Dawn breaks over a drowned land. Ahead of me, Welney Causeway – one of only three roads across the Ouse Washes – disappears into watery darkness. Waves slap against half-submerged willow pollards, markers of dykes and field boundaries in drier times.
Unwisely, I step off the tarmac. The ground sinks beneath me. What appeared to be mown grass in the shadowy blush of first light is, on closer inspection, a floating skin of water mint leaves and duckweed; a quaggy verge that embodies the ambiguous nature of fenland, described by William Gilpin in 1772 as “half water – and half land – a sort of vegetable fluid”.
