Of Floating Free 3 And An Aqueduct

The Fens, much of which is below sea level, might seem an odd place for an aqueduct. There is one, though, and it carries Well Creek (part of the link route between The Great Ouse and the River Nene) over the Middle Level Main Drain, which itself terminates at the huge St German's Pumping Station (when it was rebuilt a few years ago it was the largest pumping station of its type in Europe) at Wiggenhall St German's.

Following the video as I set off in the morning I hadn't intended to record anything else, but I realised that some people may not have seen the previous entry I made about Mullicourt Aqueduct a year or so ago. When Well Creek was opened up again to navigation in the 1970s the route included the Aqueduct which, according to Evelyn Simak, was constructed in 1921.

Such a construction was necessary because one of the almost certainly unforeseen circumstances of draining the Fens in the seventeenth century was the shrinkage of the peat, the drying of the topsoil into a fine tilth that would be blown away easily by the wind. This process leads to a progressive lowering of land levels. The Fens are therefore experiencing erosion from both directions - rises in sea level attributed in large part to climate change as well as land shrinkage as the soil is eroded through natural processes.