Last evening I went to see Francis Pryor the guy who discovered Flag Fen, author of non fiction books Britain BC series & The Making of the British Landscape, and now Time Team archaeologist. His latest book is fiction which is new venture into crime.

A really enjoyable evening and I must say I came away thinking more about our East Anglian Landscape, being East Anglian born and bred I am passionate about our landscape, OK it does not have mountains, has a few undulating hills, but we have the biggest skies and largest areas of wetland habitat than most of the British Isles, but one thing Francis said that I had not really thought about before is that we live in the most changed landscape in the British Isles (I may use this in my swan talks at Welney).

He said if you had stood here 100 years ago you would not have recognised the landscape around you, go back another 100 years and the same again, 4oo years ago and completely changed, I had not actually thought about this and of course he is correct, if I went back to Cumbria 100 years ago I would still see the fells that you can see there today and even 1000 years ago I bet I could still recognise them, but East Anglia? just look at the fens, 400 years ago it was largest wetlands in western Europe, but due to the draining of the fens in the mid 1600’s which continued until the 1800s the landscape was transformed to the large arable land we have today, which some reports say in places we only have about 60 years of peat left, so it is ongoing an ever changing landscape, will we be able to recognise this landscape in 100 years time, who knows, but it occurred to me to understand this landscape I need to understand the history, but in the meantime I will enjoy it as much as I can.

Summer crops in a Cambridgeshire field, could these now be the ingredients of a local pint I shall be drinking tonight?

Sunset over the washes Dec 2014

One of the drains that surrounds Woodwalton fen