Bog

If you're after the green and pleasant land that England is known for, the Fens are not it. 1500 square miles of reclaimed boggy wetland is not pretty and definitely not interesting.

The Fens are flat though, and covering Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, they made a perfect location for RAF bases during the 2nd world war. RAF Kimbolton, home to the 379th USAF Bomber Squadron, was one of them. And quite often, probably because being in the middle of the Fens is not interesting, the airmen built kart tracks on the airfields to have a bit of racing downtime fun.

The Kimbolton base isn't there anymore, but the kart track survives. You can see bits of the old concrete runways in-between sections of the track. It's long and super fast, which is why all the major national kart championships go there, and why we were there getting in some practice.

The Fens are flat, so there's not a lot of sound insulation. No hills and trees to block the noise. And that's why Kimbolton is only allowed to host a limited number of races each year. The locals, led by Kirstie Allsopp, complain about the noise. (Although I can't imagine the kart track being any noisier than a bomber base.) So, you can't practise there, but you can race there on one of the few permitted race weekends. Kate was club racing there, and boy, it is definitely a fast track. Super exciting to watch, I imagine it's super exciting to drive.

I'm pretty sure one of the fast straights follows the line of a runway, and I can just imagine Kate feeling as though she's about to take off when she reaches the end of the straight.

The race weekend is going well. And we'll definitely be better prepared for the next round of the Ultimate Kart Championship, which is at Kimbolton.

Here's hoping Kate will be more jet than bomber when she's back at RAF Kimbolton at the end of this month. And let's hope the only bog is in the ground and not the engine.