(I haven't posted a diary entry for a while, but I have been busy over the winter as part of a hardy team of six that braved the ice and fen winds to map Wisbech and a large part of rural Fenland. I'll come back to that later as there's more to it than just the surveying).

However, moving on, Whittlesey (aka Whittlesea) is a small market town half an hour's bike ride SE of Peterborough. At 16,000 (2001 census) it is by far the largest settlement in Cambridgeshire not yet mapped and when complete will bring Cambridgeshire to around 97% complete (the next largest place is Ramsey, which another Cambridgeshire regular has done most of now too, and after that we're into villages with up to 2,000 people, mostly a few hundred, west of Peterborough).

So two of us headed to Whittlesey weekend before last and the data is going in now. It'll take another session to complete the town. Anyone who has gone by train between Peterborough and Ely will know Whittlesey from its brick works. The old chimneys are now complemented by an equal number of wind turbines. The town itself is nothing to write home about, though it has a pleasant market square in the middle. Like a lot of places, it's like an onion with layers of houses from recognizable periods. And to go with the onion, it is also home to a McCain foods factory, of Oven Chips fame.

NCN63 (which had already been added) passes through the town on its way from Peterborough to March.