Sloes and dykes

A surprisingly sunny Sunday afternoon on this much-welcomed Bank Holiday weekend found us taking a lovely walk along Devil's Dyke. For us, this has been one of those walks that we've been meaning to do for an absolute age, but somehow have never previously managed to get beyond the fine and aptly named Dyke's End pub in the lovely village of Reach. This time, we were determined to celebrate our first genuinely free weekend of the entire summer by finally putting down pints and pulling on boots. Happily, after church we bumped into a couple of good friends who accepted our invitation to come along with alacrity, we all piled into Hilda (our trusty Nissan Micra, who doesn't much like accelerating with four people plus picnic inside) and off we went.

On a fine day, the Devil's Dyke walk is truly lovely. Unusually for Britain, where most earthworks are Iron Age, Devil's Dyke is Saxon (or rather Anglian, since I am a geek and a pedant when it comes to early medieval matters) and stretches for about seven or eight miles from Reach to Woodditton. I am endlessly fascinated by how local rulers gathered the labour to built such a feat before the days of machinery and mass communications (OK, big swords, I know), and how different the landscape must have looked then to make a seven mile earthwork an effective defense between fen on one side and low hills and forest on the other. It is all the more remarkable because we know that the region stretching from Cambridge to Ely and beyond was the last part of England to have a multitude of local kings and kingdoms, long after other parts of the country had been joined into the great overkingdoms of Wessex, Mercia et al. Local legend tells that it was built by a king Hrothgar (all kings in Anglo-Saxon legends are called Hrothgar) to preserve the honour of his daughter against an unwelcome suitor from the fire Gods, but it is more likely that the Devil's Dyke was one of the ways in which a local fenland king preserved his independence against outside encroachment from Mercia or East Anglia. Certainly he would have had a good view from the top, as the surrounding land is so flat you can see for miles. Seeing Ely cathedral soar above the fenland, for the first time I really appreciated how the medieval folk who first built the 'Ship of the Fens' must have seen it as they approached the isle across the water.

As if this wasn't enough to keep a gin-soaked medieval historian happy, I discovered that both Dyke and surrounding hedgerows were absolutely awash with sloes. I had searched in vain for some sloes on my elderberry mission in Grantchester Meadows. Plenty of bushes, but only about twenty fruit, and my mother later warned me later on the phone that it looked to be a bad year for sloes, since that their local hedgerows were also bare of fruit, so I abandoned my hopes of a row of bottles of sloe gin to go alongside the elderberry schnapps. Ever the optimist, I took along a couple of plastic bags. Perhaps, I thought, I would find enough for one small bottle.


Between the four of us, we picked nearly six pounds of sloes, enough for three bottles per couple. We only gave up when the plastic bags were threatening to split and the lure of a well-earned pint became too great. On the path between Swaffham Prior (a fine sixth- or -seventh century Saxon name) and Reach, bush after bush dripped so much of the cloudy purple fruit that they looked like great bunches of grapes hanging down, with many to be found on the Dyke itself as well. Anyone who lives in or around Cambridgeshire and wants sloes, look no further. There are plenty left for everyone and fine views into the bargain!