Saturday, 5 March 2011

Weekday walk #6

It was a bitingly cold day, and we walked along the Thames for over ten miles, taking hundreds of photos, snuggling into our hats, sipping coffee from our flasks and smelling the syrupy, caramel scents from the Tate and Lyle refinery at Silvertown.

Our highlight was the completely unexpected discovery of a little sandy beach at Gallion's Reach, at the outer edge of the docklands.  For over an hour we became mudlarks -prowling along the beach, picking up treasures, washing them in the water with freezing fingers, picking our way carefully over the slippery seaweed and hidden patches of estuary mud and occasionally looking up to gaze out across the misty, grey river.

Sea glass and oyster shell


Metal ring

On the beach!


Victorian brick


Blue sea glass


Mud, not sand


Shiny black rocks


Mudlarking at Gallion's Reach

It was magical in a rather eerie way, and afterwards it was only the chink from my pocket, of the sea-glass I had collected, that let me believe I really had been on the beach in London.

5 comments:

  1. That sounds so delightful (minus the cold!). I have heard about beach combing in London, and would love to do that one day. Love seeing the treasures you unearthed!

    Ann

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  2. Wow - how strange, but lovely to have found those lovely things. Blue glass too! That really is treasure.

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  3. I'm always delighted when I see elaborate sand sculptures on that sandy stretch by the South Bank.

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  4. I do fancy the smell of that factory. The area near my office always smells of coffee in the mornings because of the roasters.

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  5. Who would have thought that you could walk on a beach in London! I love all the treasures that you collected. I would be scared in case I found a washed up body!!!

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