Telling Tails
the day a mermaid cast a glamour on herself
Village sign beside the Fair Green in Reach, Cambridgeshire. Note the signpost pointing to Burwell :-) 14 February 2026
Hello lovely friends, and welcome to another edition of Between The Moons.
When I had the idea of these extra offerings for our little community, one of the things I wanted to share with you was some behind-the-scenes moments. Often when I write a story for Bracken & Wrack, it represents a quest or adventure in itself with plenty to ponder, and I may well have recorded the journey with myriad photographs and snippets of video. Within the main newsletter, though, there will usually only be space for a couple of pictures to accompany my words, especially since it’s one among several pieces of writing which all need their own illustrations.
Last Saturday I was in Cambridgeshire undertaking a quest for a very elusive inland mermaid. Indeed, she managed to hide herself even when in plain sight, casting a glamour on herself by tricks of the light. But more of that later.
You may remember Her Silvery Path: the day the mermaid lifted her veil, our between-the-moons gathering of a few months ago when I told of searching for the spot in dense woodland where the Mermaid’s Head spring bubbles up from the earth. And then, of following her silvery ribbon all the way to the confluence where the River Mermaid joins the mighty Bure.
In that post I showed you the photographs I’d taken along the way and explained that I was preparing to write up the whole adventure for Mermazine, the new bi-annual journal celebrating East Anglian mermaids and their kin.
I’m hoping that the story of our pilgrimage to the Burwell Mermaid will be published in the second issue of Mermazine, due out in the summer. I’ve not yet written it up, but once it’s ready I’m planning to include a small extract in our regular Bracken & Wrack newsletter. Meanwhile, here are some of the photographs I took over the course of the day that will grant you a sneak peek of that tricksy mermaid’s tail/tale.
The story begins in a community hall car park next to Girton church close to Cambridge. Metal art commissioned for the churchyard wall celebrates Girton’s close association with the ancient Cambridge colleges, as this parish supplied goose feather quills to the scholars for generations. Geese, giant feathers and fantastical foliage all illuminated by night gave our park-up place a fairytale quality even before the quest for the mermaid began.