Jack’s Land

A Saturday morning in December, and I find myself in a cluttered wedge of brown-belt no man’s land. It’s at the end of the playing fields, where the shipping containers are kept beside the heaps of grass cuttings, old goalposts and a rack of long idle sculls, never to see the water again. Behind me, on the other side of a scruffy hedge that grows out of a flooded ditch, is the golf course. In front is the bypass, heavy with the traffic of Christmas shoppers. Apart from the occasional spatter of rain on my jacket, all I can hear is the hiss of the cars, and the odd exclamation of golfing anguish. It isn’t the obvious place to stop and pause. But, over the way, perhaps a quarter of a mile off, above the fields that lie fallow between the mainline and the industrial estate, there is a huge flock of birds, wheeling and swirling against the leaden sky.

They are just too far away for me to be sure of what they might be and, not for the first time, I find myself regretting leaving my binoculars at home. Too big for starlings, I try to narrow down the options. Pigeons flock in such numbers, but they don’t move in the air like that – this is altogether more dynamic, almost chaotic; a choreographed murmuration this is not, but it is beautiful and captivating nonetheless, the sky changing colour as they shift, disperse, regroup and coalesce. It’s wonderful. My first thought is crows but, as I watch carefully, I can make out the comic jazz hand wings; lapwings, and there are thousands of them. I watch for a while, hoping that they will come closer so that I can get a better look, but they are happy where they are. Time to move on so, taking my life into my hands, I nip across the bypass and, noting the faint steel blue patches of sky emerging from behind the cloud, I set off on my way.

I woke early with a walk in mind but had been surprised by the pitch-black darkness. I shouldn’t have been – the shortest day is almost upon us and it doesn’t really get light until eight. So I made tea and returned to my bed to read and doze. In the end, it was almost ten when I left the house. This route is a firm favourite, one I have written about before, and I eased into it like an old boy pulling on his comfy slippers – even the thought of this walk brings contentment and solace.

A pleasant buffeting wind, gentle on the skin, with the slightest hint of rain, quickly revives my still bedwarm self. The walk takes me south out of Ely, through a small estate and past waste land that, since my last visit a month or so ago, has burst into life and is now a vast building site. Then it’s across the aforementioned rugby and football pitches, following a pair of kestrels that seem to be playing, calling out to each other. Are they courting perhaps? Surely a bit early, but they look great – the gorgeous chestnut plumage spectacular against the drab wintery backdrop. Once over the bypass, I am in a happy mix of woodland, hedgerow and fields, before the walk back along the river. It is largely dry, despite the latent threat of rain, and the muddy ground underfoot has a pleasing plasticine give about it, taking the print of my boot as I walk along.

It is not just the lapwings gathering in numbers – all the birds seem to be congregating; gangs of rooks and crows looking for mischief, chattering long-tailed tits and clouds of goldfinches skitter through the hedges, while geese and pigeons graze en masse in the fields as I walk by. Far off, I see a remarkable convocation of gulls standing cheek by jowl in an enormous cluster, like penguins huddled against the polar winds – I have never seen anything quite like it. They can’t be feeding, so what are they up to? Plotting, no doubt. Best of all, fieldfare, again in enormous numbers, busy and cheerful, their distinctive call echoing through the woods.

There are a few solitary types; a buzzard lifts itself up as I approach, slow and unhurried, and, with a single flap, it floats off to a distant tree where it can remain undisturbed. Then, with a bit more urgency about it, an egret, alarmed by my presence, hastily scrambles into the air and flies over to the reedbeds by the river. Walking back, I see some graffiti artists at work under the railway bridge, and another one under the bypass – it seems to have become a thing that people do on a Saturday morning, like playing golf or visiting the garden centre. I watch for a while, as a freight train rumbles above them. The pastoral idyll is fading as I close in on the city again and I consider that not all human endeavour is quite so ephemeral, for it is the cathedral that now dominates the view, solid and steady, calm and unmoving.