26
Purbeck Gazette, March 31, 2025
Field & Stream
purbeckgazette.co.uk
by AJ Selby “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh” – Rachel Carson IT’S good to see wildlife and countryside in other areas of this isle and a trip during that fine week in early March to Kent to visit my eldest son offered the opportunity to revisit Cliffe Pools on the North Kent marshes. This haven for waders and other estuary birds covers 700 acres of former gravel pits which have been left to nature for many years and now offer a range of habitats from lakes and la-goons to mudflats and tidal creeks, saltmarsh and untouched rough grassland. The North Kent peninsula, known as the Hoo peninsula – Hoo meaning Spur in old English – extends from just east of Gravesend and north of the Medway towns of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham –with a hard ‘G’ – all the way east to the village of Grain. Throughout this sparsely populated and little visited chunk of the Garden of England are some extremely interesting places such as Cooling, whose castle is home to Jools Holland, and Cooling church, a location in Dickens’s Great Expectations. The churchyard and the marshes to the north were the haunt of the convict Abel Magwitch in the same book. It covers an area of almost 40 square miles with a population of about 30,000 with much uninhabit-ed marshland. Other areas of interest include High Halstow, with a 130-acre nature reserve, part of which is RSPB Northwood Hill SSSI that features the largest heronry in Britain with up to 200 pairs nesting each spring. The
you can see the city of London a dozen miles away. Passing some rough grassland, a dozen lapwings launched themselves into the air, caught by the breeze as they danced away with a twist and a turn. The old name for these birds is the peewit, after their call, and they hold a special spot for me as I was in the peewit tribe in the boy scouts many dec-ades ago. After years of decline, they are making a comeback, and not a moment too soon. The sea wall loomed in front of us and as we looked over we saw the Thames in full flow with Essex and Tilbury Docks on the far bank. A few small vessels plied the battleship grey water, their spray catching the sunlight and giving off myriad sparkles of colour, and then we spotted a larger ship com-ing upstream. As we watched it pass, its bow wave ran up the creek beside us and filled the muddy channel with water, going on and on as the groove in the mud started to narrow. Back on the edge of the river, many gulls were looking for scraps and then soaring into the wide blue sky with some morsel or another. Skirting along the sea wall and back inland we spotted a pair of stonechats in a furze bush ahead and then in a narrow dyke, a greenshank, furtively poking around for some titbit. A walk of around five miles took us back to the car park having seen much, and I can heartily recommend a trip to the Hoo peninsula if you find yourself in the far south-east. There are some wonderful places to visit includ-ing the lovely wide beaches at Egypt Bay and St Mary’s Bay. The Saxon Shore Way crosses here on its way around the Kent coast and into East Sussex to Hastings. There is so much history to this place, as well as wildlife, and as we left feeling we wanted to see more, I started planning my next trip back before too long.
Wildlife and history on a visit to the Hoo peninsula
Cliffe Pools on the North Kent marshes is a haven for waders and other estuary birds covering 700 acres of former gravel pits which have been left to nature for many years PHOTOS: Google
raucous noise of hungry chicks in May needs to be experienced. The easternmost point is known as the Isle of Grain, although it is no longer an island. It has nothing to do with corn as the word comes from the old English of Greon, meaning gravel. The entire area is home to 300,000 breeding birds and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, both locally and nationally, when a dozen years ago Boris Johnson proposed an international airport and supporting infrastructure be built on the Thames at the north of the marshes – fortunately,
common sense pre-vailed. Walking from the car park at the RSPB reserve of Cliffe Pools we spotted tufted duck and dabchicks at the first lake we came to. The hedge-lined track is also busy with wrens and sparrows and the air is both refreshingly brisk and yet with that cleanliness that you find in exposed environments. The next gravel pit looked to be tidal and contained some shallow water and a muddy scrape where avocets, redshank and shelduck fed, filtering out the tiny crustaceans from the mud. The insistent call of the redshanks as they take off as a small flock hint at the loneliness of their habitat and while this place feels as remote as Dartmoor,
DO YOU HAVE A STORY? Then email ed@purbeckgazette.co.uk