Nestled in the Fen countryside of East Cambridgeshire, the historic city of Ely is home to one of the most magnificent cathedrals in England, and makes an ideal day visit or short break location. Situated on the River Great Ouse, Ely was an island and a significant port until the 18th century when the Fens were drained, leaving it high and dry. The name itself means 'eel island', and certainly the low lying fens were historically very marshy and rich in eels - it's even been claimed that, during the 11th century, monks of the town would use eels as currency to pay their taxes!

Today, the city is very attractive, retaining many historic buildings with its winding shopping streets. From the lovely riverside you can enjoy a boat trip, leisurely riverside walks, explore the many cafes and antique shops, visit the Babylon Art Gallery or listen to music in Jubilee Gardens.

Whether it is a tranquil, peaceful retreat you are looking for or an inspiring, invigorating visit then the tiny but bustling city of Ely has it all!

For a small city Ely had a glorious past, and hosted some of the biggest names in English History such as King Canute, Hereward the Wake, William the Conqueror and perhaps her most famous of inhabitants, Oliver Cromwell, who lived in Ely for several years after inheriting the position of local tax collector in 1636. The former home to the Lord Protector now houses Ely's Tourist Information Centre.

The main attraction is of course the magnificent Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity - known as the "Ship of the Fens" as its towers can be seen for miles around across the low-lying wetlands. The Cathedral was begun in 1083 and completed in 1351. Its original square central tower collapsed in 1322 and was replaced by the octagonal one we see today. The Cathedral now houses the only national museum dedicated to Stained Glass.

Perched on a mound of clay above the River Ouse, ELY - literally "eel island" - was to all intents and purposes a true island until the draining of the fens in the seventeenth century. Up until then, the town was encircled by treacherous marshland, which could only be crossed with the help of the locals, "fen-slodgers" who knew the firm tussock paths. In 1070, Hereward the Wake turned this inaccessibility to military advantage, holding out against the Normans and forcing William the Conqueror to undertake a prolonged siege - and finally to build an improvised road floated on bundles of sticks.

Since then, Ely has always been associated with Hereward, which is really rather ridiculous as Ely is, above all else, an ecclesiastical town and a Norman one to boot. The Normans built the cathedral , a towering structure visible for miles across the flat landscape and Ely's only significant sight. It's easy to see the town on a day-trip from Cambridge, but Ely does make a pleasant night's stop in its own right. It's also handy for Wicken Fen .

Ely Cathedral is seen to best advantage from the south, the crenellated towers of the west side perfectly balanced by the prickly finials to the east with the distinctive timber lantern rising above them both. To approach from this direction, follow the footpath leading up the hill into the cathedral precincts from Broad Street - also the second turning on the right as you walk up Station Road from the train station. At the top of the footpath, pass through the medieval Porta , once the principal entrance to the monastery complex, and turn right to reach the main entrance on the lopsided west front - one of the transepts collapsed in a storm in 1701.

The first things to strike you as you enter the nave are the sheer length of the building and the lively nineteenth-century painted ceiling, largely the work of amateurs. The procession of plain late-Norman arches leads to the architectural feature that makes Ely so special, the octagon - the only one of its kind in England - built in 1322 to replace the collapsed central tower. Its construction, employing the largest oaks available in England to support some four hundred tons, is one of the wonders of the medieval world, and the effect, as you look up into this Gothic dome, is simply breathtaking. Octagon tours depart several times a day from the desk at the entrance and venture up into the octagon itself.

When the central tower collapsed, it fell eastwards, onto the choir , which was subsequently rebuilt in a fussier decorative style. The thirteenth-century presbytery, beyond, houses the relics of St Ethelreda , founder of the abbey in 673, who, despite being twice married, is honoured liturgically as a virgin. The other marvel at Ely is the Lady Chapel , in actual fact a separate building accessible via the north transept. It lost its sculpture and its stained glass during the Reformation, but its fan vaulting remains, an exquisite example of English Gothic.

T o the north, the High Street , with its Georgian buildings and old-fashioned shops, makes for an enjoyable browse and, if you push on past the Market Place down Forehill and then Waterside, you'll soon reach the Babylon Gallery, where an imaginative programme of temporary exhibitions featuring contemporary art and craft is displayed in an attractively renovated old brewery warehouse. Alternatively, head west from the cathedral entrance across the triangular Palace Green, to Oliver Cromwell's House at 29 St Mary's St, a timber-framed former vicarage, which holds a small exhibition on the Protector's ten-year sojourn in Ely, when he was employed as a tithe collector.

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Other attractions around Ely

The Fens - And Wicken Fen

One of the strangest of all English landscapes, the Fens cover a vast area from just north of Cambridge right up to Boston in Lincolnshire. For centuries, they were an inhospitable wilderness of quaking bogs and marshland, punctuated by clay islands on which small communities eked out a livelihood cutting peat for fuel, using reeds for thatching and living on a diet of fish and wildfowl. Piecemeal land reclamation took place throughout the Middle Ages, but it wasn't until the seventeenth century that the systematic draining of the fens was undertaken - amid fierce local opposition - by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden . The transformation of the fens had unforeseen consequences: as it dried out, the peaty soil shrank to below the level of the rivers, causing further flooding, a situation only exacerbated by the numerous windmills, erected to help drain the fens, but which actually resulted in further shrinkage. The problem of shrinkage was only resolved in the 1820s with the introduction of steam-driven pumps, as these leviathans could control water levels with much greater precision, enabling the fens to be turned into the valuable agricultural land of today.

At Wicken Fen, nine miles south of Ely via the A142, you can visit one of the few remaining areas of undrained fenland. Its survival is thanks to a group of Victorian entomologists who donated the land to the National Trust in 1899, making it the oldest nature reserve in the UK. The seven hundred acres are undrained but not uncultivated - sedge and reed cutting are still carried out to preserve the landscape as it is - and the reserve also features one of the last surviving fenland wind pumps. Traditional "droves" (wide footpaths) enable visitors to explore the fen and a boardwalk nature trail gives access to several hides.