VISITORS to Wicken Fen were surprised to see television personalities, Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker filming on the fen this week.

Julia and Matt spent two days at Wicken Fen filming for Countryfile, the BBC’s popular peak time programme on the British countryside.

Countryfile was at Wicken Fen to film progress on the implementation on Trust’s Wicken Fen Vision, following the recent opening of the Lodes Way, a nine mile cross country cycle way linking Wicken to Bottisham with connections to Ely and Cambridge, providing a new route for people to explore the magic of the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Launched in 1999, the Wicken Fen Vision is a 100 year plan to create a landscape scale nature reserve and ‘green lung’ for Cambridgeshire covering approximately 5300 hectares stretching from Wicken to the outskirts of Cambridge. Since the launch of the Vision the area of the reserve has more than doubled to 754 hectares.

During their visit they also filmed features on the Wicken’s herd of Konik ponies, sedge harvesting, standup paddle boarding and eel catching with Peter Carter, the last traditional eel catcher in the fens.

It was an extremely busy schedule for Matt Baker, who was practising with his Russian Strictly Come Dancing partner, Aliona during breaks in filming.

The programme on Wicken Fen will be shown on BBC One on Sunday 3 October at 6.30PM.