This is an ancient landscape; the drainage pattern may have taken shape over a million years ago.

• a distinctive open, rolling landscape fronted by gentle, stepped escarpments (as seen at Ashwell, Therfield Heath, Heydon, Wandlebury);
• shallow dry valleys (as at Kelshall, Heydon);
• spring-lines where water emerges from the chalk aquifer at impermeable layers, such as the Melbourn Rock (as at Ashwell, Fowlmere, Fulbourn, Chippenham);
• an extensive dip slope mantled with glacial till and an extensive dip slope mantled with glacial till and dissected by valleys with streams which may cut down to chalk bedrock;
• seasonal streams (for example the River Kennett at Moulton).

The Anglian glaciation has played an important role in the shaping this landscape: its ice sheets eroded and surmounted the escarpment, draping it and the dip-slope with till ('boulder clay'), breaching it to form through-valleys such as the River Cam, and progressively lowering the escarpment towards the north-east.

• low, rolling uplands, often mantled by a veneer of glacial till (as seen at Swaffham, Great Massingham, Docking);
• periglacial patterned ground, where frost acting on varying chalky and sandy subsoils produced soil stripes and polygons (as at Brettenham Heath, Grimes Graves, Brancaster);
• chalk streams, where rivers are supplied by chalk springs or run directly over chalk bedrock (for example the rivers Nar, Wissey, Thet);
• Breckland meres, where the Chalk is an aquifer for a group of natural lakes in Breckland with a distinct seasonal recharge regime (as at Langmere, Ringmere, Fowlmere);
• periglacial pingo ponds and palsas, where frost acting on springs in the Chalk bedrock during the Ice Age has given rise to clusters of ramparted ponds (as at Thompson, Foulden and East Walton Commons);
• dolines, basin-shaped depressions caused by solution and collapse of the Chalk bedrock (the Devil's Punchbowl at Croxton is a good example).

• valleys may have cut down through younger deposits to expose chalk bedrock in the middle sections of their course, as in the Wensum and Gipping valleys;
• chalk springs may bubble up in valleys, as along the Glaven valley (Norfolk);
• solution hollows (dolines) may form where solution and collapse of the Chalk has taken place beneath thin superficial deposits; these may take the form of circular depressions in farmland;
• solution hollows close to valley sides may have become enlarged by thermokarst processes in the Ice Age to form natural lakes; examples include Quidenham Mere (Norfolk) and Bosmere (Suffolk);
• streams may be absorbed into swallow-holes where overlying deposits become thin, as at Water End (Herts), or where they flow off boulder clay, as at Coddenham (Suffolk).

Soils in the 'chalk belt' include:

• rendzinas - shallow, silty, grey, well-drained soils; formed over chalk bedrock on escarpments and hillsides;
• calcareous brown earths - loamy, well-drained, chalk-rich soils; formed over chalky material on gently undulating land;
• palaeo-argillic brown earths - fine silty or loamy soils with flints and a reddened subsoil; formed over plateau drift, clay-with-flints or glacio-fluvial drift and till.

In the Breckland area, chalky sub-soils are covered with a sandy layer of glacio-fluvial and aeolian drift. Their interaction under periglacial conditions during the Ice Age has produced patterned ground of stripes and polygons in many places.