in 2023, floods have been consistent and a part of every day life here rather than a seasonal occurrence which drain and dry out in summer. Constant flooding causes the land level to sink and the dykes have been built higher and higher to protect inhabitants.
Exploring the Fens and their beauty
The best way to explore the Fens is on foot. They cover a huge natural area, and I’ve explored many of the walks through them. There are multiple individual Fens making up the overall landscape and some of my favourites include:
- Mare Fen
- Ouse Fen
- RSPB Fen Drayton Lakes
- Wicken Fen
- Hoe Fen
- Stow cum Quy Fen
Walking in the Fens is both super easy and hard. Easy because the land here is completely flat – there are no hills or mountains anywhere, but also hard as it’s pretty much always wet and you can easily sink in the mud and peat – it’s really important to wear wellies or proper waterproof hiking boots. It also means that if the rivers are in flood, you won’t be able to walk the routes as they can flood by up to 6ft of water, and obviously no wellies are going to save you from that.
Completely flooded walking path (L – the bridge in the background is meant to cross the river, not be submerged in it!), and typical Fenland walking terrain alongside a waterway (R)
It’s also hard walking in the Fens because it’s so exposed. Being so flat means if it’s windy you’re blown over and if it’s misty you have limited visibility. As you can see from my walk in winter it’s beautifully atmospheric but very murky.
There are some Fens which are run as their own sites, such as Wicken Fen and Lopham Fen, so have better walking trails and board walks to help with the mud. These Fens are also home to the famous Konik ponies – and if you watched the latest David Attenborough documentary, they were featured!
Driving in the Fens is normally OKish as the roads are well protected. That said, most of the smaller roads run to the side of waterways, and it’s common to have flooded roads especially in the areas around Ely- it drives me nuts as during rainy periods it’s rare I can drive anywhere beyond the main A-roads without a detour at some point!
