The Hundred Foot Washes is the older name for what is now more commonly called the Ouse Washes. It is a man made flood plain that is 21 miles long and mostly half a mile wide, stretching from Earith to most of the way to Denver, designed to hold flood water from the river Great Ouse and prevent the flooding of thousands of acres of land from Huntingdon to Cambridge to the Wash.

The Washes are bounded by two man made rivers; on the north by the Old Bedford and on the south by the Hundred Foot (or New Bedford) river. Most of the year the New Bedford, which is tidal, carries most of the flow from the Ouse out to the Wash. When the level of the Ouse rises too high sluice gates open at Earith so that water also flows into to Old Bedford which is designed to overflow into the Washes. This eventually creates a river that’s half a mile wide and 21 miles long and those few roads that cross the Washes are often closed when the water rises.

During the first lockdown of 2020, seeking for somewhere to walk the dog that was away from other people I often would drive down to Sutton Gault and walk him along the river banks; as as they dried out from the winter floods, we would also walk over the Washes themselves. In high summer these are used for cattle grazing but all through the spring they were wide and deserted and made for some lovely walks. As we walked there in spring and summer I saw them change and grow, full of wildlife and greenery, and the idea came to me that this should somehow be recorded. Hence the idea of taking a photograph of the same place on the Washes every week for a year.

I found a place that was ideal; fairly near to Sutton Gault with a clear view due north. The exact location is by the second marker post on the Cradge Bank heading north along the New Bedford from Sutton Gault. The what3words location is https://w3w.co/loves.plums.scary

And beginning on Tuesday 1st September 2020 I went down to the New Bedford and took a photo looking north across the Washes. This I have done every Tuesday for six months now, and the resulting photos can be seen here. As luck would have it, it has been a very eventful winter. Twice the level of the Old Bedford as measured by the Environment Agency gauge has hit the record breaking height of 4.04m above mean sea level, with the result that the Washes have been very full indeed. However as I write, the levels has been dropping for the last two weeks and I can walk the river banks without needing wellington boots; the Washes themselves are still under water though. Watch the photo log for the changes that Spring will bring.