Fen School A, Walk 6

Setting off through the school gates, one of the girls in the group states her goals for the walk straight away: “I hope we get to play on the green – there are some great climbing trees”. The green she’s referring to is a grassy area, with trees, at the heart of a close of 1950s houses. When the children had been planning their walks, we asked them to bring in photos of their ‘special places’, and this girl had brought in a photo of ‘her tree’ on the green, planning the route of the walk to pass by where the photo had been taken. The children set off ahead in the lead, avoiding the road we had supposed they might take, instead winding their own way shortcuts to get to the close: “Oh, short cut! I know the way”. We squeeze through a gap between two garages. Pointing along the narrow space, one boy tells me, “I found a den here, it was about 100 years old”.

Having reached the close, one of the children tells off the others for walking on the grassy areas in front of the houses (the front gardens in the close are not fenced): “you do know you’re standing on someone’s garden?” Then attention then turns from the apparently ‘owned’ garden area to the ‘shared’ grassy area at the heart of the close. The girl for whom this was a special place leads us to the tree which she calls ‘her’ tree: “I like to climb it, put sheets up and make a den”.

We continue our way along a footpath at the end of the close. As we walk along, one of the girls calls out, “look out for the ditch at the end!”, and we're told a story about how one of the girls in the group had once cycled out along this path, missed the sharp right angle turn, and gone straight into the ditch. From here, you can see the A10; one of the boys in the group actually lives at the other side of the A10 and you can see his house from here, but this prompts a discussion about where Fens VillageA ends; it's agreed by all (except the boy whose house it out beyond the road) that Fens VillageA ends at the main road. The cars speeding along mark a clear barrier to movement and exploration, and somehow the road seems out of place in the context of the village: the boy who had been carrying the camera at this stage remarked, “I'm closing it because I don't want to see the road, it's modern.” As we continue to walk and talk, it becomes clear that the commuting patterns of some of the children who live outside of the village partly create this sense of a village starting at the main road: at the turn-off from the A10 into the village, one boy explains “I scoot down here to school... my mum drops me off there and my brother scoots as well”, showing us the place where his independent movement through the village begins.

As the walk continues along these children’s chosen route, we move back through the heart of the village and out into farmland, and are shown more trees along the way. “This is my friend’s personal tree. Can I show you my personal tree?” They explain to us that they had also helped one of the girl’s brothers to find a tree, “because it wasn’t fair that he didn’t have one.” The children ask for permission to climb up these trees, but are gently discouraged from doing so by the school staff accompanying us on the walk. All the same, picking up sticks they wander off the path to run through football posts, investigate leaves, and hang off the trees.

Walking along a path at the edge of a farm, one boy declares indignantly, someone's smashed my little hut I built!”, before correcting himself: “Oh, no, it's still there.” There is a lot of splashing in puddles (calling out ‘muddy puddles’!). Again, this prompts memories of earlier explorations: “We were running this way, me and my sister. She fell in the mud flat, and it was all over her.”

We tentatively ask some questions about the region, and what “the fens” means to the children. The overwhelming flatness of the landscape is key: “You can see the view, you can see it all because it's so flat you can see everywhere.” While there is some awareness within the group of the history of the landscape, and its character as wetland before it was drained for arable farming – one girl, for example, telling us when asked about the past, “it was all covered in water and it was boats around and Ely was an island” – the children’s own focus is very much on the landscape of the present day. In particular, the children dwell on the importance of drainage ditches. Walking along, two boys chat with us about their knowledge of the ditches: “When farmers have flooded fields they put ditches in so they don't flood as much”; “see this ditch? It never flows”. Another calls out that the ditch is “infested with rats”, only for his friend to respond “no actually, this world is infested by humans”. As we’re having this conversation, one of the girls rushes up to us, breathlessly announcing that one of the group just fell into the ditch. We must have been taken in by this ruse, as she then cracks up laughing and says “You should have seen your face!”

On the way back to school, we pass by a resident of the village rebuilding his garden wall. “On a nature walk are you?” he asks, before asking some them to identify a couple of species of tree in the locality. One boy shyly identifies some of the trees, and it was interesting to see this knowledge emerge unexpectedly in the context of this encounter; but it is only when we are walking along further that he goes into more detail about his extensive knowledge of trees, again linking this back to his own experiences, remarking that “you can make a really good fire with silver birch.”