A walk led by school children in Year 6 around Fens VillageB Village in the Fens in East Anglia

During this visit, we walked with a group of 10 children with and 2 teaching assistants. This walk takes place on the 16th of December after lunch on a cold but clear winter’s day very near the end of the term. Christmas is in the air, decorations and Christmas lights adorn the houses and the streets and influence the children’s conversations as we walk.

We set off in the wrong direction first but changed when we realised. This route went round the North of the village past the children’s play area and then down to some farm fields and then back to the school via the garden centre that the children were very keen to show us.

As we set off one boy talks about how he had moved from where he used to live in the village to a village further away when he was around six years of age.

The playground behind the school is only just being built. 'That park's surface's not down yet, it's literally only about 5 months old.' I ask what was there before; 'Before it was just a big circle.'

We head onto Broadway and from there towards Little Field; 'Are we going through the fields? I sometimes go that way when I'm bored; I saw a deer in there once.' Another girl asks, 'Can we go through that field'; the first girl replies no, because we'd destroy all the crops. We ask what kind of crops: 'cabbages – I've been there.'

I'm told that people take their dogs for walks along here, which leads one of the boys to remark 'Watch out for dogs!', and joke about health and safety.

We passed a number of dogs on the walk. Their interactions with strange dogs and dog feces have an impact on them, creating memories which they recall and recount. So one boy told a story as follows: ‘I walked up to a tree right and I was sitting right next to it and a dog came up and I went hello doggie, and it started peeing on my leg!’

Another girl whose house was on the corner before the fen farm talked about walking her dog around the farmer’s field. This clearly forms a significant element of her awareness of place.

These children were quite keen to point out where they lived. They made reference to where their friends live too and also were family members live (‘my stepsister’s grandma lives down there!’). For these older children their homesteads and those of their friends seemed a vibrant strand in the tapestry of their sense of place.

Along Hinton Way, we ask the children to stand for a minute in silence with eyes shut, then ask them what they heard: ‘birds’ ‘a plane; ‘The tree in the wind’; ‘I heard the water in the ditch’. We also ask them what they smelled: One boy says, ‘Fresh air’, but then another answers, ‘I smelled dinosaur poo, It smells; it is called coprolite’. The children had done some schoolwork on coprolite and its impact in the region and they brought these thoughts into the conversation; making it a visceral part of the way they experienced place.

In fact, one of the boys who carried an audio recorder spends much of the walk pointing out dinosaurs that he can see as we walk along. He talks about the ‘Dinosaur Costco’ which is a shop with a big dinosaur guarding it and he continually points out the dinosaur that is following. ‘Did you see the T.Rex over there?’ he asks.

When we reach the fen farm fields: ‘Look at that view! I can see Ely Cathedral.’ The boy who had been pointing out the dinosaur says: ‘Look, there is a dinosaur on top of it!’

When we asked about the way they think the view would change in a hundred years’ time they said: ‘I think there will be lots of buildings’, and ‘there will be floating buildings’ – this reference prompted by the children having heard about flood risk in the area. ‘Oh, and flying cars. My auntie saw one, they are already building them, she is a scientist and she flies all over the world.’

Afterwards, one of the girls goes back to the subject of what you can hear; 'You can hear that water in the drain [drainage ditch]'; she enjoys geocaching, and says that they've been geocaching down here, before explaining how geocaching works; she then breaks off her explanation after finding a rock: 'I think I've found a fossil!'

From these fields we head back through the village. As we walk, two of the girls ask why the cemetery at the church is not on the route: 'It's a good space, you can see who's died and when and how old.' We are heading towards the garden centre which many of the children had singled out as particularly important in their sense of place. On the way we walk along a narrow bush-lined lane. All of the children who we ask have been here before: 'I come down this way with my dog'; 'My dad and me and my sister like coming through here to pick blackberries.'

Here we pass the entrance to a place called Doghouse Grove. Oddly, when we did the mapping exercise with these students they did not identify this as a destination but in subsequent conversations it emerged as a very important part of their childhood in this village and they were thoroughly disappointed that we were not going to be going there. Subsequent to the walk, research reveals that the space is in fact a wildlife reserve that used to be monks’ fishing ponds but now consists of an ash tree spinney for public walks and exploration.

We also pass an electricity substation with a sign that is read out: ‘Danger of Death!’. This is formed into a sort of a chant which is repeated by a couple of boys as we walk along. ‘Danger of death, danger of death!’, they sing.

We are now coming up to the garden centre and they start to talk about their memories of the place. They mention that Santa’s Grotto is there. Some of the children come here with their families to get a Christmas tree. They tell us that they are excited by this place because: ‘you can come here to get sweets. You can just walk around and look at all the cool stuff', ‘like trees’ and ‘water fountains’ and so on. There is clearly great enthusiasm for this place. Tellingly, there's a great deal of disappointment when they realise that we're not actually going in to the garden centre on our walk, just standing at the entrance to it.

We do another sensory exercise at this spot and they talk about hearing the cars, and an aeroplane and so on. There is some disagreement about the sense of smell: one child comments on the 'Fresh air', but another says 'I smelled a car when it went past.'

We then head back to the school. On the way we pass a pub which is remarked on for its Sunday roasts.

As we had moved back from the farm fields, through the village, and behind the houses, it was notable that some of the children's enthusiasm had dimmed; they didn't offer as many remarks, or respond to questions (either from ourselves or the Teaching Assistant) as freely. A couple of them even started to ask when we'll get back to school. Nevertheless, as we near the school gates, one boy remarks, ‘This is much better than regular lessons. We have been out for like an hour.’