Mostly walking or kayaking the more remote landscapes around London, especially the Thames Estuary and its creeks.
Ian Tokelove
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Gas silos at Grain last Saturday, viewed from a seawall path. The cracked earth of the footpath was misted with the funnel webs of small, cautious spiders, and the calls of chiffchaff and cuckoo were matched by a mighty chorus of marsh frogs, singing lustily from the borrow dykes.
#RemoteLondon
Local river clean-up, the Ravensbourne. Lots of wildlife here, including kingfishers and Pichu, hiding out in the concrete canyons of Lewisham and Deptford.
#BrookmillPark #HealthyRiversProject
Out sound-hunting with the remarkable @radiolento.bsky.social crew, on the Isle of Grain. Always good.
Stoke Saltings, Medway Estuary. I always think of the white boat as the ghost boat, unfinished & seemingly unwanted. It’s set aside at the far end of a remote, ramshackle marina, my kind of place / #RemoteLondon
Reaching for the sky: a dead birch tree standing beneath dark, rolling storm clouds. A recent walk in Suffolk’s Constable country.
A trip to Grain Tower with Adam Taylor, a Medway expert who was grabbing some footage for his upcoming talk ‘Defending the Swale’ at Sambrook Brewery, Wandsworth on Monday, 29 June.
The heavily-eroded tower dates back to 1855 and once defended the mouth of Kent's Medway estuary. Access is tricky.
The end of the line at Brandy Hole, on the River Crouch. Here the seawall path was breached in 2002 to allow the sea in, rewilding precious saltmarsh.
I love this part of the path, walking along the rough remnants of the seawall, with a high spring tide lapping close, and the chatter of birdsong.
An overgrown corner of Battlesbridge Boatworks, on the River Crouch in Essex.
The disused gantry bridge at Harwich Train Ferry Berth. Dating back to 1923* this once served train ferries to Zeebrugge in Belgium. The last service ran in 1987 and the structure is now Grade II Listed.
* Originally constructed in Richborough, Kent in 1917 to support troops fighting in WW1.
The gnarled, sculptural remains of a riverside willow, upstream of Flatford Mill on the River Stour. Stripped back to its core, its bleached, twisted bones seem almost alien.
It’s the sort of stump that looks as though it could move itself, when the mist is thick and no one is watching.
