Coastwalk

St Osyth → Walton-on-the-Naze

Distance: 14.9 miles
Ascent: 338 metres
Duration: 4 hours 59 minutes

The richness of diversity
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I've been talking about getting back to the sea for months now, so what do I do? I pretty much blow it all on one walk. This is always the way with resort strips. A large town (in this case Clacton) spreads both ways along the seafront, merging with villages and hamlets, extending a long promenade as it goes.

Here the prom starts at the caravan park in Seawick and extends through Jaywick, Clacton, Holland and Frinton to Walton. It's about ten miles in length and takes in astonishingly different communities. A walk such as today's puts you in touch with the variety of society in England today.

Frinton-on-Sea is famously resistant to change. Three fierce battles have been fought in recent years to introduce a chip shop, a pub and - oh the humanity - an ice-cream seller on the beach. This is a rich retirement town where residents take comfort in the familiar.

One explanation is that Frinton is afraid of Jaywick on the far side of Clacton. It's hard to convey the nature of this settlement. Other authors have used the terms "shanty town", "third world" and "deprived". It's certainly not somewhere I would have been comfortable loitering.

Clacton and Walton deliver everything I've come to expect of seaside towns. Each has gardens; each amusements and a pier (in Walton's case it's a huge structure getting on for a kilometre in length).

So I ended my walk in familiar territory but it's Jaywick and Frinton I was thinking about while riding the bus back to the car.