The Creeksea Cliffs

With the flood defences along most of the River Crouch, there are few places where you can observe the unobstructed process of erosion. Here is one, the Creeksea Cliffs, on the north shore between Althorne and Burnham-on-Crouch. These are clay cliffs tumbling into the river, bringing trees along with them and revealing untouched flint cells to the sky. It's a fossil haunt too apparently, the source of shark teeth and Ray fangs, arrowheads and more. We beachcombed for pottery fragments and interesting shells. Near the eastern extremity lay a lamb corpse, its face eaten off.

Walking Crouchside - Easter Monday

Easter Monday

The riverside walk along the flood defences, west from Althorne to North Fambridge, cold eothen wind to the back. The partly flooded Bridgemarsh Island lies to the left for most of the journey. Enclosed by a 'sea wall' by 1736, when those same defences were partly destroyed, the island was once inhabited, farmed and had a brickworks, tile-works, shop and a school. But it would be slowly abandoned to the tides, as holding back the waters became more difficult and costly.  The island was overcome in the 1953 floods with remaining parts of its defences being taken to shore up others on the mainland south shore of the Crouch.

Learn more about Bridgemarsh Island in Essex Coastline:Then and Now by Matthew Fautley and James Garon (Matthew Fautley, 2004)

Far away beyond the Crouch

" Then far away beyond the Crouch, came another striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another still farther off wading deeply through a shiny mud flat half way up between sea and sky. By midday they passed through Tillingham, which strangely enough seemed silent and deserted, save for a few furtive plunderers hunting for food. Near Tillingham they suddenly came into sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine."

War of the Worlds (1898), H.G. Wells 

Image:War of the Worlds Thunderchild by ~TroC--czarnyrobert