I’m in Bridgewater, Somerset, with the van and looking for somewhere to stay. There is a “Certified Location” near where I want to be tomorrow so I ring the number of "Mud Horse Cottage". CLs are the human side of the Caravan Club – small sites with few facilities but people with some character. I’ve no idea what a mud horse is. A ripe Somerset accent is saying hello. Would they have space for a camper van and one person tonight?
"Oh yes, there's a couple of spaces. When you gets to the gate come right on through. We're down by the beach."
Stolford is a hamlet of 10 or so houses tucked in behind the sea wall on Bridgewater bay. Most of them have pantile roofs and stone walls: it looks French. Looming just to the west of it is the solid cuboid structure of Hinckley Point nuclear power station. From there lines of pylons march over miles of rough grass, marshland, pebbles and sea; the stark metal seeming to emphasise the harsh beauty of the landscape.
I opened the gates and drove on gravel through the cottage garden to the little walled paddock behind, which sloped up towards the sea wall. I was the only one there, and I was glad. Deafness and solitude: they feed off each other. The deafer I get the less inclined I am to attempt conversation. I embrace isolation, but I still try. A simple exchange of views or information without too many “sorrys” or “pardons” can make the day. I realise that I actively search out times and places where I can be alone in a big landscape, and this gives me an idea for a series of pictures.
I make a lunch of packet soup and bread and then lie down, read a few pages and fall asleep. With hearing aid removed, I am deaf to the sound of a thunderstorm rattling the van. I don't sleep for long - never do in the day - fifteen minutes perhaps. Another rainstorm, some reading, some map perusal, and a few chores later I am ready to survey my surroundings. I lug the telescope through a gap in the hedge, down some rough sand steps and then onto the sea wall where the whole great expanse of the Severn estuary is laid out before me. Away to the right is Burnham on Sea; on the opposite shore are Newport and Cardiff and in the middle is the aptly named island of Steepholm. Out on the mud there are shelduck, a few curlews; nothing much else. It's a quiet time of year for the birds; a time for nurturing fledglings and moulting.
A 4x4 truck passes me with some sort of contraption on the back and it's making its way slowly out onto the pebbles and rocks. Scrawled along the side of the truck are the words "THE MUD HORSE". Surely he can't be planning to drive out onto the mudbanks? They stretch as far as they eye can see and notices tell us how dangerous they are. But he does - or seems to. He must know where the rocks are. He is perhaps half a mile out from the land when he stops. I focus the telescope on him. After waiting a while – for the tide? - he unships the contraption and begins to push it out onto the mud, leaning on it for support and paddling with his feet. Unknowingly I have chanced upon Adrian Sellick, the last of the Mud Horse fishermen. Once common in the area and on the opposite shore, he is still doing what his grandfather and father did - set nets across the tide and harvest the catch. I walk round to the fish stall next door and find what must be Brendan, Adrian's father, scrubbing off a strange looking marine creature with a shape like a vertebra - a sole perhaps? He hangs it up on the gate alongside what looks like a miniature shark. There are sole fillets for a pound so I buy one for my supper.Here's the info: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/3337013/Last-round-up-for-the-mud-horse-fisherman.html.
How lucky I am to be here where an old way of life goes on beside an ugly new one - the doomsday box and its metal veins alongside an ancient skill being superseded by supermarkets.
Back at the van I unfold the Brompton bike, and loaded with optical gear, I set off eastwards, parallel to the shore, along a rough track which should lead me to the Steart peninsula. It does - as long as I am willing to take in pebbles and grass as road material. After perhaps 45 minutes I reach the little tarmac road heading northwards towards Steart village, and more importantly to the huge new area of saltmarsh which the Wetlands and Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency have established. I am at the "Steart Gate car park" and the signs pointing south say "main car park 3.4k" "Polden Hide 3k". The one pointing north says "Breech 2k" These are big distances for a nature reserve, but this is more than a reserve, it’s an answer to rising sea levels: don’t fight the sea, channel it. Breech is where they've let the sea in. I get to within half a mile of it and find it's closed to protect the nesting birds. There's another path on the west side which leads up to the northern point of the peninsula. There, cycling across a field of grazing cattle, dodging the cowpats, I find the old tower hide looking rather forlorn. Climbing the stairs expecting to be alone again, I am surprised to find a young man with a Swarofski telescope and various charts and papers. I scan the view with the binoculars and see two Shelduck. What is he doing observing 2 common ducks with a 2k telescope? It turns out that Steart is a major moulting ground for Shelduck and if I look closely out beyond the shore I can just see a small flock of the white and brown birds. These he tells me can still fly and are probably the locals. He expects them to be joined by up to 3000 migratory birds later in the summer when all of them will be flightless for a few weeks. The survey is to get the details - how many, when and where.
It's a long haul back on the roads - a huge detour south - but it feels good. The sun is shining again, it's warm and have my lovely piece of fish for supper, with some veg and rice, and the last glass of a carton of wine. More reading, and as the light declines, a DVD of "The Shining". I get halfway through but find it boring.
The Steart Marshes
The people who live in Steart village must be used to being surrounded by the wild. Over the centuries they had built the sea walls and drained the land to keep livestock and grow crops. Now the land is being deliberately flooded – farmland to saltmarsh. From human food to bird food. Perhaps the people were too baffled by this change so they retreated into the twentieth century tradition of mechanical, high energy farming. It was and still is all about maximising yield, and using oil-derived chemicals to wring the most food from the land. That was a concept they could understand: you put fertiliser on and crops grow better. You get paid more for your harvest. The price of fertilizer goes up, so does the price of food. How could they adapt to a philosophy of fertility reduction and the encouragement of weeds?
Impossible. They had, I guess, sold most of their land so the obvious thing to do was to invest the proceeds into producing food on a much smaller area. In this tiny village there are now at least 3 farms devoted to intensive poultry – concentration camps for chickens. I had to make way for an 18 wheeler, one of the biggest articulated trucks allowed on our roads. It was delivering feed. Enough to fill several of those skyscraper silos - probably the dry, dusty meal which is the chickens’ only food. Why would they want more? It contains all the nutrients they need.
A few miles on I find this sign:
Why are the ducks free? Because there is not enough demand for their products from the supermarkets? I’m still amazed by the contrasts here: a pocket of industrial farming surrounded by its polar opposite. A bleak and beautiful landscape, a string of charming villages, and always above and beside them the symbols of man’s war on nature, the metal and the concrete, and ten thousand chickens.
I’ll be back. I’ve seen what’s been done and it’s amazing. The destructive power of the highest tides will lose itself in this great wetland. The plants, insects, invertebrates, all the strange creatures which like living in salty mud – they will multiply and feed new flocks of migrant birds. I will come with my telescope and someone will tell me what to look for: the odd man out, a stranger consorting with a crowd of regulars, a spotted redshank among the ordinary redshank. Ordinary? They are wonderful, magnificent birds, but they are common so we look between their legs for the oddity. I will hunt it down with my optics and shoot it with my camera. Bang, click, it’s there in the bag. But like a fish thrown back it will be none the worse for the encounter.
Collecting things is a very male pursuit and I never thought of myself as a collector of anything. I love photographing the birds, but they don’t have to be oddities. I just love the experience – getting up close to nature.
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