Essex Marshes | Curious Coast

for sale
Me Tim & a Pint
Wild animals
Love me
Volvo
Tender
rigging
Pub
under repair
you're a star
coast
low water
boat house
under repair
the hard
boat pond
under new ownership
gargoyle
listing to port
hands on deck
the cut
posts
marsh
worn out
tides out
greenery
weather's a comin

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CuriousCoast
Tim Baynes
Trevor Clapp
#CuriousCoast
info@curiouscoast

The offbeat, kiss-me-quick atmosphere of the East Anglian and Kent seaside and coast fascinates photographer, Trevor Clapp and watercolorist, Tim Baynes. This website records some of their trips to these extraordinary places.

ESSEX MARSHES

Land competes with water for space. At low tide water and mud slithers between cracks and crevices in these damp green and rust colour marshes.

COPT HALL LITTLE WIGBOROUGH
Unruly gulls seek food; a curlew is unable to settle.
And landscape punctuated by an occasional frail wooden fence post.
Far in the distance is the box-like shape of Bradwell Power Station, partially decommissioned.

The River Blackwater is the lands sluice.
And in these margins, here, is where the Roman’s gathered salt, the terracotta shards of their pots still strewn.

Farms and fields abut this marsh ground.
The winter wheat is now clearly visible.
A church close to collapse and roped off. The congregation is directed to the neighbouring parish, pro-tem. The church’s tower looks out to the estuary, and drainpipe gargoyles poke fun as we graze up at them.

TOLLESBURY VILLAGE
Rain comes as we enter Tollesbury. This is village of the plough and sail, and has relied on the harvests of the land and the sea. Oysters are still an important trade.

On the hard, looking out across the saltings the tide is starting to flow, underlined by a local’s warning not to stay parked in this particular spot for too long.

Everything is falling apart or filled to the gunnels with water, intrusive is the constant morse code of rigging against mast. Recorded on my phone it sounds like footsteps. It’s tempo conducted by the wind. The Tollesbury Cafe provides good coffee, fortified we return to a drubbing by wind and rain.

HEYBRIDGE NEAR MALDON
Further along is Heybridge Basin our final stop on this windy wet tour.

Heybridge Basin where the 12-mile navigation from Chelmsford pours out into the River Blackwater through and ancient lock now modernised. Next to its quay two pubs eye each other up, The Old Ship Inn and The Jolly Sailor.

Again, there is the constant song of rigging on mast. There are few people about; we imagine the area is overflowing in the summer; with people sailing and a regular tide of visitors ebbing and flowing from the nearby caravan parks.

We toss a coin and enter The Old Ship, two pints and a portion of chips (make that two please).