Route details, maps, pubs, features, local history and folklore for a wide variety of walks focusing primarily on Norfolk and Suffolk

Saturday, 7 November 2026

Fen Rivers Way - Downham Market to Ely

Great Ouse river approaching Ely

A 20 mile walk along the Fen Rivers Way between Downham Market and Ely

The walk follows the Great Ouse river through the fens. It is flat but nonetheless interesting, the landscape holding fascinating history and folklore.

Walk Statistics

  • Start location: Downham Market 
  • End location: Ely 
  • Distance:   miles (  km)
  • Total Gain:   ft (  metre)
  • Total Descent:   ft (  metre)
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  • Walk Time:  
  • Walk Grade: Moderate
  • Terrain: Footpath, country lane

Maps:

The following maps and services can assist in navigating this route. There are links to printed maps and links to downloadable GPX route data for importing into navigational software and apps.

 
Walk Notes

This walk was undertaken on a Sunday in late March. The original plan was to catch the train from Ely to Downham Market and then walk back. However, engineering works on the railway meant that the train service had been replaced by buses which delayed the start of the walk by 20 minutes.

The day had started grey and heavily overcast, and as we approached Downham Market, the heavens opened, releasing torrential rain. We were equipped with waterproofs, of course, but such heavy downpours can be somewhat dispiriting, particularly when walking across the Fens, where the wind has little to impede it as it whips across the flat, exposed landscape. Fortunately, by the time we alighted from the bus, the rain had virtually stopped, leaving only a fine drizzle. Even that had disappeared completely by the time we reached Denver Sluice.

Thankfully, the river banks are generally well drained, and despite the earlier deluge, the ground underfoot was neither waterlogged nor particularly muddy.

We encountered remarkably few people throughout the entire walk. Not even dog walkers, who seem to be a persistent feature on almost every walk we undertake. It made for a particularly quiet and peaceful journey through the Fenland countryside.

The walk took around eight and a half hours, including refreshment stops at The Ship Inn at Brandon Creek, which was bustling with Sunday diners, and a brief visit to The Swan at Littleport. The latter stop was primarily for the use of the facilities. There was no cask ale on offer, but it seemed only fair to pay for the privilege of the toilet by purchasing a cold keg beer. Not quite the same as a satisfying pint of traditional ale, but needs must!

We arrived in Ely just as the sun was setting, having completed a typically Fenland trek across an almost entirely flat landscape. Such is the nature of walking through the Fens that even the smallest feature can become a point of interest. Whether it is a church, an isolated building, a farmhouse, a bridge or even a moored boat, anything that breaks the seemingly endless flatness of the landscape attracts the eye.

Denver Sluice provided our first real point of intrigue, the church at Ten Mile Bank was an unexpected discovery, and The Ship Inn had a few tales of its own to tell. More about these can be found in the Features section of this page.

The hike reaches its peaceful conclusion at Ely Riverside, a vibrant, historic waterfront packed with moored canal boats, antique centres, and welcoming pubs including The Cutter Inn, a historic, multi-story riverside pub that has served travellers since the days of the commercial fenland barges.

All in all, despite the unpromising start and the occasional challenge presented by the weather, this was a thoroughly worthwhile walk. The Fenland landscape may appear sparse at first glance, but look a little closer and there is plenty to discover along the way.

Directions

The Fen Rivers Way is well signposted throughout. This follows the Great Ouse River, often swapping banks as it navigates to Ely. It can be walked with little navigational assistance.

  1. From Downham Market station, leave on the approach road down to the main road. Turn left, then over the roundabout and the river bridge. Before the road bends around to the left, there is a footpath on the right. Take this and follow to the river bank. Turn left and follow the river.
  2. At Denver Sluice, follow the road across the sluice and continue along this road (Ten Mile Bank) that follows the river floodbank.
  3. The road eventually comes to a crossroads. Turn left and go over the river bridge (Hillgay Bridge), then continue on the footpath along the riverside.
  4. The river and path will eventually follow the course of the A10 trunk road. First part of this is the pavement alongside the road, then switch to the broad verge until a lay-by on the right. Follow this until it re-joins the A10. Continue along the verge, over the river bridge and after a few yards there is the access road to the Ship Inn on the left. Take this up to the pub.
  5. The pub sits at the confluence of the Great Ouse and Little Ouse rivers. Go around the far side of the pub to pick up the footpath alongside the river bank of the Great Ouse.
  6. There is another lengthy section along the river bank alongside the A10 road until it meets the next river bridge. The path leads directly onto the bridge road and across the bridge. There is a staggered junction after the bridge, take the left junction for Littleport.
  7. Follow the road through to the railway crossing. Just before the crossing there is a track on the left with parking for a creek known as The Boat Haven. Take the and follow it around the railway side of the building then left to follow down the southern side of the creek and back onto the riverside path.
  8. The path emerges onto another road, with the Swan Inn on the left and a road bridge next to it. Go directly over the road onto the track and immediately turn left where a footpath through a gate leads down the side of a domestic garage and to the river side. Follow the the path in front of the riverside cottages. This all looks private but this is a public footpath. Continue along this next section of river.
  9. At the next road (Prickwillow Road) turn left and proceed over the river bridge. Just before the junction on the right, there is a sign for the Fen Rivers Way pointing down the road. In reality you need to proceed along the grassy bank alongside the river for a short distance to the railway, drop down to the road to go under the railway bridge, then back along the grassy bank on the opposite side.
  10. Keep to the riverside, past the next road bridge and then the next bridge is a metal footbridge with metal steps up to the span. Cross this bridge and follow the footpath as it passes through Roswell Pits Nature Reserve and then over the Cuckoo Footbridge. Follow the footpath past an industrial area on the left.
  11. Immediately after the industrial area, take the Fen Rivers Way footpath that leads away on the left. This leads back down to the riverside. Keep to the footpath which passes a marina on the opposite side of the river, then along the Ely river front where there are numerous eaterys.
  12. Continue through to the road, by the Ely High Bridge. To get to the station, turn right, proceed under the railway bridge and the station is on the left.
Pubs

The Ship Inn, Brandon Creek

Image of pub
Address
Brandon Creek, Littleport, Cambridgeshire PE38 0PP
Website
https://www.theshipbrandoncreek.com/

Situated at the confluence of the Great Ouse and Little Ouse rivers, the Ship Inn at Brandon Creek is a historic riverside free house steeped in local folklore, including connections to 17th-century murders and the “Black Sheet” regional legend where three traveling Irish laborers were hanged on suspicion of murder of the landlord and his wife in their beds. For full details of the legend see the Features section on this page.

Other local tales relate that Mark Twain once ‘sobered up’ at the pub and Cliff Richard, having moored up on a river cruiser, was turned away for not being appropriately dressed, having his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

Although a pub is reputed to have been on this site from the mid 17th-century, this was nothing more than a clay-walled tavern for the slave-labourers set up by the Dutch drainage engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, who was tasked with digging the new Bedford River. Folklore relates that the first innkeepers of this makeshift drinking hole were of Dutch origin. The first official recording of a licensee is that of Thomas Potter in 1794 which suggests the present building is from the very late 18th century.

The pub serves traditional British tavern fare such as a Sunday carvery, Ploughman’s platters, and vegetarian options, alongside rotating guest ales.

Features

Denver Sluice

Denver Sluice

Denver Sluice serves as a stark introduction to the surreal, engineered geography of the Fens. Here, the River Great Ouse intersects with an intricate hub of artificial relief channels and cuts, creating a massive water management complex that acts as the gatekeeper for the entire region. This spot marks the definitive boundary where the tidal river, vulnerable to the surges of the North Sea, meets the non-tidal, managed waters of the interior plains. Standing on the banks, you are treated to a fascinating display of civil engineering, where the sheer force of modern water gates, historic brick masonry, and churning channels layout a clear picture of the centuries-old battle to keep the surrounding farmland from slipping back into the marsh.

The historical weight of this site is immense, and it holds a central place in the narrative of British land reclamation. Originally conceived and built in 1651 by the legendary Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, the first sluice was a highly controversial structure that faced fierce resistance from local fenmen, who feared it would destroy their traditional fishing and fowling livelihoods. The structure actually collapsed in 1713, leading to devastating regional floods, before being brilliantly redesigned and rebuilt in the 1830s by the famed engineer Sir John Rennie. Today, it protects over 1,500 square miles of low-lying terrain from catastrophic flooding. For the modern walker, it is a perfect spot to pause early in the trek, watch the passing boats navigate the locks, and perhaps grab a quick drink at the nearby Jenyns Arms pub before heading south into the quiet, vast horizons of the river banks.

The engineering of the Fens was far from a peaceful transformation; it was a deeply contested battleground that pitted the mechanical ideals of the Enlightenment against a fiercely guarded way of life. When the Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden was commissioned by the Earl of Bedford and the ‘Gentleman Adventurers’ in the 1630s and 1650s, his grand vision was to tame what the elite viewed as an unproductive, waterlogged quagmire. Vermuyden’s strategy relied heavily on creating rigid channels, dykes, and the monumental first Denver Sluice in 1651. However, to the local fenmen, these artificial barriers were a direct threat to their entire existence. For generations, the local population had built a thriving, independent economy based on the natural cycles of the wetlands, relying on fishing, reed-cutting, and wild fowling.

This bitter clash gave rise to a legendary band of local guerrilla activists known as the “Fen Tigers”. Desperate to preserve their beloved marshlands, these local saboteurs launched a campaign of fierce resistance against the foreign ‘Dutchies’ and their construction crews. Under the cover of night, the Fen Tigers would smash recently erected dams, tear down dykes, set fire to brand-new bridges, and break open Vermuyden’s sluice gates to intentionally flood the reclaimed fields back into wetlands. They even refused to provide the manual labour required for the drainage schemes, forcing the investors to import outside workforces. Though the straight channels and modern concrete of Denver Sluice ultimately triumphed, the memory of the Fen Tigers’ defiance remains a proud piece of regional folklore, celebrated to this day on the official Fenland flag.

The Flag of the Fens featuring the Fenland Tiger

The early engineering also faced a volatile adversary in nature itself, illustrating a fundamental misunderstanding of the tidal mechanics of the Great Ouse. Vermuyden assumed that the freshwater rivers would seamlessly empty into his new cuts. Instead, blocking the natural tidal flow at Denver angered neighbouring trading hubs like King’s Lynn, whose merchants fiercely argued that the sluice choked their harbour by halting the natural river currents that swept away silt. The simmering civil dispute was abruptly settled by the river itself in 1713, when a massive tidal surge completely overwhelmed and demolished Vermuyden’s original sluice. For nearly four decades, the waters ran wild and the Fens suffered catastrophic regional flooding until Charles Labelye built a replacement in 1750. The enduring brick-and-stone structure that you cross today was ultimately constructed in 1834 by Sir John Rennie the Younger. Rennie’s robust design, featuring an elegant four-arched bridge and extended stone piers to form functional locks, finally created a harmonious balance between inland agricultural drainage, tidal flood defence, and river navigation.

References

  1. BeNorfolk article on Denver Sluice – Engineering Water. Detailed account of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden’s 1650s drainage scheme and the guerrilla tactics used by the local Fen Tigers
  2. Circato website article - Denver Sluice: The Battle That Threatened King’s Lynn’s River.Explores) The historical trade conflicts between King’s Lynn navigation and the drainage levels, the structural failure of 1713, and the subsequent 1834 reconstruction
  3. New Life Old West website article - A Brief History of the Fens. Highlights the livelihoods of the traditional fenmen, the sabotage of dykes and sluices, and the modern legacy of the Fen Tiger symbol
  4. Our Washes website article - Denver Sluice Technical and Historical Profile. Documents the precise chronology of the complex from Vermuyden (1651) to Charles Labelye (1750), and Sir John Rennie’s grade-listed four-gate lock modifications in 1834

Church of St Mark at Ten Mile Bank

The village of Ten Mile Bank takes its name from the length of the high earthen floodbank alongside which it is built. During the massive 1650s drainage works spearheaded by the Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, a major bottleneck of the River Great Ouse was heavily modified and straightened to accelerate the flow of floodwaters toward the sea at King’s Lynn.

The resulting man-made section of elevated embankment stretched ten miles from the newly constructed Denver Sluice down to the mouth of the River Little Ouse at Brandon Creek. Over time, the linear road and flood protection barrier built atop this dynamic stretch became known simply as the ‘Ten Mile Bank’. When an agricultural community and a scattering of windpumps sprouted along the riverside in the 19th century to cultivate the newly dried peat soils, the hamlet naturally adopted the name of the colossal engineering footprint it sat upon.

Church of St Mark at Ten Mile Bank

The Church of St Mark at Ten Mile Bank is a striking and literal reflection of the landscape it inhabits. Built between 1846 and 1847 directly on the west bank of the Great Ouse River, this Grade II listed chapel of ease was established by the Reverend W.J. Parkes to serve a rapidly growing local population. The expansion of drainage steam engines in the early 19th century had finally made the marshy fenland cultivable, bringing a huge influx of agricultural labourers, river workers, and railway builders to the area. Interestingly, the construction of this small yellow-brick, Early English Gothic Revival church was also a strategic move by the established Church of England to counteract the growing influence of the two Methodist chapels that had already taken root along the river crossing.

Because it was built on unstable, peat-heavy fenland, on the site of a former post-medieval windpump, the church shared the same fate as much of the local architecture: severe subsidence. By 2002, the ground shifts had caused such critical structural damage that the church was condemned, closed, and scheduled for demolition. Refusing to lose their riverside landmark, the tiny community of roughly 200 residents launched an eight-year campaign. They successfully raised over £250,000 in partnership with organizations like the Norfolk Churches Trust to micro-pile and stabilize the foundations. Reopened in 2009, St Mark’s stands today as an exceptionally well-preserved example of an early Tractarian church, retaining its original 19th-century pulpit, wall panelling, and beautifully carved poppy-head pews. For hikers on the Fen Rivers Way, its distinctive western bell turret serves as a welcoming visual anchor along an otherwise isolated, windswept stretch of the riverbank

References

  1. Norfolk Heritage Explorer website - St Mark’s Church, Ten Mile Bank, Hilgay Architectural and historical record profiling its construction over an 1836 windpump site and its subsequent 2007 structural stabilization
  2. Ouse Valley Benefice website. About St Mark’s, Ten Mile Bank. Details the church’s role in serving 19th-century railway and river workers, the 2002 closure due to fenland subsidence, and the community restoration project
  3. Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership blog. True Landscape Landmark. Discusses the impact of the 1819 and 1842 steam drainage engines on the local population and the rivalry between the new Anglican chapel and the existing riverfront Methodist chapels.

The “Black Sheet” legend

AI generated image depicting the key features of the legend

As the Fen Rivers Way reaches Brandon Creek, the serene meeting of the Great Ouse and Little Ouse rivers gives way to one of the darkest and most atmospheric chapters of Fenland folklore. Today, The Ship Inn offers a welcoming hearth for weary hikers, but its very foundations are tied to the brutal realities of the 17th-century drainage era. When Sir Cornelius Vermuyden began carving out the New Bedford River, local hostility forced him to rely on prisoners of war—including Dutch, French, and royalist Irish soldiers—subjected to harsh forced labour.

The grim reality of these fenland work camps, and the legendary true-crime mystery that birthed the regional “Black Sheet” legend, is vividly captured in Mike Petty’s compiled regional histories known as “Samuel Pickwick’s visit to Cambridge in 1838”. This is a creative historical framework constructed by the eminent Cambridge local historian Mike Petty MBE. While Samuel Pickwick is actually a fictional character from Charles Dickens’s 1836–1837 novel The Pickwick Papers, Petty uses the premise of an imagined September 1838 visit to explore real, documented stories of Dickensian-era Cambridge and the surrounding Fens through a series known as “Pickwick’s Cambridge Scrapbook.”

In this specific extract the character referred to as Peck is “Farmer Peck,” a fictionalized archetype of a veteran fenman from the village of Parson Drove. Farmer Peck is acting as an exceptional local storyteller who meets Mr Pickwick:

As Peck told it the only labour that Vermuyden could get as he strove to dig his newer Bedford River were prisoners of war - Dutch, French and Irish. After a day’s slave labour they would be treated to a miserable meal and herded into a rough shelter made of reeds with armed guards posted to ensure they stayed in. But one night two of the sentries died, half-strangled and then finished off with a bullet from their own rifles, as three Irishmen made their escape…

…Vermuyden arranged that a tavern should be built close by any stretch of new work they were starting so that the men could buy their ale easily… One such clay-walled pub was built where the Great Ouse and the Little Ouse combined, a spot called Brandon Creek… It was even lonelier in those days than it is now in the 1830s, and nobody cared to live in the tavern, but in the end an old man and his wife took it over. They hadn’t been there long before they were found murdered in their beds.

Suspicion focussed on the three Irishmen escapees and rumour went round that they were hiding up in Southery… They enchanted the locals with their tales and song, & turned the head of many a fen girl who was happy to submit to their charms. But one was not so easily wooed. She resisted their flattery - and she resisted most persistently when the Irishmen refused to take no for an answer. Her screams brought a crowd of fenmen to her rescue and the three Irishmen were trussed up hand and foot and carried into the fen for the soldiers to find. But no soldiers were willing to come looking until promises were given that they would be safe - on this one occasion. The men were found guilty of killing the old tavern keeper and his wife. The sentence was death and the execution would be carried out at the scene of the crime.

Two oak piles were driven into the bed of the river and a beam fixed between them. A boat was positioned under the beams, the three prisoners on deck, nooses round their neck… the river was tidal and as the tide ebbed, so slowly the boat dropped. They watched as the doomed men stretched themselves to their full height, watched as they stood on tiptoe and watched for all the two hours it took before the tide lowered the boat enough for the men to be swinging clear of the deck… And when it was finally over the gallows was dismantled and the beam used as the mantelpiece in the pub, where it still stands, a warning to all.

Regional oral histories recorded by groups like Heritage Alive! add a fascinating genealogical layer to this tragedy. They identify one of the escaped Irish prisoners as Johnny O’Hara, a member of a traditional Irish Traveller family swept up in Cromwell’s mid-17th-century military campaigns. According to local accounts, the bizarre ebbing-tide execution was carried out because the murdered innkeepers were a Dutch couple; wartime colonial protocol dictated that killing a foreign national meant you were executed in the manner of that victim’s country.

The trauma of this event permanently embedded itself into the landscape and the O’Hara lineage. Upon their eventual release from the drainage camps, surviving family members remained in Britain as Travellers. For centuries, they bore a white noose on a black background painted onto the back of their trailers as an enduring memorial to Johnny’s fate. Generations of his descendants maintained a solemn ritual: whenever passing Brandon Creek, they would hang a physical black sheet over the roadside hedges as a silent, visible reminder of the dark history hidden beneath the tranquil fenland waters.

Littleport Legend of King Canute

Looking south from the A10 bridge at Littleport

Historically, Canute and his queen, Emma of Normandy, were passionate patrons of Ely Abbey. The 12th-century chronicle Liber Eliensis explicitly notes that the King loved to travel to Ely by barge, specifically to hear the beautiful, echoing songs of the abbey’s choir. However, local lore records a specific winter journey where royal privilege collided sharply with the realities of the waterlogged wilderness.

According to the accounts preserved by Fenland folklorists like W.H. Barrett, Canute was traveling via a small punt across the swollen rivers of the Fens to catch eels for his wife. A sudden, fierce fenland squall caught his boat, blowing it wildly off-course until it ran aground near a high hill rising out of the marshes. Drenched and freezing, the King sought shelter at a nearby monastic cell or grange connected to the Abbey.

Unbeknownst to the King, the monks inside were deep in a chaotic, drunken revelry. Because he was dressed in standard traveling cloaks rather than royal finery, the heavily intoxicated monks failed to recognize their sovereign. Deeming the rain-soaked stranger an unworthy nuisance, they cursed at him, flatly denied him entry, and slammed the heavy oak doors in his face.

Seeking refuge further down the river bank, the shivering King knocked on the door of a humble mud-and-reed hut belonging to an impoverished local fisherman known in various texts as Legres (or Legge). Despite having almost nothing to his name, the fisherman immediately welcomed the stranger inside, warmed him by his peat fire, and shared a horn of ale and a simple meal.

As they sat by the fire, Legres, unaware of his guest’s true identity, poured out a dark history of local oppression. He explained that years prior, the very same dissolute monks from the monastery had brutalised his family. When Legres had attempted to defend his wife, the abbey’s men had brutally flogged him, and his wife later died in childbirth. For eighteen years, the fisherman had lived an isolated life on the marshy hill, nursing a deep, burning desire for justice against the corrupt religious house.

The next morning, an enraged Canute revealed his identity and summoned his royal fleet, which was moored further down the Great Ouse. He ordered his soldiers to descend upon the monastery. The dissolute monks were swiftly rounded up and punished, and their ill-gotten wealth was seized.

To ensure the abbey could never abuse the river workers again, Canute ordered the surviving monastic workforce to build a permanent, fortified fishing village on the high clay hill where the hut stood. Because of its modest scale compared to the grand Isle of Ely, the new settlement was named “Litelport” (Littleport). In a final act of poetic justice, Canute officially decreed that the humble fisherman, Legres, was to be installed as the absolute first Mayor of Littleport, granting the local peasants autonomy over their own stretch of the river.

Interestingly, this local folktale has been used by East Anglian historians—such as the regional Kingdom 1000 Project to explain the origins of Canute’s massive 1020 AD legal codes. Historians note that Canute’s real-world laws were surprisingly progressive for the early medieval period, establishing the rare right for poor peasants to directly petition the Crown. Regional tradition proudly claims that it was his night spent listening to the grievances of the Littleport fisherman that inspired the Viking King to guarantee equal legal protections for both the rich and the poor across Britain

Roswell Pits Nature Reserve

Cuckoo Bridge at the Roswell Pits Nature Reserve

Roswell Pits Nature Reserve is a fascinating, multi-layered highlight to feature in your travelogue. It sits at the intersection of industrial civil engineering, prehistoric palaeontology, and modern conservation wars. Before it became the peaceful wetland oasis hikers enjoy today, it was actually a bustling industrial zone heavily tied to the maintenance of the Fenlands.

The landscape here was completely inverted by human hands. Originally, this area wasn’t a low-lying lake system at all—it was a notable elevation known as Roswell Hill (or Roslyn Hills). Starting in the 17th century and peaking throughout the 1800s, massive excavations stripped the hill away to extract its valuable Kimmeridge and Gault clay.

Following Cornelius Vermuyden’s re-routing of the regional rivers, the surrounding peaty soils began to dry out, shrink, and sink below river levels. To stop the waterways from collapsing and flooding the new farmland, workers needed vast quantities of impervious, water-resistant clay to pack the flood banks. Because Roswell sat right next to the River Great Ouse, it became the primary quarry for the region.

The men who dug this heavy clay by hand were known as “gaulters”. Working in grueling teams of three, they filled wheelbarrows and pushed the heavy sludge down to waiting wooden fleets of flat-bottomed barges, or “lighters”. During its peak in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a loud, muddy landscape with at least 100 barges constantly operating out of the pits. Excavation only fully ceased in the late 20th century, leaving behind deep, hollowed-out craters that slowly filled with water to form today’s iconic lakes.

Because the excavations cut so deeply into the ancient northern outcrop of Kimmeridge clay, Roswell Pits became globally renowned as a Geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). As the gaulters hacked away at the earth, they inadvertently uncovered an astonishing prehistoric graveyard of Jurassic marine life from roughly 150 million years ago. The site yielded one of the UK’s most diverse collections of fossilised reptiles, including ancient crocodiles, prehistoric sea turtles, ichthyosaurs, and a complete, pristine skeleton of a plesiosaur. They even discovered the fossilised limb bones of a colossal sauropod dinosaur trapped in the deep shales. Many of these remarkable type specimens were preserved and can still be viewed today in the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge.

Once industry left the pits, nature rapidly reclaimed the void, transforming it into a vital 210-acre wetland habitat. However, its status as a tranquil sanctuary was almost lost in 2006 during a bitter community controversy. The largest lake was sold to a private owner who intended to clear the area to build commercial boat moorings and marinas for traffic coming off the River Great Ouse. Fearing the destruction of the delicate ecosystem, passionate local residents banded together to form a pressure group called Ely Wildspace. They launched a fierce legal campaign to halt development. The battle culminated in 2008 and 2009 when Natural England intervened, stepping in to legally expand the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) designation to protect almost all the former pits from development. Today, it is a completely protected biological haven managed alongside the Environment Agency. Thanks to the preservation efforts, walkers passing by can hear the rare, booming call of breeding bitterns, watch marsh harriers glide over the vast reedbeds, and catch the setting sun reflecting across the lakes with the silhouette of Ely Cathedral looming in the background.

Route Validation Cards

Validation Date - 2023-03-26

  • Time of Walk: 09:30:00 to 18:15:00
  • Validators: Griff, Kat
  • Weather Conditions: Drizzle at the start, overcast for most of the day clearing for some late afternoon sunshine
  • Notes: Initial route undertaken
Summary of Document Changes

Last Updated: 2026-11-07

  • 2026-11-07 : Initial publication

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