Understand
For centuries much of the north east of the region was inaccessible marshland, until a programme of drainage assisted by Dutch engineers transformed the Fens into the country's most fertile farmland, leaving the landscape criss-crossed by canals and dotted with windmills.
The major population centres today remain concentrated in the south and west of Cambridgeshire, with the north and east of the region remains a bleak, empty landscape.
