In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
Ripped By mstoll
Using my 19th-century guidebook,
I'm continuing my journey from Brighton to North Norfolk,
today crossing the flat plains of Cambridgeshire.
And these broad lands would have been remote
before the arrival of the railways.
And possibly the best access would have been by boat.
On this stretch of the route, I'm following railway tracks
which opened up previously inaccessible parts of England.
Each day, I'll explore the places recommended to me
by my "Bradshaw's Guide".
On this journey, I'll be in for a rare rail treat.
Today is a very special day for me because of this bit of card.
This is called a driving cab pass,
and this means that between Downham Market and King's Lynn,
I get to ride in the cab with the driver.
I'll be hearing how Victorian technology
is still responsible for the safety of two counties...
The structure that we've got here
can hold back up to five metres' worth of tidal water.
If you imagine that five metres heading towards Ely and Cambridge,
it would cause catastrophic events up in all that populated area.
...and uncovering an ambitious Victorian plan to drain the Norfolk Wash.
The Wash is the estuary in the UK
which has the largest amount of land claimed from it.
Now it's a three-mile boat ride up the River Great Ouse
before you actually get to the Wash.
So far, I've travelled over 140 miles from Brighton
through London and Suffolk to Cambridge.
And now I'm heading north,
tracing a major commuter line through the Fens en route to the Wash.
Then I'll pass through East Dereham and Norwich
on the way to my final stop, Cromer.
Today I'm starting in Ely,
before continuing to Downham Market and the port of King's Lynn.
This length of track slices across some of Britain's most fertile landscape,
and it's a route I have reason to remember.
Many years ago, I tried to become the Member of Parliament
for the Isle of Ely.
And the name was a little puzzling because no island is evident.
But as my Bradshaw's Guide points out, and this was written in the 1860s,
"This fertile district less than a century ago was covered with water."
The Fens were a waterlogged marsh until they were drained
by a complex system of ditches, locks and pumps in the 17th century.
My guide says, "The whole of this extensive county
is penetrated by artificial drains to redeem as much ground as possible
from its former swampy conditions."
Long before the waters were held at bay, a magnificent city arose at Ely.
But prior to enjoying its magnificence,
I'd like to chat to the area station manager, Alan Neville.
- Morning, Alan. - Good morning.
- Very good to see you. - Thank you.
It's quite an interesting station.
I think of it as some kind of backwater, but you're jolly busy.
It's a very busy station. It's actually nicknamed the Crewe of the Fens.
We've got a footfall throughout the year
of about one and a half million customers.
You might assume it would be a backwater,
but over 170 trains pass through Ely each day.
And being provincial and particular, it maintains an important tradition.
And what's going on here?
Well, this is the announcing equipment.
We very much pride ourselves on the announcing at Ely Station.
It's all done verbally
and we actually get a lot of praise for the human-voice element.
- Would you like a go? - I'd love a go.
That's the train. The train now arrived at platform one.
The train at platform one
is the 0915 cross-country service to Birmingham New Street,
calling at March, Peterborough, Stamford, Oakham, Melton Mowbray,
Leicester, Nuneaton, Coleshill Parkway and Birmingham New Street,
due to arrive at Birmingham New Street at 1138.
- Was that more or less right? - That was absolutely fine.
I haven't misled too many people?
My announcements might lure people away from the Ely
to the exotic towns of England,
but there's good reason to stay here and explore.
Here's a curiosity.
A little pipe shaped like an eel.
Ely, eels. The place is very famous for eels anyway.
For centuries, the prosperity of this wetland
has been founded on the eel trade.
Some say the eels were even exchanged for the stone
employed to build the glorious cathedral,
extolled in my "Bradshaw's Guide".
From E*ly Station, you have a wonderful view
of what Bradshaw's described as "the principal object of interest".
"The venerable cathedral founded in 1070."
And typically Bradshaw's gives statistics.
500 feet long, its Norman nave, 270 feet high.
And it is for me one of my very favourite cathedrals in England.
In Bradshaw's time, fast rail transport allowed eels to be packed on ice
and sent all over the country.
But in truth, with the land drained,
the Fenlands' aquatic trades were already beginning to decline.
- Peter. - Hello.
Michael. I believe this is the most fascinating shop I've ever been in.
Thank you very much.
Eel trapper Peter Carter and his family
have made their living on the Fens for hundreds of years.
- What does an eel trap look like? - This is a Fenland trap.
Inside it's got spikes pointing inwards.
The idea is the eel can push his way in but he can't turn to come back again.
- It's like a valve. - A valve, yeah.
That's known as a chair which is an old Fens word meaning "narrow gap".
The advantage of these traps is the eels like them
because they chew the willow. Aspirin comes from willow.
Your traditional way of life, how common is that today?
I'm the last one I know doing it.
So, on the fen, the old-fashioned ways anyway.
- Really? - Yeah.
Peter hand-makes his traps using local willow
which can withstand long submersion in water.
To help me understand the Fens and a lost way of life,
he's taking me out on his boat.
It's a very beautiful country, Peter.
What was this like a few hundred years ago? It was mainly water then, was it?
Yeah, it was very shallow water.
It was more like mud and silt than anything.
The landscape's changed massively since it's been drained.
But you imagine it was all reeds before.
Reeds, rushes, willows. Must have been an impressive sight.
And a man could make a living in that environment?
Yeah. You couldn't go hungry.
The amount of food you could eat, pike, eel, duck, goose, swan.
Whatever you got your hands on, they'd eat them.
And the people lived on some islands. There were some islands?
Yeah. They were all islands.
That existence was ended when in the 17th century,
Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden was employed by rich landowners
to construct a network of enormous drains.
They aspired to turn the watery Fens into productive farmland,
but they met resistance from local families
who formed a guerrilla group called the Fen Tigers.
These Fen Tigers, what did they do?
They're the ones who protested and started fighting.
They used to damage the banks to stop them...
As quick as they were digging them out,
they blew them up and reflooded the areas.
They didn't want it drained.
They knew once the land was drained, that was it.
The wildfowling would go, the eel fishing would go,
and the big landowners would come in and start farming it
and then people would earn less wages.
But in the end, the landowners had their way.
The landowners won in the end.
Agriculture flourished on this sediment-rich earth,
especially when the railways opened its produce to the markets of the kingdom.
But Peter's ancestors' way of life was all but lost.
I reckon that's a technique from university days.
The old punting? Yeah.
It was the only way to get around on the fen at one time.
Most of the land was so shallow, it was the easiest way to move.
Most of the work you do is stood up. I've got the first trap just here.
This is a Victorian-style trap, which is a wire one.
- And again, it has been a quiet day. - No.
They're all going to be like that. That's disappointing.
- Have you caught any today? - You're actually sat on them.
I'm sat...
- What, under here? - Yeah.
Whoo! Look at those beauties.
There's just a few small ones. They grow bigger than that.
Four foot in length sometimes.
These are better for cooking, that sort of size,
Slimy.
The slime is what helps them survive out of water.
They can come out of water and travel from one dyke to another,
by using the slime to keep themselves wet.
They draw the water through the wet grass.
- They're a beautiful creature. - Lovely.
It's time for me to leave Ely and continue on the next leg of my journey
and discover more about how the Fens were transformed in Bradshaw's day.
I'm now on the line that runs from E*ly to King's Lynn,
and Bradshaw says of this,
"It's the most important section of the East Anglian Line
as it brings a very valuable district of the eastern part of the country
into railway communication,
not only with the metropolis,
but with the northern and western parts of the kingdom."
And as I run along here, I can see that the line is built up on banks,
and I'm thinking about what a major achievement it was
to build this heavy railway across such boggy country.
Once the Fens were drained, rural towns could be connected by a railway.
But given the lie of the land, it's still prone to flooding,
and each generation has improved the engineering
that keeps the sea at bay.
The next station is Downham Market.
I'm on my way to the Denver sluice,
first built in the 17th century and strengthened again in 1834.
It's a strategic point in the defence of the Fens.
- Hello, are you Dan? - Hi.
Dan Pollard is the lockkeeper here.
What we've got here at Denver is a lock and then three sluices.
And what is a sluice?
A sluice is a way
of controlling the river upstream of the gates.
So we can either open up the gates to discharge water
or we can keep them closed to maintain levels upstream.
So, river that way, sea that way.
Yes, down towards King's Lynn.
The 18th-century drainage schemes were brilliant,
but they lacked machinery.
By the 1800s, steam technology was beginning to revolutionise
the water management of the Fens.
Bradshaw's makes an interesting reference, too, to the country
really being saved or designed by steam.
I imagine what he's talking about are huge pumping engines,
would that be right?
Yes. What happened is, when Sir Cornelius Vermuyden
started the fen drainage,
and they put wind pumps on to drain water off of the land,
transfer water from the land up into the drains and the rivers,
and then eventually they went over to steam power.
There's a large engine at Stretham
and that was the steam power to pump water off of the land.
And I would guess that the arrival of the steam engine
with all that power must have been a bit of a turning point.
It was a turning point in the watershed
in the fact that they could drain the water off a lot quicker
and a lot more efficiently than the wind pumps could.
Not so much a turning point as a watershed.
Yes.
With the introduction of steam pumps,
the sluice was redesigned by Sir John Rennie.
He added three new gates and widened the lock,
creating a system that to this day safely controls the water level.
Now, supposing all this paraphernalia weren't here,
what would the consequence be?
Pretty much the Fens would be the Fens as they were
before Vermuyden was here.
The land would be saturated, flooded for good portions of the year.
The structure that we've got here does actually hold back
up to five metres' worth of tidal water.
So if you imagine that five metres heading up towards Ely and Cambridge,
it would cause catastrophic events up in all that populated area.
So, in your hands lies the survival
of Ely Cathedral and of Cambridge University.
- Not much pressure there. - No, no.
Well, there's a fair amount of pressure
when there's huge amounts of rainfall falling in that area.
If I was to...
What we do here is keep people's feet dry in all of Ely and Cambridge.
Once the danger of flooding was removed, the value of land shot up,
and Norfolk grandees became rich.
My "Bradshaw's" says, "The productive and remunerative farming
of the Fens of Norfolk is one of the greatest triumphs of steam. "
"Lands have been enhanced in value not only 100 percent
but even one hundredfold. "
As wheat spread across its acres,
Norfolk became known as the breadbasket of England,
and over 400 windmills were in use.
I'm spending the night in the county's only commercial working mill.
In its day, its proximity to the railway made it very profitable.
- Hello. - Hello, Michael.
- Lovely to see you. You're Mark? - Yes, indeed.
Congratulations on having a working windmill. Absolutely amazing.
The last one in Norfolk and we are very proud of it.
Mark Abel has leased the Denver windmill for two years.
- There you go. - Fantastic. Wonderful.
I get a thrill every time I come up here still.
It's formidable power.
The wind is driving that wheel and driving this.
And then that's all connected to the stones beneath.
Because basically,
that is a sailing ship.
It's the technology. It's trapping the energy of the wind with canvas,
transferring it through a wooden structure,
built like ribs and boards like a ship.
My Bradshaw's Guide is very keen on steam.
- Was this ever converted to steam? - This wasn't.
It's quite interesting, within 25 years of this being built in 1835,
a separate mill was added on to the side, steam powered.
It had three sets of horizontal stones the same as the windmill
but was completely independent and just powered by steam.
Beautiful. I'm staying in the miller's cottage.
In the mill cottage just down the yard.
And I expect there will be bread for breakfast.
Oh, there will indeed.
The next morning I head straight to Downham Market Station.
I'd left myself time to enjoy this very special stop on the Norfolk line.
- Good morning. - Good morning.
I was hoping for a coffee, please.
- I'm sure we'll sort it for you. - What a charming station.
Downham Market Station is grade II listed,
but the service to passengers is definitely grade I.
I've never seen anything like that.
This is the station waiting room. This is...
But is it a lending library?
No, no, we sell the books in here. They're all second-hand books.
And we've got a 50p corner and obviously slightly dearer ones.
But if you come in here with a cup of coffee,
are you entitled to settle down with a book?
Absolutely. We have people staying here for several hours sometimes.
May I just feel that it seems comfortable to read my Bradshaw
in what's really the perfect setting?
An armchair in a railway station in deepest Norfolk.
The hospitality to be enjoyed here is clearly well known to local people.
- Good morning. - Morning.
I've been enjoying the waiting room. Fantastic.
It's wonderful. I think it's the best station there is.
- You know it well? - Yes, we live down the road.
Sometimes we use it when we come on the train,
and sometimes we just come and have a coffee
or a piece of toast or something.
And people get off and have a beer.
What about the books? Do you use the bookshop?
Oh yes, I've bought quite a few books.
I daren't buy any more. I've got too many.
- Filling up your house. - Yes, definitely. I like books.
Where are you off to today?
Well, we're not going anywhere today.
We're just coming to look at the train and be at the station.
How marvellous.
I'll now be covering the last 11 miles of the line
to the terminus at King's Lynn.
And there's a thrill in store for me.
Today is a very special day for me because of this bit of card.
This is called a driving cab pass.
And this means that between Downham Market and King's Lynn,
I get to ride in the cab with the driver.
Which way to the cab?
- This way, sir. - I guessed that.
I'm looking forward to seeing the line stretch out ahead.
So much better than the view from a passenger seat.
- Hello, there. - Hello.
- Are you expecting visitors? - Yes. Yes.
Alan Woolner has worked on the railways for over 30 years.
- What speed can we go in this train? - Well, this will do 100 miles an hour.
But obviously the line speed is 75 here.
The reasons you get pretty good speeds through Fenland
is that it is so flat, and they built the railways dead straight.
Dead straight, yeah. It's pretty straight.
Since trains began operating with a single driver,
passenger safety has been heavily dependent
on one ingenious piece of equipment.
Now, I don't want to raise a morbid subject,
but what's the dead man's handle or dead man's pedal?
Oh, that thing there.
When that bleeps, I have to lift it and just acknowledge it.
You get five seconds to acknowledge it, otherwise the brakes will go on.
So periodically, that little noise, that little "peep-peep" comes on,
and then you have to lift and press the pedal again.
- Shows you're in good health. - Yeah, shows I'm still alive.
- End of the line, Alan? - End of the line.
Pretty station. If you went any further, we'd get wet.
Yes, you definitely would.
Thank you for letting me ride with you.
- Bye-bye, Alan. - Pleased to meet you.
I feel really good about that. That was such fun.
I rode in the cab!
Bye-bye.
Still buzzing after my journey, I'm heading into King's Lynn,
a town I've recently discovered.
In the centuries before the railways, it was a major international port.
Recently I took part in a festival
to celebrate King's Lynn's membership of the Hanseatic League.
This was a group of towns around the Baltic and North Sea
that joined together in a trading association. A sort of common market.
And this was the warehouse of the Hanseatic traders.
Now, because King's Lynn was an important port
with these continental links,
it probably had stronger connections with Hamburg than it did with London.
And even today, going around King's Lynn,
you get the feeling of a continental town.
The Hanseatic League, formed in the 13th century,
was an alliance which dominated trade for centuries.
Members were known as Hansa towns
and had guaranteed protection for their trade.
At any one time, there were up to 80 members of the alliance
which survived until 1669.
The league was revived in the 1980s to enable original Hansa towns
to exchange ideas on business, culture and tourism.
- You've got some lovely buildings. - Yes, lovely buildings.
How important was King's Lynn as a port?
Very important.
It was the third most important port in the country,
and Norfolk, of course, was the wealthiest county in the country.
So we certainly had something in those days.
Do you think King's Lynn was influenced by...
It had this connection with other North Sea towns.
Very much so. It's a Hansa town,
and therefore we had connections with the entire Europe,
right up to Russia and Denmark and everywhere like that.
So, yes, we were always a trading port until fairly recently.
King's Lynn had flourished because of its access to the Wash,
a great tidal estuary through which four rivers flow into the sea.
But in Bradshaw's time, the town felt threatened.
It worried that the railways would take the port's trade.
And then engineers devised a plan to reclaim 32,000 acres of land.
My guide says, "Here since 1850,
works on a large scale have been carried out for reclaiming parts of the Wash. "
King's Lynn feared losing its access to the sea.
- Good morning. - Hello, Michael.
Fantastic view today, isn't it? Absolutely wonderful.
I'm meeting RSPB area manager Rob Lucking.
The Wash is the estuary in the UK
which had the largest amount of land claimed from it.
Now it's a three-mile boat ride up the River Great Ouse
before you actually get to the Wash.
So all of this land that we can see in front of us here
has actually been claimed since the mid-1800s.
And now, has a stop been put to that process? Are they still claiming it?
No, the last land claims were completed in the early 1980s,
and since then, there has been no further land claim in the Wash
because the Wash is so important for wildlife.
So they've left a little bit of water to go out on.
Exactly.
There's still 250 square miles of the Wash for us to explore today.
Oh, that'll do. Great.
Fortunately the plans to reclaim land were never fully realised,
and a narrow channel still connects King's Lynn to this vast basin of water.
You really have to put yourself in a different mindset
to understand the importance of King's Lynn historically.
Because before the railways,
the ports were the places that had the good communications.
That's right, and King's Lynn was a massively important port.
Part of the Hanseatic League. King's Lynn was where it all happened.
A lot of the wealth of King's Lynn was built on the back of maritime trade
and the wool industry.
It's really sort of grown from there.
The people of King's Lynn
discovered advantages in the railway
since fish and shellfish harvested from the Wash
could be sent to market quickly by train.
The town's fear of the future receded.
Although the port is not quite as important now as it was then,
you still get a lot of timber coming in through King's Lynn, a lot of cereals.
And it's still a real busy hub,
just on the outskirts of King's Lynn now.
The port is not the only survivor.
The Wash is the most important estuary for wildlife in the United Kingdom,
and is home to the largest single colony of common seals in England.
So it's getting a bit choppier now. We're actually out in the Wash, are we?
That's right. We've left King's Lynn behind, three miles behind us,
and we're now just out of the mouth of the River Ouse
and into the Wash proper.
I'm getting the impression
that this is really a very important place for wildlife.
Yes, and without a doubt,
it's the most important estuary in the UK for wildlife.
We reckon over two million individual birds probably use the Wash every year,
and we've got very important breeding populations of birds here.
But most importantly is the Wash is like a motorway feeding station for birds.
From a conservationist's point of view,
I would love to travel back 500 years
and see the Wash and the Fens how they used to be,
as one massive delta full of wildlife.
But on the other hand,
I think the Wash and the Fens do represent man at his best.
His ingenuity and his capacity to solve problems
like land drainage and land claim.
And in fact now, it is pretty well protected, isn't it?
It is.
The Wash has got just about every conservation designation going.
It's a site of special scientific interest,
it's a special protection area,
it's a special area of conservation, and it's a Ramsar site.
So it should be protected for generations to come.
Travelling around this country with my "Bradshaw's Guide",
I'm awestruck by the self-confidence of our engineers
as they attempted the impossible, and rearranged the British landscape,
an ambition that reached its peak in the Victorian epoch.
My journey through the Fens has made me think that development and growth
can be seen as both good things and bad things.
The draining of the Fens
has created some of the most fertile land in England.
And the arrival of the railways brought many extra changes.
But it also destroyed an old way of life.
And while I've been here in the Fens,
I've been aware of a certain nostalgia for old times, for old days,
when the waters held sway.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'll be finding out why a rare breed of turkey is making a comeback...
We start hatching in April. That's a long time to Christmas,
and it obviously takes a long time to finish them.
So therefore you're getting more of a moist meat.
Roll on, Christmas.
...sitting shakily in the driving seat...
I think I do need further lessons.
I don't think that was a complete success,
but it was very exciting indeed.
...and tasting one Victorian delicacy which still draws crowds.
It saves the person doing the eating a lot of work.
Well, of course. Not everybody knows how to dress a crab,
and not everybody can dress a crab like Tracey.
Ripped By mstoll