TRAVEL / In search of swans'way: In the Fens the earth is flat and empty, the sky huge. But for Jill Crawshaw this eerie landscape has the special lure of a land of lost content, an ideal past that nearly was

IN THE throes of one of our periodic let's- escape-the-crowds phases that afflict city dwellers from time to time, it was the isolation promised by the small ad that launched what has become a family tradition. Fenland and north-west Norfolk are among the least populated areas of England, the guide books told us - so we packed our crackers and fairy lights, and prepared to hole up.

We had no idea that we would be directly under one of the busiest flight paths in Europe. Squadron after squadron, 3,500 Bewick's swans jet in from Siberia to their winter riviera on the East Anglian washes, 500 whoopers make the slightly shorter journey from Iceland, about 10,000 wigeon migrate from Russia and Scandinavia and 1,000 pochard from the Baltic states. At night we fell asleep to their eerie lullaby, to be woken by their urgent honking as they flew over to settle on the black earth like snowdrifts, plundering what was left of the farmers' potatoes and sugar beet.

From having little feeling for birds, we became fascinated spectators of the daily ornithological drama. At the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust refuge at Welney, we learnt that these magnificent creatures fly 2,500 miles to get here, returning again and again with their families, one pair of swans with 30 different cygnets over the years.

We began, too, to share their fascination with this strange corner of England, though it can hardly be called Christmas-card country. There's nothing fancy about the Fens. Even the names are to the point: Hundred Foot Bank, Forty Foot Drain, Three Holes and Grunty Fen. There are no soft contours, few trees and even fewer hedges to clutter the huge expanses of sky above an almost totally horizontal world - a world of dykes and canals, sluices and drains, designed with set squares and crisscrossing a patchwork of fields of the richest soil in Britain.

Yet these former marshes were once described as a 'rotting and pestilential land', the residents as 'yellow bellies' because they lived like frogs in a waterlogged wilderness. It was a 17th-century Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, who reclaimed the marshes and curbed the excesses of the Great Ouse. If the weather turns very cold, the flooded washes freeze and skaters enjoy a huge free ice-rink, formerly the site of the World Ice Skating Championship. In the 19th century, so legend has it, the Fens skating champions, the oddly named Turkey and Fish Carter, were capable of running down a pike swimming under the ice until it collapsed from exhaustion, and the brothers were able to break the ice and fish it out.

The inhabitants grumble that nothing ever happens in Welney, but at Christmas and New Year, to us at least, the village seems to be en fete. Even The Three Tuns, an old waterside inn and almost the last truly genuine Fens pub - with no video games, no television, no fruit machines, and serving no food apart from crisps and pork scratchings with its Elgood's bitter - puts on its party frock for the holidays. Tinsel and glitter festoon the dart board and the punt gun which stretches the length of the wall above the open fire. Mounted on the bow of a flat-bottomed punt, one shot could have dispatched 30 birds. On New Year's Eve, for reasons no one can remember, the pub puts on its own Scottish Hogmanay, with a local accordionist and haggis on the house. Next morning, a fleet of narrow boats chugs in and ties up alongside. Now converted for leisure use, they used to carry coal and iron from the Midlands to the busy East Anglian ports of Ely, St Ives and Bedford, before returning with their cargoes of flowers, wool and vegetables.

For matters spiritual, Norfolk has a plethora of medieval country churches with unassuming flint walls and simple symmetrical towers, often hiding beautifully carved little fonts and pews, and painted screens.

There's nothing hidden about Ely Cathedral. Its fortress-like silhouette dominates every landscape for miles - an apt enough representation of the East Anglian folk, who can count among them Boadicea, who fought the Romans on the fringes of the town, Hereward the Wake, who defended Ely against William the Conqueror, and Oliver Cromwell, who closed down the cathedral for 17 years. The cathedral was founded as an abbey in the seventh century by Ethelreda, an East Anglian king's daughter who in the name of piety refused to consummate two marriages. The Normans built most of the mighty structure we see today, though the finest feature is the 63ft Octagon, constructed by Alan de Walsingham in 1322 to replace a Norman tower which had collapsed. To pay for more recent ravages, visitors are asked to contribute pounds 2.60 to enter the cathedral. Church services and Sundays are free, however, and at Christmas the vast proportions are an invitation to belt out the most rousing carols in full voice.

Ely itself is an agreeable market town that still reflects its former importance as a staging post on the road that linked the prosperous port of Lynn Regis (now King's Lynn) to the capital. The same road (now the A10) was often blocked for weeks before Christmas by farmers driving their turkeys to London. Norfolk is still the turkey capital of England.

It was along the old A10, too, that 400 years ago John Chapman, pedlar of Swaffham, set out to seek his fortune, only to be told by a ''voice' when he got to London Bridge that there was a crock of gold hidden in his garden. According to the Swaffham church records, on his return Chapman paid for the north aisle and contributed to the spire. A stained glass window commemorates his gift to what became an elegant regency town, its balls, theatres and soirees attracting the gentry for the 'season'.

On this classy side of the A10, Christmas is still very much the season in a liberal sprinkling of stately homes headed, of course, by Sandringham. Lesser mortals can stay at Congham Hall, the chintzy Georgian country house hotel near the estate. Guests can attend church on the royal estate, or go clay pigeon-shooting at the Sandringham shooting school.

There's the panto too: the Princess Theatre in seaside Hunstanton (pronounced Hunston) is an annual outing for the young royals, who arrive unannounced. At this year's Robinson Crusoe we can be sure that there'll be no soap stars or boxers, few political jokes, but lots of hissing and booing, and 'Oh yes there is'.

Best of all, there's the coast for bracing walks on great sweeps of sand beneath Hunstanton's candy-striped cliffs, or for quieter forays into the secret creeks and estuaries round Brancaster, where the sea creeps stealthily round old wooden jetties and oyster beds.

Back in the Fens, the last chimes of the old year fade away and the embers of our log fire will soon be going cold, but only for a year or so. Like the swans, we've become the most faithful of tourists.

TRAVEL NOTES

ELY TOURIST INFORMATION OFFICE, tel: 0353 662062, provides lists of bed & breakfast and self-catering accommodation; b&b from pounds 13 to pounds 18.50 per person per night; a self-catering cottage sleeping five people costs from pounds 150 to pounds 200 a week, shorter

periods negotiable.

CONGHAM HALL HOTEL, Grimston, King's Lynn, Norfolk PE32 1AH, tel: 0485 600250, offers a three-night Christmas break for pounds 485 per person, including most meals and some wine. Normal weekend breaks cost pounds 165 per person. Clay-pigeon shooting,

flying and ballooning, and helicopter flights can all be arranged.

THE WILDFOWL AND WETLAND TRUST, tel: 0353 860711, is open seven days a week from 10am to 5pm except on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Entrance for non-members is pounds 2.95 for adults, pounds 2.20 for senior citizens and pounds 1.50 for children.

Membership of this charity (which has its headquarters at Slimbridge in Glos) costs pounds 12 a year for senior citizens, pounds 18 for single and pounds 24 for family membership.

Fen Cottage, available Christmas, New Year, sleeps 6, simple, nearestvillage 3 miles.

(Photographs omitted)