Review: Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire; a fascinating place to visit

To gain an insight into the wildlife of the Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, it pays to take to the water.

I do so in the company of Ralph Sergeant, who, with his East Anglian accent and long beard, is a fenman straight out of Central Casting. 

He worked at Wicken for over 30 years before his retirement, but he’s still on hand to share his knowledge when the need arises.

He’s also a dab-hand at steering the reserve’s 10-metre-long, electrically powered boat.

Painted green, this is similar to the craft local people would have used 100 years ago to transport material harvested from the fen to Cambridge – 30 miles to the south. Flat-bottomed and rounded at both bow and stern, their design can be traced back to the Vikings.

The boat slips silently along the Wicken Lode; even the language is distinctive in these parts, ‘lode’ being a word for ‘way’ or ‘course’ that dates back to Anglo-Saxon or even Roman times.

Such residents of former centuries have left their mark on the legends of the region. One of these involves a ghostly Roman detachment, visible at dusk, their arms and armour clinking as they tramp past.

There are many more tales – of a missing Victorian policeman, believed dumped in the fen by a gang of villains, of the sinister Lantern Men – bent on luring travellers off the path and to a watery doom, and of Black Shuck – a giant dog that is said to haunt the area.

There might be more to this last than just local legend, Sergeant says: ‘We were cutting the sedge one day and we saw something large and black rise up from the undergrowth and run away.

‘When we got there the grass was flattened, you could see where it had been lying. And it was no deer, it was much larger than that.’

He doesn’t think he saw the legendary dog, however; more likely a big cat of some description, maybe an unwanted pet, attracted by the quiet isolation of the reserve.

A bird takes flight in front of us, rocketing on the wind away over our heads – tiny and becoming tinier by the second. ‘A snipe,’ says Sergeant, barely inclining his head.

A coot in the rushes

We follow the course of the waterway until we are looking down onto land acquired by the reserve in 2001 on one side and farmland on the other. The lode is now a good two metres above the level of the fields.

The fens were largely drained in the 18th century to create agricultural land, their peat soil perfect for growing vegetables but, exposed by generations of ploughing and planting that soil has eroded, leaving lodes such as this one stranded.

The peat, though, is vulnerable. Strong winds and exposure to air cause it to erode; which means carbon is released into the atmosphere.

In some places it is down to between 20cm and 50cm. At a rate of loss of one centimetre a year, the land will become less profitable fairly soon.

Peat loss, however, can he reversed over time. Many of the agricultural fields in these parts are kept artificially dry by pumping. End that process and the land will become wetter.

An appealing summer venue

Combine this with an increase in natural vegetation and gradually a centuries-old cycle of environmental destruction will end.

The policy at Wicken Fen is to let nature take its course. With changing habitat and rising water levels, species are returning.

It’s already possible to see otters, water voles, bitterns, avocets, hen harriers, cuckoos and sedge warblers. It’s an impressive list.