Introduction


When we started walking the coast of England we had no intention that this would become a major lifetime project. Having to make a last-minute arrangement for our summer holiday in 1987, we said "Let's go to the nearest piece of coast and see how far we can walk along it." It turned out well and we started adding further stretches of coast, initially once every two years, but soon annually, or even twice a year.

We had always enjoyed the coast - there is something refreshingly "edgy" about having the sea always at our side, and one of us was into marine molluscs. We also enjoyed long-distance walking and had long been involved in general natural history recording. This project enabled us to combine all three interests.

You soon discover when embarking on a project like this that you need a few rules, which evolve from the first experiences. Our main rule was that we should walk as close to the coast as possible, which meant beach-walking whenever we could (unlike the official coast paths that largely remain above shore, recognising that at high tides the beach may be inaccessible). The route should also be capable of being a continuous walk, so that when we came to an unfordable river we walked inland along its banks to the first place at which we could cross, whether a bridge or a ferry.

We only carried light packs, so that at the end of each day's walk we had the problem of getting back to our car where we started. Initially we walked back, but soon realised we would be walking the coast twice this way! We used public transport whenever this was available - buses or trains, sometimes adjusting our start and finish points to make this easier. Failing this - and it was often not possible - we would phone for a taxi (an increasingly costly option over the years). Having our car with us gave us more freedom as to where we could stay at night - and after a day walking and only light food we were usually ready for being spoiled by a good meal and a comfortable bed! Even so, we stayed on the coast itself whenever there was a decent option.

Each walk was made for enjoyment, it was not a route-march to see how quickly we could get it finished. We therefore took it gently at times when passing through pleasant scenery or where there were many plants or creatures to record.

In terms of biological recording, we systematically noted every bird, butterfly, creature or sea-shell that we came across, sometimes spending time searching for the shells. We could not record every plant in the same way - there are too many common ones - so we were more selective, noting all coastal plants and any others that were not run-of-the-mill.

In our daily posts, edited from our original diaries, we include a star-rating from no star to **** according to our subjective estimate as to how special that day was from the point of view of natural history. This score (and our daily records) will, however, have been affected by the weather - it is difficult to appreciate the environment fully, for instance, in torrential rain, and there are many more butterflies and other insects to be seen in warm sunshine!

A summary of all our natural history records on the walk can be found using this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1LLGD55lKRHYXd1SGU1QndrcUU/edit?usp=sharing





Friday, 31 January 2014

Lincolnshire: Fosdyke Bridge to Gedney Grove End 2/7/2008***


 

White campion with common poppy & meadow vetchling
 
Hedge brown
 
Drains & embankments: the usual view
The proprietor of our B&B, Pipwell Manor, kindly drove us to our nearby starting-place of Fosdyke Bridge, from where we walked north up the east bank of the Welland.  White campion dominated the first part of the embankment and we continued to see this plant frequently the rest of the day, which after the first kilometre was not very flowery.  A small nature reserve Moulton Marsh had a copse that seemed as though it had been planted with a mixture of shrubs, many native but others alien like many-flowered rose and Waterer’s cotoneaster.  As we continued out to the estuary and the saltmarsh widened the main sounds were those of skylarks and oystercatchers, the latter creating a racket whenever we came anywhere near their chicks, even though we could never see them.  In one case the chicks were obviously somewhere on the path itself and the adults got very agitated.  When we reached the point furthest out towards The Wash we could still hardly see sea, only saltmarsh and mud.  East from here the embankment fringed the area of saltmarsh used for air force practice (often rented out, we were told, to Americans and Germans). The peace was shattered by noisy flypasts.  We frequently walked into horizontal strands of what seemed like cobweb and were presumably money-spider lines spreading in the wind, but we did wonder whether they might have been some military intruder detection system picking us up on their radar!  We had our lunch on concrete steps that led to a flagpole with a red flag flying and we passed many lookout posts containing 'hidden' military personnel.  After lunch a helicopter came in very low above our heads and continued to roar around us all the rest of the way to try to spook us.  There was little wildlife around, but we did see the first emergence of hedge brown to accompany the meadow browns and ringlets.  We also saw field scabious for the first time this trip.  As we turned the corner towards the Nene estuary we passed close by the remote self-contained village of Gedney Grove End and we eventually walked back to the Rising Sun pub there to call our B&B owner who had promised to collect us by car.  On the return journey John Honnor, a former drainage engineer (who now gives talks on the subject), gave us an interesting history on the development of the reclaimed land of the fens and the series of embankments of different ages that we had noticed.  It had occurred to us today that we were walking, in fact, a completely artificial man-made coast and the original coastline is obviously marked by the series of villages now miles back from the Wash, such as Holbeach, with its Sea Lane, or Moulton Seas End.  This makes the walk along the most extreme embankments a very remote experience, with only an occasional glimpse of an outlying farm.
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