The River Crouch had waves with white tops as though it were the sea; they splashed over the saltings and the rigging in the boats sang out in the gale force winds. Just four brave walkers turned out for this last walk of the year – as we gathered on Althorne station the train guard wished us luck and we liked to think he was keeping an eye on us, as he passed on several occasions. Fortunately, although the wind was blowing mainly from the south, it had a bit of west in it, so for most of the time it was partly behind us as we walked back to Burnham,. It wasn’t long before we had extra strong gusts and were almost blown from the wall and at one point had to sit down to prevent this happening. We walked in the shelter of the seawall as much as we could. It seemed that the strongest winds occurred when we were most exposed, as by the time we had passed the hill at Cliff Reach and gone down to Creeksea, it was almost calm compared with earlier,

With all this excitement the stretch over the fields and lanes and back to the group leader’s house seemed quite mundane. Other group members met us there and warmed by mulled wine that loosened tongues we spent a pleasant couple of hours relating tales and reminiscing about walks we had done together over the year.

8 kms/5 miles

Diane Caulkett