Fenland

9 December 2015
I am heading for the Nene and Ouse Washes in the Great Level. This is how Wikipedia describes it:

"The Great Level of the Fens is the largest region of fen in eastern England: including the lower drainage basins of the River Nene and the Great Ouse, it covers about 500 sq mi (1,300 km2). It is also known as the Bedford Level, after Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, who headed the so-called adventurers (investors) in the 17th-century drainage in this area; his son became the first governor of the Bedford Level Corporation."

The trucks have gone and in their place are other huge machines - vegetable harvesters, diggers, tractors with trailers piled high with root crops. The roads are ruled across a dead flat  landscape of black earth and huge arable fields. They progress in sharp right-angle bends to the next straight. It is a cold clear night in December, and with no town near, and a crescent moon,  the stars seem closer. I drive for 5 or 6 miles in a line so straight that the wheel could be locked in position if it were not for the humps and troughs where shrinking peat has bucked the edges of the road.

I am heading for a place called Eldernell. Here is Wikipedia again:

"The Nene Washes are a Special Protection Area along the River Nene in the English county of Cambridgeshire. They consist of a number of washlands such as Whittlesey Wash or Guyhirn Wash, which can be deliberately flooded to protect settlements or more important farmland when the river is high.
They extend for around 21 kilometres (13 mi) east of the City of Peterborough and cover more than 15 square kilometres (3,700 acres). The washes are significant for their over-wintering populations of Bewick's swan (Cygnus columbianus bewickii) and pintail (Anas acuta).
The RSPB owns and manages 500 hectares (1,200 acres) of the Nene Washes.,with public access at Eldernell."

The GPS on my phone doesn't seem to understand how to navigate in these parts and when I finally  get to the end of a narrow lane and the tiny hamlet of Eldernel I find a giant digger slowly being unloaded from a truck which completely fills the road. There is nothing to be done but wait. It's around 15:00 and the light is beginning to fade. At last the low-bed truck moves on and I get to the little car park where the RSPB has a notice board. There are a couple of other cars there as well as the low-loader who is signalling to me to move so that he can reverse and turn round. I look out at the promised land of swans and ducks and see nothing but farmed grassland - and surprisingly dry grassland. Clearly the big rains have not got this far east. It's the floods which bring the birds.
 There is a youngish man with a big lens so I ask him what is to be seen:
"Oh, there's very often a short eared owl, but not today."
"Is it too late now?"
"No, it might be worth waiting a while, but the light's no good for pictures, so I'm off now."
It's been a long drive so I put the boots on and go for a brisk walk along the dead straight line of the dike. There is very little of anything to be seen. This is the kind of place that nobody comes to after dark so potentially good to park up for the night. I could be here at dawn, but the wash is not flooded, it's still barely four o'clock so in the end I decide to drive on to Welney and the Ouse washes.