Brandon Creek to Denver Sluice and home
Walked by Sally and Richard, Tuesday 29th December 2015
9 miles of walking (3.25 hours) including 7.5 miles on route of Ouse Valley Way
Click here for all our photos from this walk.
Today we walked home! We also completed the final leg of the Ouse Valley Way (having walked from Denver Sluice to Kings Lynn earlier in the year) so there was a real sense of satisfaction. I'd both underestimated the length of the walk and mis-remembered after looking up the JordanWalks page for the reverse leg. In my mind the walk was about 7 miles long, so I was slightly surprised that it took us more than 3 hours and also by how tired I felt when I got home. Having said that, it was a very pleasant walk, if not thrilling. It was another mild and sunny morning, and the going was not so muddy as recent walks have been, nor so wet underfoot as yesterday,
We drove down the A10 to the the Brandon Creek picnic area (TL604913) and we were walking by 8.45. Fishermen were just setting up on the opposite bank. We walked along the river bank to The Ship Inn, then right around the pub, so as to go right to the confluence of the River Little Ouse with the River Great Ouse, which is what happens at Brandon Creek - presumably so-called because the Little Ouse goes to Brandon. We have walked along the Little Ouse before, but today's aim was to continue on the Great Ouse, so we headed back up the pub driveway and used the A10's bridge to cross the tributary, and so to pass from Cambridgeshire into Norfolk, declared to be "Nelson's county".
We climbed back onto the river bank and veered slightly away from the A10, next to an old section of road. A family of two swans and two cygnets were progressing along the river at about the same speed as us. We stopped for a chat with a man who was standing watching the swans. He seemed to think we'd be better walking on the opposite bank (difficult from here given that we crossed the nearest bridge to the south at the beginning of yesterday's walk) and that we would encounter a batch of brambles on today's walk - we never did find them! It is however entirely possible that the better route from Littleport is up the west bank of the Great Ouse all the way to Denver.
At the end of the by-passed section of road, the river bank was blocked by a portacabin and a wire fence; we'd expected to have to walk along the A10 for a short distance, so we were not disappointed. We passed a couple of houses, but the route was then signposted back to the river bank, up a slightly overgrown passageway (perhaps this was the "brambles"? though if it had been too overgrown we could just have stayed on the road slightly longer). We rejoined the river and passed an old pumping station which, curiously, had a caravan inside. Perhaps it is being renovated?. We then walked past the moored boats at Denver Cruising Club and left civilisation and the A10 behind us. There were views back to the village of Southery and to the Wissington Sugar Factory (known locally as "Wissey").
We were walking up above good black fenland soil. We weren't actually entirely away from civilisation; "Ten Mile Bank" runs up the other side of the river and we passed the wind turbine for a pumping station, then the tops of occasional farms which are mostly built below the level of the river. The buildings became more frequent as we approached the centre of the village of Ten Mile Bank and "Hilgay Bridge" (which is not in Hilgay...). We climbed up to the road ("Modnay Bridge Road") and crossed Hilgay Bridge then turned right along Ten Mile Bank towards Denver Sluice.
After a mile or so we passed under the railway by Ouse Bridge (a section of line we know very well) and, by Ouse Bridge Farm, we passed the confluence of the River Wissey with the Great Ouse. Another mile brought us to the Denver Sluice Complex, with a series of welcoming signs which we hadn't seen before. No doubt these read completely sensibly if you are on the river, but from the landward side they read "Complex" "Denver" "To The" "Welcome". Also relatively recent is the home of the Two Rivers Brewery, though that's not signposted on the ground.The "Denver Sluice Complex" hasn't always been a "Complex" but it does include several sluices, controlling the flow of water from the fens and protecting our house from flooding. The flood defences here date back to the work of Cornelius Vermuyden in the 17th Century and have featured in fiction (e.g. Dorothy L. Sayers "The nine tailors"). The operation today (which - thankfully - seems to work) is complicated; there is a nice description here.
We crossed Denver Sluice and said goodbye to the route of the Ouse Valley Way heading north, then we crossed the AG Wright Sluice and walked down Sluice Road to the village, passing the rather sad-looking Denver Windmill; the sails were removed following an accident in 2011.
