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Sunday 14th — Low tide, 07:20
Back at the harbour before the town wakes. The ferry is hauled onto its slip and two men in orange are scraping barnacles off its keel, laughing about something I can't hear.
Sea kale on the shingle — a great grey-green cabbage growing straight out of the stones, as if planted by someone with a sense of humour.
Skimmed nine stones. One went eleven bounces. Nobody saw it, so I'm recording it here as fact.
Total walked this weekend: 31.4 miles (the map says 29, my feet disagree).
Things to remember
— The smell of the boathouse: tar, rope, and pencil shavings.
— Mrs Alder's sign: "CRABS. KNOCK LOUDLY. I AM OLD."
— That the tide tables were right and I was wrong, twice.
— To come back in October, when the geese arrive and the chip shop closes and the marsh belongs to the birds again.
Saturday 13th, cont. — Saltmarsh
The path gave up at the sluice gate and became a suggestion. Followed the line of fence posts, each wearing a cormorant like a hat.
Redshank calling — a nervous, tumbling whistle. Curlew further out, sounding like the marsh itself is sighing.
Found a whole razor shell, unbroken, 19cm. Kept it. Found a bicycle wheel. Did not keep it.
The light at four o'clock turned every creek to pewter. Sat on a lump of concrete that had once meant something and ate the last of the ginger cake.
Sketch — Purple sea lavender
Not a lavender at all, apparently. Grows in sheets across the upper marsh so that the whole ground goes violet for August. Pressed a spray between the tide tables.
Limonium vulgare — flowers July to Sept. Note the stiff, papery calyx.
Saturday 13th September — Harbour to the Point
Left the cottage at 06:40 with the kettle still ticking. Mist on the estuary so thick the moored boats looked like they were hanging in the air.
First bird: a little egret, standing on one leg in the channel like it had been left there overnight. Then oystercatchers, dozens, all complaining at once.
The old lifeboat house has lost another window. Someone has painted a small yellow sun on the door.
Tide turning around nine. Walked the shingle spit as far as the wreck ribs, which look more like a whale every year.
Noon — The Point
Wind picked up from the south-west. Ate a cheese and pickle sandwich in the lee of the coastguard hut, which smells of creosote and warm brick.
Seals on the far bank, eleven of them, arranged like commas. One rolled over to look at me, decided I wasn't interesting, rolled back.
A man with a metal detector said he'd found a Victorian button and forty years of ring-pulls. He seemed content with both.
Note: buy new laces. Left boot now held on by optimism.