Circuit from Denver to Fordham and the River Wissey

This circuit could be combined with the circuit from Fordham and the circuit from Hilgay to form one walk of around 12.5 miles. This walk (or the entire circuit) can be walked from the Fen Rivers Way at Denver Sluice, though we actually started from our house in Denver village (close to Denver Windmill). If you start at Denver Sluice, cross the A.G. Wright Sluice and walk along Sluice Road towards Denver village. Denver Windmill soon comes into sight and you reach it shortly after crossing the railway line; the mill is(or was) open to the public and has its own tea shop (though, sadly, the sails shown in the photograph are no longer there). From here you can either walk straight down Sluice Road until you reach the Bell Inn, and then turn right onto Whin Common Road, or you can turn onto Sluice Common (just before the windmill, opposite Hollies Farm) and head off on a footpath to the left (just behind the windmill) that emerges onto a track behind modern houses - then follow straight ahead (behind the medieval Manor Farm) then right and left to emerge on Whin Common Road. The track can also be reached by turning right at various points as you approach the village: onto Brady Close (and then through a cut-through at the bottom of Brady Gardens), onto a footpath soon after Brady Close, or onto a track immediately after Manor Farm.

Once you reach Whin Common Road keep going until you're within sight and sound of the A10, then turn right onto Whin Common. The common used to be quite overgrown (and a good source of blackberries in the autumn) but when we walked this way in April 2009 we discovered that there has been a lot of clearance - thankfully they had left some of the eponymous whin (gorse) bushes. There was also new fencing in evidence, which may mean that they are going to graze the common (a good thing) but also that our route off the common at its southern end may be barred in the future. For now, there was a convenient break in the fence and we walked beside farm land to reach the A10 opposite the gatehouse to the Ryston Estate. [Note added April 2020: there is still an exit from Whin Common here and even if this is barred in the future, there is a path on the outside of the fencing along the side of the common that is furthest from the A10.]

We walked a short distance alongside the A10 then turned right onto a 'by-road' past the Old Rectory at Southacre. There are peacocks here, though the only one visible as we walked past quickly retreated into the grounds of the house as we approached. But this is a pretty country lane; you cross the former railway line and several attractive farms and country houses and then keep straight ahead at a post box, as the road turns to the left to pass the Church. You turn right by Border House and then left to walk past a car park that we use when walking the Fordham circuit. This track soon crosses the Cut-Off Channel (used to transfer water between Denver Sluice and Essex). To follow the Fordham circuit at this point you turn left across farmland, with the Cut-Off Channel a short distance to your left. However we turned right onto a tree-lined track, past Twelve Acre Covert.

The track does a dog-leg around some farm buildings and emerges at a bungalow by the track down to the old Fordham Pumping Station. When the children were small we used to go on May morning walks led by the Denver, Ryston, Roxham and Fordham Village Trust, with breakfast at the Pumping Station. It was once steam powered, though I think a diesel pump had been installed prior to the pumping station's replacement by a far smaller, modern station. In addition to the entrances to the bungalow and the pumping station there are two tracks at this point - you want the left hand one of the two, across very black fen soils then past Harold Covert (where we saw two deer); then it is just a short scramble up the bank to the River Wissey.

The Fordham circuit rejoins the route at this point (coming along the River Wissey from the left) but we turned right along the bank of the river, passing underneath a railway bridge and soon reaching the Great Ouse, with Ouse Bridge Farm and the route of the Fen Rivers Way in the section between Denver Sluice and Brandon Creek on the opposite bank. We turned right along the bank of the Great Ouse; the grass was quite long so our boots and trousers were soon wet through, but it was otherwise pleasant walking.

We eventually reached Environment Agency land at Denver Sluice, with moorings for cruisers and good views of the sluices, Denver Sailing Club and the Jenyns Arms. The various waterways, sluices and locks at this point are remarkably complicated. The path crosses the impounding lock (used to raise the water level at this end of the Cut-Off Channel and so to reverse the flow direction so as to supply water to Essex) and emerges back onto Sluice Road.

Note that this walk is one of those rediscovered as a "Coronavirus walk" in April 2020, first walked as one of that strange time's "Easter walks".