St
Peter's Chapel
Hunchback
cockle
Howe
Outfall
Decorated
gate
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Bradwell
Waterside is the riverside part of Bradwell-on-Sea, which is entirely inland!
Perhaps it was once on the coast but now left high and dry by land
reclamation. We got yesterday’s A2B to
pick us up just before 8am from the White Harte and take us to our start, as
we would end up at Burnham. The early
start was because this 15 mile walk is along a remote piece of coast at the
end of the Dengie (“den-jee”) Peninsula,
passing through no settlements at all on the way and mostly well removed from
any roads. The way, fortunately, was
not too difficult, with only a little long grass to negotiate. Sometimes we walked on top of the
embankment, especially where this was concreted (although there we got the
full blast of the almost gale-force south-westerlies), sometimes below on the
landward side, but the view was equally far from exhilarating, either
featureless saltmarsh sward of mainly cord-grass with large swathes
(sometimes like dwarf woodlands) of shrubby seablite, or equally featureless
agricultural fields of wheat or lucerne.
The latter at least provided the appropriate prairie-like habitat to
encourage large numbers of skylarks to
enliven the walk with song. Sometimes
we could not see the end of some straight sections of embankment. From the natural history point of view,
despite the remoteness, this was one of our least interesting days. The exceptions were at the start,
especially where we walked in front of Bradwell Power Station at the point
where the River Blackwater meets the sea.
Here a small beach of sand and shell-banks was formed, giving a
mixture of dune and shingle vegetation, including yellow-horned poppy, sea
kale, and sticky groundsel. This also
gave us the only shell records for the day such as the hunchback cockle. A little later we reached England’s oldest church, St
Peter’s Chapel, built around 600AD on the site of a Roman fort, some contours
of which could still be seen. This
chapel is cared for by a little religious community that lives just behind a
little wood near the chapel. Below the
chapel they have created a beautiful flower-meadow, where the deep blue
tufted vetch mixed with yellow meadow vetchling, bladder campion, field
scabious, musk mallow and knapweed.
Just before we got here the promised thunderstorms reached us and we
were glad to shelter at the chapel.
Although only 2 hours after our 8.30 start, we decided to wait out some
of the rain while having our first meal of pastries and fruit. We resumed walking south along the
embankment with only the occasional “outfall” punctuating the monotony. Our next meal we took at 1.30pm near (about
1km from!) Bridgewick Farm, sitting in bright sunshine on a cleared margin of
a wheat field, as elsewhere was all long grass. When the saltmarsh beyond the sea-wall gave
way to muddy sand, there were a couple of waders (turnstone, curlew) among
the feeding gulls, but we saw few other waders. In the inland creeks we occasionally saw
little egret, avocet, coot and little grebe.
As we rounded the SE corner of the peninsula (Holliwell Point) we saw
Foulness ahead and gradually entered the north bank of the River Crouch,
where the embankment finally led us to Burnham, and walkways, first past the
Royal Corinthian Yacht Club and then the Royal Burnham Yacht Club, and
finally along the sea-front to the ferry point and our hotel. On the whole walk we had seen only three people,
fishermen who had separately reached the coast by car along track-ways. A gate near Holliwell Point was totally
draped with old shoes and other flotsam – we wondered who had bothered at
this remote place.
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Bradwell
Waterside
St
Peter's Chapel meadow
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Bradwell
Power Station
Sea
view!
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