Brandon to Lakenheath Fen and return

Amazingly, for the third consecutive week, my one free day was the one day of the week with lovely weather, and we were able to get out walking. As we drove to Brandon, the low Sun and mist made for slightly tricky driving, but it was beautifully atmospheric. We parked at Brandon Station, off the A1065 (it is slightly difficult to find the entrance to the station car park, but there is masses of space and it's free!) and set off on the walk at 9am. The mist had already cleared and it stayed sunny all day.

We walked down Brandon High Street, crossing the Little Ouse River, and we turned right onto a passageway almost opposite the point at which we emerged from Gashouse Drove last Sunday. The first part of the walk required careful map reading (we're getting used to the lack of Hereward Way signs, but today there was also a shortage of footpath signs of any sort). We meandered our way around common land, a sports field and allotments on the outskirts of Brandon, getting slightly lost betwixt allotments and the sewage works! Thereafter we were on tracks and lanes, and 'private, no entry' signs were very helpful in helping us to identify the route that we were allowed to follow.

After meandering our way down Smallfen Lane and up Sandy Drove, we turned onto Chalk Road and followed this all the way to Lakenheath Station. When we walked between Brandon and Lakenheath Station earlier in the year, we had assumed that this 'road' would be boring (so on that occasion we walked in one direction only ad chose to walk along the river). Wrong! It was a delightful track and as we followed it we observed the transition from breckland to fen. We crossed the Cut-Off Channel (not much water in it here) and then emerged onto the B1112 north of Lakenheath, and turned right towards Lakenheath Station.

Chalk Road is close to the railway line but no trains had passed us, so we were beginning to think that there must be engineering works today. However, as we approached Lakenheath Station, the level-crossing barriers (now automatic in contrast to when we were here just 10 months ago) went down and a train passed - perhaps we were just too early for trains until now! After crossing the railway, we passed the entrance to the RSPB reserve at Lakenheath Fen, and crossed the Little Ouse River by way of Wilton Bridge.

Then the fun began. The path was rather overgrown and it rapidly became obvious that very few others walk this way (though we were here in January and it was not so bad then). We emerged at a fishing lake with boats moored on the river, and a man from one of the boats warned us that walking along the next stretch was 'serious'. He wasn't wrong - in the next couple of miles we encountered an overgrown path, a bull in a field with cows and bullocks, and an electric fence with an extremely wobbly stile over it.

As we and the river passed underneath the railway, the challenge was mud! We wanted lunch and the best 'bench' available was an unused stile. A little further on, the path by the river again became very overgrown, so we hopped (?) over a barbed-wire fence and followed a much easier path through woodland to Brandon Sluice (where we had to hop back over the barbed-wire fence). From Brandon Sluice the path by the river became much clearer and we returned to Brandon High Street and thence to the car.

Following leg