Isle of Axholme

The Isle of Axholme lies in North Lincolnshire, a flat wedge of land once surrounded by marshes and rivers. Before the 17th century it was a scatter of villages on islands of higher ground in the Trent, Idle and Don floodplains. The Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden drained the fens, turning marsh into fields and giving the area its present shape. The land is unusually fertile because centuries of flooding left deep peat soil over ancient woodland remains. Locals still dig up petrified oak trunks six feet below the surface, called ‘bog oaks’. A long-distance path, the Peatlands Way, crosses the whole island, linking its quiet villages and wide arable fields. Visitors walk quiet lanes between Epworth, Crowle and Haxey, each built on the old dry islands. Sandtoft has Europe’s largest trolleybus museum, while the flat northern fields grow wheat and sugar beet. The M180 motorway now cuts the island in two, but the old railway stations at Crowle and Althorpe still serve the line to Sheffield.