Ah, The Fens. That bleak desolate waste of flat drained land situated as far north as East Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, as far south as Huntingdonshire and Essex and as far east as Norfolk.

There is something magical about this flat and seemingly uninteresting landscape.

Is it the fishing? Yes the fishing is very good indeed; but most of all it is the people.

The first thing you notice as you enter fenland is the plethora of wrecked vehicles. Many of these bent bits of metal are seen laying forlorn in fields and hedgerows. The problem with fenland roads is that they are straight for long distances culminating in sharp hairpin bends, hence the reason for the wreck in the ditch.

Then you have the gardens; again full of wrecked cars, tractors, old comboyned haarvesters, ploughs, haywains, neddy carts and other decrepit bits of agricultural hardware.

Look out for the local drivers for goodness sake. They are quite simply the worst drivers in Britain. The reason for this is that most of them pass their tests at the age of 14 on a tractor. There are two speeds to the local drivers – dead slow where they take delight in causing tail backs for several miles, and go-like hell!

If there is a speed limit of 50 miles an hour on a narrow road next to a drain and you stick to it, the locals will invariably tail-gate you by sitting about 1/2 an inch from your back bumper whilst hooting, giving you a two finger salute and screaming: “Geh oorff moy laand!”

No wonder the roads of the fens, especially those of the Lincolnshire fens have the highest accident rate in the whole of England!

There are two main classes of people to be found in Fenland. The local peasants are the salt of the Earth. Good old boys who drink ten pints of Speckled Hen and then cycle back home weaving from one side of the road to the other. Many of them remind me of the farm workers I knew in my youth, dressed in smocks, chewing grass and driving gentle dobbins pulling the plough.

And then there are the local village girls. Huge they are, mainly from swinging tatie sacks and carrying two or three bairns on their backs. They remind me of Zulu women.

And talk about drink.

Other than picking taties or driving tractors, drinking is the next most popular occupation amongst the local girls, and I mean girls up to 60 years of age. They don’t sit there demurely with a ladies half – no way, they knock back six pints of bitter in no time, whilst gorging in six packets of crisps and a couple of bacon butties.

And now we come to the real men of the Fens, the farmers. Their sole topic of conversation is whether it is too dry, too wet or too expensive, plus how they are being ripped off by the local supermarket!

They are the heaviest drinkers I have ever met in my life, yet they can mount a tractor and plough 100 acres of land after 10 pints, or a bottle of Scotch. The white Afrikaans population of South Africa, with a reputation of being the heaviest drinkers in the world has nothing on the farmers of the fens.

Saturday night is the time for celebration amongst the fenland farmers. They will invariably gather at one of the farms and cook a whole cow on the spit whilst demolishing several crates of whisky and numerous barrels of strong ale.

There are always plenty of bairns in evidence, to carry on the family tradition and take over the farm when the patriarch eventually dies of alcoholic poisoning.

However, with all their faults, I really love the people of the fens, together with the marvellous fishing there is down there.

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