Time and tide, they won't wait

By Kate Simon

Thirty years ago, I took my partner to Suffolk for the first time. I loved how the flat ground opened up the big sky; he thought it was a tedious landscape. Thirty years later, we live in the county – he’s since embraced big skies.

That same sense of awe is what tempts people to stride out across the flat expanses of tidal sands. What to some seems like a pointless trudge to a distant horizon, to others is about being in an elemental space. September being a month for walking festivals (check out Walkers Are Welcome), it seems a good moment to consider such a hike.

Buy our new book here

The most famous walk of this kind in Britain crosses Morecambe Bay, from Arnside to Grange, on the Lancashire coast, offering an unparalleled perspective on where land meets sea. But these are treacherous sands where guides have been providing safe passage since the time of Henry VIII.

Yet more perilous, if lesser known, is The Broomway in Essex, which has a reputation as the deadliest footpath in Britain, earning it the nickname The Doomway. This route across the seabed from Great Wakering near Southend to Foulness was the only way to reach the island until a bridge was built in 1922.

The sea has caught out more than 100 people over the years. With weather, tides, shifting sands and, this being an MoD area, unexploded ordnance to negotiate, a guide is advisable here, too, a job done by a former bait digger, Kev Brown, aka Thames Estuary Man, who offers walks of three to seven miles in length.

We have a similar spot in my home county, Cheshire. This one, in Wirral, covers the two-mile gap between West Kirby and Hilbre, one of three islands in the Dee estuary (before borders were rearranged, this now landlocked county touched the Irish Sea). The Friends of Hilbre have published a recommended route and guided hikes are also available via Eventbrite.

Hilbre was once an outpost for Benedictine monks from Chester Abbey. At the turn of the 19th century, it had a pub that served the crews of passing ships, and more recently has counted among its few residents the author Ann Cleeves (Shetland, Vera), who is a patron of the Friends of Hilbre. Today, it is an uninhabited nature reserve, one of the best places to see Leach’s storm petrel and a breeding ground for shelducks, meadow pipits and linnets.

Clearer routes for walkers are marked out for those wishing to cross to Brough of Birsay in Orkney to see the remnants of a Norse settlement, the castle and priory at Lindisfarne in Northumberland, the Art Deco hotel on Burgh Island in Devon, the castle on St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and the tip of Worm’s Head on the Gower. But each must be undertaken with as much caution as Morecambe Bay, The Broomsway and Hilbre Island.

Such walks offer great beauty and great danger in equal measure.

Phil’s Beer Notes

After risking your life on the sands, you’ll need a pint. At Arnside, with spectacular views through picture windows across the sea to Lakeland, JJ Crossfield’s is a good bet. This café-bar on the site of a former grocer’s shop, opened in 2023 and showcases cask ales from the local Lancaster Brewery, plus guests.

There’s a brewery at Great Wakering called George’s, and you can best sample its ales from the handpumps at the nearby Castle Inn, a pub which dates back to 1620, with cellars that once led to tunnels that ran down to the creek and were used by smugglers of tea, silk and brandy.

Liverpool’s Black Lodge Brewery opened a second taproom at West Kirby last year and provides a lively community venue serving cask and craft beer and hosting regular tasting events upstairs. And there’s a Spitting Feathers Brewery bar just around the corner, too, so you’re spoilt for choice here.

Photo: Walking the Broomway by G Travels is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.