Foul Anchor bridge

We spent our Bank Holiday morning hunting for slender hare's ear at a site close to the remote village of Foul Anchor, which is tucked away between the North Level Main Drain and the River Nene, close to the border between Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. It is said to get its unusual name form the strong currents in that part of the Nene, that rip out the anchors of any boats moored there.

This tiny hamlet is surrounded by feats of engineering that historically enabled converion of the wild marsh into the current intensively farmed landscape. The rivers have been straightened and the engineers responsible are commemorated in names such as Kindersley's Cut, which was started in 1722, but wasn't completed for another fifty years, thanks to the politics of the day. Other lengths of river have more prosaic names such as the Nene Outfall Cut.

This is a landscape of straight lines, glistening mud, swirling water, sluices and pump houses. My image today is part of a footbridge over the North Level Main Drain, a vestige of Victorian elegance among the wheat fields, which has clearly been subject to regular repairs. When I first approached the bridge there were two buzzards circling in the air above it, a raptor that would have beenvery rarely seen in the fens twenty years ago, and would certainly not have been resident.

Despite the man-made nature of the landscape, parts of it are surprisingly rich in wildlife. We were surprised to find some rather good quality calcareous grassland on the west bank of the Nene, with a colourful mix of hairy hawkbit, field scabious, quaking grass and common mouse-ear, while further south there was frequent burnet saxifrage and spiny restharrow.

Our search for the slender hare's ear in Lincolnshire was fruitless, with the former location overtaken by rank grasses. But we strayed out of Lincolnshire, and visited the only area of saltmarsh in Cambridgeshire. This was cattle grazed and proved a much more suitable hunting ground - we located a large colony of slender hare's ear, growing in a sward of sea couch, buckshorn plantain and strawberry clover.