I have seen the accounts of some of the bird species that used you to occur on Otmoor and guess it was larger and wetter than today with a mixture of very wet meadows and large areas of pure fen, hence one of the villages lying to the north called Fencott. I spent the day here yesterday, mainly looking for Brown Hairstreaks to photograph on the Roman road, but the few that were seen were high up in the Ashes. Once the red flag came down, I crossed the moor by way of the Roman road. I guess in the 19th century you could actually walk along the road, which today is covered with scrub. Perhaps the only dry-shod way across Otmoor during those far off days. Peter