Country Life
FENS IN FROST.
Is it because bearing frosts have been rare in this generation that English people are so ignorant of the charm of the Fen country in winter ? Once you have entered its maze of dykes you may skate the whole day without pause over new country. The most delightful of athletic days in my own experience was spent among ". the Dutch ditches " of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. A party, led by a Ferman of long experience, assembled at Holme station on the main Great Northern line just south of Peterborough, where one of the smaller dykes runs almost up to the platform. It would have been possible to put on skates in the train and not have risked a too laborious walk to the launching place. From early morning till late in the evening we skated and skated ; and decided, as we fought our battles o'er again, that we had covered forty miles. The estimate was perhaps as optimistic as round figures are apt to be, but with all allowance we covered an immense distance at good speed, met adventures and saw scenes that abide in a grateful memory.
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