Loads of leeks

For once the sun shone all day, so after a morning trip into town for Pete and me to get one or two remaining presents (which also involved browsing the local art shop and a very pleasant cup of coffee), Pete, Chris and I headed out to the Great Fen to do their newly opened 'Last of the Meres' trail.

This took us to places that we'd never been before including the edge of the former Whittlesey Mere, which was the largest lake in lowland Britain before it was drained in the mid nineteenth century. Interestingly you can still see traces of the lake in the thick layer of whitish marl visible on ditch sides, which were deposited by the generations of stoneworts, which had dominated the bed of this shallow, calcareous water body. There is still a shallow depression marking its former location, which was under arable cropping until a few years ago, when it was bought by the Great Fen Trust and is now being restored to damp grassland.

Further on we walked along the old course of the River Nene, and then along the Engine Drain, where we spent some time watching a pair of short-eared owls hunting over the rough grassland. Unfortunately they were quite distant, so the few photographs I took weren't that good. I've included one in the extras, just to remind me of the day. We also saw three Chinese water-deer in this area.

The next stretch of the walk passed through arable land, where I was rather taken by these neat rows of leeks, and the huge flock of starlings that were flying in the background. Our various stops meant that it was dusk before we returned to the car, but as we were on our last approach a barn owl swooped silently over my head, before flying low over the field in search of voles - pure magic... The walk reminded me how much wildlife there is in the Great Fen, and what a pleasure it is to walk in winter, when the weather's dry and not blowing a gale!