Ouse Washes at Sutton Gault

The Ouse Washes are the Fens at their most graphic: two dead-straight rivers a kilometre apart running to the horizon, with a strip of washland between that floods silver in winter. At Sutton Gault, by the old Anchor Inn, the New Bedford River's engineered geometry gives you leading lines a landscape photographer would kill for, plus lonely fen roads, pumping stations and cloudscapes that go on forever. But be honest with yourself about the season. From late autumn to early spring the flooded washes hold internationally important numbers of whooper and Bewick's swans, wigeon and other wildfowl — tens of thousands of birds — and much of the washland is RSPB and WWT reserve. A drone over that lot is disturbance you can't defend, and WWT Welney downstream is an outright no-go. So treat November to March as off-limits over the washes themselves, and be wary of breeding waders on the grazed washland in spring. Late summer, when the washes are dry, cattle-grazed and quiet, is the honest window — and the low harvest light on all that geometry is worth waiting for. Wind is the other adversary: there is nothing to stop it between here and the Urals, as the locals say.