Saturday, 14 October 2000

Coastwalk

Burnham-on-Crouch → Bradwell Waterside

[St Peters on the Wall]

Distance: 19.1 miles
Ascent: unknown
Duration: 6 hours

Mudflat marathon
« Rochford | St Lawrence Bay »

For the first four and a half hours of today's walk I didn't meet a single soul. You wouldn't expect to find such remoteness in England, let alone in the crowded south-east corner only fifty miles from London. But here it is: a fifteen mile path more deserted and lonely than most of the wilderness walking on Britain's moors and mountains.

It won't come as a surprise then to learn that I'd been a little worried about today's walk. It wouldn't be the most interesting (the landscape's totally flat), and there wouldn't be many opportunities to cut it short if I had a problem.

After a couple of miles though, a blip appeared on the horizon that I knew to be my destination. St Peter-on-the-Wall stands alone on the mud-flats, and turned my day into a mini pilgrimage. The site dates from 653 AD when St Cedd formed a community here. Set into the chapel altar are stones from three other church communities involved with St Cedd: Lindisfarne, Iona and Lastingham.

Services are held here in summer evenings, the congregation walking to the chapel from the end of the nearest track a mile or so inland. My walk though, continued for a few miles further round the coast past the soon-to-be-closed nuclear power station to the village where I'd left the car early this morning.

An exhausting day, but a refreshing one too: plenty of time alone with my thoughts and a focal point to draw them to a close.

Posted by pab at 22:20