Heading back to Cambridge from Ely, we spotted a sign to Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve. Ever since reading about Hereward the Wake as a child, I had been fascinated by fenland environments. (At the time, I sided with Hereward, little realising that my genome has a powerful Viking and Norman signal.)
Later, when I was on advisory boards for the old Nature Conservancy Council and, later still, for Anglian Water, I heard a good deal about Wicken Fen, without ever quite finding my way there.
So we were initially disappointed, having found our way there as the day wound down, to see a sign saying that the reserve closed at 17.00. We had arrived at 16.59. But the women manning the visitor centre said that, while the centre itself was closing, we could wander at our heart’s pleasure (or is it leisure?) through the fens. So we did, with dazzling cloud displays all the while.
Joy.
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