Just Plain Magical

   People often ask why I love living out here in the fens of East Anglia when in their eyes it's just flat and boring, well yes it may be flat and open and famed for the strong winds that can make the area seem very wild at times, but for me it's a beautiful place in its own right. At this time of year when the autumn slowly passes into winter, often you hear people moan as they feel temperatures fall and darkness fill the evenings but the fens still have many magical things to show, one being those huge beautiful sunsets that every dusk seems to produce.
   Below are just a few of the amazing evening skies that have entertained artist for hundreds of years and have blessed those hardened fen tigers and fenners for many a generation, they are the fen signs that show winter is around the corner.

  How can people not understand why I love the fens? 

The Village of Welney

   The village of Welney is situated on the Ouse Washes. well known for the famous Wildfowl and Wetland Trust that sits just outside the village. The Washes were a very important part of Welney life, they were once very popular with the wildfowlers who shot vast numbers of duck using their huge long punt guns and fishing kept many families feed with large amounts of Eel being traped. Both Ducks and Eel were sent off to London markets.

   Welney and the Washes were also the centres of ice skating in England with Welney boasting a World champion and several British champions the skaters being depicted on the village sign.
   Surrounded by the black peat fens Welney is in a very rich area of agriculture with many different crops grown from the common cereals such as Wheat and Barley to the more unusual crops like Lavender and Thyme and of course the king of autumn crops the pumpkin.
   The parish church of St Mary is worth a stop, it was constructed in 1848 from Norfolk Carrstone, it has a Victorian Gothic design and is set in a long narrow graveyard next to a large water tower on the main street that runs through the village.

   The village did have a nice primary school but it was closed a few years back, the building still stands empty. There are no shops in the village now and there is one remaining public house, Lamb & Flag which has a very popular restaurant serving both hot and cold meals along with traditional ales supplied by the local brewery, Elgoods. The Lamb & Flag is situated on the main street making it an ideal stop off point for cyclists with friendly staff and a nice beer garden. I must have cycled through Welney hundreds of times over the last two years some when the frost lay on the black soil, some when mist hung over the river and many when the warm fen sunshine lit those huge blue skies every time I think of those hard fen tigers who lived off the Washes and all they produced. How different their world must have been, the cold, the wet and every day struggle to place food upon the table I read of these hard folk who lived such lives and understand fully why they had the name "Fen Tigers"