TO REACH Blackwater you take the Yarmouth Road out of Norwich, passing housing estates, a shimmering glass business park and a tangle of roundabouts. On the far side of Postwick, a throwback English village with a flint church and a cricket pitch, you follow a heavily rutted track down to the river Yare, emerging opposite the Ferry House pub. Fishermen sit silently on the banks as pleasure boats churn the muddy water. The entrance is via a rickety wooden bridge over a dyke; a path through a dense thicket delivers you into a sudden green wildness.

Mark Cocker, a British author and environmentalist, bought Blackwater, a five-acre plot of damp fen woodland, in 2012, with the aim of returning it to a state of nature. Six years later, the site seethes with life, barely visible trails cutting through rampant sedge and mallow, cow parsley and burdock. Chiffchaffs and willow warblers sing in the sallow and alder, while every leaf seems to hold a butterfly or dragonfly or hoverfly. There are clumps of nettles,…Continue reading
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