19th March 2009

18th March 2009

Saltmarshes form in relatively sheltered coats, where silt and sand accumulate, becoming colonised by salt-tolerant plants: sea purslane, golden samphire, glasswort, sea aster and others. The plants trap more sediment, and the marsh becomes a kind of filter for teh tidal water, meshing off nutrients and foods with each receding tide. The architecture of saltmarshes, and the mudflats into which they dwindle, is formidably complex; a maze of rays, wriggling channels, creeks, fleets, gutways and swatchways, all of which are kept clear by the sluicing action of the tide.

As well as the unusual plants that form them, there saltmarshes are home to hundreds of rare insects, and provide uniquely safe nesting ground for waders. They are also among the most effective tidal defences known.

from The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

There were also the Sheldon Tapestries, huge woven hanging maps of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, into which red threads had been discreetly insinuated to mark many known recusant hide-outs.

from The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

The sea wall at Thorney Bay