River Great Ouse in the context of "St Neots"

The Wash is a shallow natural rectangular bay and multiple estuary on the east coast of England in the United Kingdom. It is an inlet of the North Sea and is the largest multiple estuary system in the UK, as well as being the largest natural bay in England and is the outflow for the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and the Great Ouse. It is also one of the most important places of conservation in Europe, with several nature reserves located within this area.

The coastline is partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Norfolk. The Lincolnshire side forms part of the only coastline of the East Midlands region whilst the Norfolk side forms the north-west corner of the East Anglian region. The coastline stretches from Gibraltar Point just south of the seaside town of Skegness to Gore Point near the village of Holme-next-the-Sea, just east of the seaside town of Hunstanton in Norfolk. These two points are over 75 miles (121 km) from each other by road, but only eleven and a half miles (18.5 km) by sea.

Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population was 106,940. Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire and seat of the Borough of Bedford local government district.

Bedford was founded at a ford on the River Great Ouse and is thought to have been the burial place of King Offa of Mercia, who is remembered for building Offa's Dyke on the Welsh border. Bedford Castle was built by Henry I, although it was destroyed in 1224. Bedford was granted borough status in 1166 and has been represented in Parliament since 1265. It is known for its large population of Italian descent.

Downham Market, sometimes simply referred to as Downham, is a market town and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It is on the edge of the Fens, on the River Great Ouse, approximately 11 miles (18 km) south of King's Lynn, 39 miles (63 km) west of Norwich, and 30 miles (48 km) north of Cambridge.

The civil parish has an area of 5.20 square kilometres (2.01 sq mi) and at the 2011 census had a population of 9,994 in 4,637 households. It now includes the hamlet of Broomhill, formerly part of Wimbotsham parish to the north of the town.

Milton Keynes (/kiːnz/ KEENZ) is a city in Buckinghamshire, England, about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was 264,349. The River Great Ouse forms the northern boundary of the urban area; a tributary, the River Ouzel, meanders through its linear parks and balancing lakes. Approximately 25% of the urban area is parkland or woodland and includes two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). The city is made up of many different districts.

In the 1960s, the government decided that a further generation of new towns in the south east of England was needed to relieve housing congestion in London. Milton Keynes was to be the biggest yet, with a population of 250,000 and area of 22,000 acres (9,000 ha). At designation, its area incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Fenny Stratford, Wolverton and Stony Stratford, along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between. These settlements had an extensive historical record since the Norman Conquest; detailed archaeological investigations before development revealed evidence of human occupation from the Neolithic period, including the Milton Keynes Hoard of Bronze Age gold jewellery. The government established Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) to design and deliver this new city. The Corporation decided on a softer, more human-scaled landscape than in the earlier English new towns but with an emphatically modernist architecture. Recognising how traditional towns and cities had become choked in traffic, they established a grid of distributor roads about 1 km (0.6 mi) between edges, leaving the spaces between to develop more organically. An extensive network of shared paths for leisure cyclists and pedestrians criss-crosses through and between them. Rejecting the residential tower block concept that had become unpopular, they set a height limit of three storeys outside Central Milton Keynes.

The River Cam (/ˈkæm/) is the main river flowing through Cambridge in eastern England. After leaving Cambridge, it flows north and east before joining the River Great Ouse to the south of Ely, at Pope's Corner. The total distance from Cambridge to the sea is about 40 mi (64 km) and is navigable for punts, small boats, and rowing craft. The Great Ouse also connects to England's canal system via the Middle Level Navigations and the River Nene. In total, the Cam runs for around 69 kilometres (43 mi) from its furthest source (near Debden in Essex) to its confluence with the Great Ouse.

Ely (/ˈiːli/ EE-lee) is a cathedral city and civil parish in the district of East Cambridgeshire in Cambridgeshire, England, 14 miles (23 km) northeast of Cambridge, 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Peterborough and 80 miles (130 km) from London. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 19,200. The parish which includes the villages of Chettisham, Prickwillow, Queen Adelaide and Stuntney and the hamlet of Mile End had a population of 20,574 in 2021.

Ely is built on a 23-square-mile (60 km) Kimmeridge Clay island which, at 85 feet (26 m), is the highest land in the Fens. It was due to this topography that Ely was not waterlogged like the surrounding Fenland, and an island separated from the mainland. Major rivers including the Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse feed into the Fens and, until draining commenced in the eighteenth century, formed freshwater marshes and meres within which peat was laid down. Once the Fens were drained, this peat created a rich and fertile soil ideal for farming.