You can take a girl out of the fen . . .

. . . but you can't take the fen out of the girl


Today I led (with a lot of help from Cliff) my first walking route the Cambridge Rambling Club. I knew that a flat route is sometimes unpopular, but I hoped to win them over with a 14 mile circular route in my native habitat.

The route followed an ancient causeway through the fen before continuing along the banks of the Old West River.

 

The morning began cold and foggy; and although the sun was always there behind the milky air, the mist would not lift.

It gave the fen a deeply mysterious ambiance; it was easy to imagine Hereward and his followers waiting to ambush the unsuspecting Norman army, or the Fen Tigers* stalking the Dutch drainage engineers!

The ditch-side teasels shimmered with cobwebs spangled with beads of water.

And then the sun came out!

Casting long shadows over the fields.

You can follow the route (and see more photos) on fellow-walker Geoff's Everytrail site here.


Back home, hot bath, delicious Gloucester Old Spot pork chops for supper

and now for some spicy apple and pear crumble and ice-cream :-)

Celia
x

* Fen Tigers = indigenous inhabitants of the Fenland. In the 17th century the Duke of Bedford employed Dutch land drainage engineers to dig a vast system of drainage channels fed by 'windmills' pumping the water off the land. The local population who relied on the fish and water fowl for their survival, sabotaged the work and became known as 'Fen Tigers'.
The term has been adopted by the Mildenhall Speedway team, and more recently applied to 'big cat' sightings around the Cambridge and Fenland area.

True Fen Tigers still exist, Roger Giles has written an excellent description here. While delving around to compile this definition, I came across a song by Hobson's Choice "Fen Tiger and the Quarryman", which coincidentally was inspired by a 'meeting' in Over Fen . . . the afternoon section of my walk, where after major gravel extraction the Fen is being reinstated. You can listen to the song here and read the lyrics here, I think they perfectly describe the defiant character of the Fen Tiger.

Celia