Flotsam & Forts
Here before you is a path that leads over to the Marshy extremities at the eastern edge of the island. At high tide the sea is held in place by the path, away from the much lower grazing fields contained within the walkway...for now anyway. Coots, geese, ducks and moorhens chatter on one side. Gulls scream on the other. Toward one end a strange little pool juts out into the sand and it is easy to imagine a lady of the lake residing here. A benign "Stay Below" waiting under the skin of the water to bestow a new excalibur...
Things you could do!
Take 10 minutes to reflect on the things you can see from here…
What memories come to the surface?
​
What characters and beasts belong in this kind of a place? (You can draw them if you like!)
What sights, sensations and smells would you like to bottle up and take home?
Make a list of the things you would like not to forget about this very moment.
​
Choreography - Take your finger and, closing one eye, turn slowly 360 degrees, tracing the shape of the horizon as you go.
Here is a cross roads.
We begin facing toward the long path stretching as far east as we can go.
​
In this direction we find the Blockhouse. It's last resident is remembered as perhaps a woman of ill repute, or even a cunning woman. Such tales abound of folk who live out their days in such isolation, especially if they are Women.
A little further finds you at the ferry stop, where you can catch a ride over to Brightlingsea. It sits there looking back at us from over the water.
Turn 45 degrees to your right.
Out there was doggerland, that ancient connective land tissue that lay between here and the continent. Sometimes the tide pulls so far out toward the horizon that you can imagine walking back over the long lost land. Eyes scan the mud, searching for one of the famed lost cities, ears listening for the sound of drowned church bells tolled now by the waves of the north sea in place of the hands of men.
Close to here the bones of mammoth and hippo have been found, as well as some of the notorious east coast sharks teeth.
​
Turn 45 degrees to your right.
​
This way finds the cliffs with their sand martens. Buried in nest holes deep in the golden face, like hundreds of tiny eyes that look out over the water too. The beach bellow littered with a crumble of fallen pill boxes, a wealth of oyster shells and great tumbles of flint.
​
And crowning the cliffs with leaf and gall and hopeful roots, the remains of the grove. Pine and oak rustling in prayer against the wind and the tide. Looking down at the skeletons of fallen family, seaweed now trailing from sandy branches in place of ivy and moss.
That way leads back round to the playground, a path where the low light strobes and paints enchantment between the sea, the young trees and the land.
​
Turn 45 degrees to your right.
​
This way is the direction that will take us home it leads to the most engaged with pillbox on site, people go inside and feel the sound change and echo, feel the world shrink.
​
And back this way, this is the way that we came from and we know what it contains much more intimately than we know the way forward…
​
Next Stop... Family Friendly Trail - Tidings
Extended Trail (ages 12+) - Ferryman's Waiting