tributary causeways; a sequence of compass bearings and paced distances; a numbered list of observations concerning appropriate clothing to wear on the Broomway; and some points of advice as to how best to avoid dying on it.
Patrick owed his life to the Broomway. ‘Let me tell you,’ he explained to me the first time we spoke, ‘there was a man called Mr William Harvey, and one day in 1857 he set out with a coach and horses to cross to Foulness. Well, he never arrived, and so they went looking for him. Of the horses no trace was found. The coach was discovered upside down in the sands, and there was William’s drowned body lying dead on the flats.
‘After she’d done with her grieving, William Harvey’s widow went on to marry a Mr Lily, and of that congress was born my great-grandfather. So while the accident was Mrs Harvey’s great loss – and indeed also Mr Harvey’s – it was eventually my great gain. In this way, do you see, I am grateful to the Broomway, and so I have devoted myself to walking and researching it.’
Patrick spoke with precision, and with faint hints of Victoriana. He was a man of quiet honour and exactitude, punctilious with his facts. He had worked onshore as a form-maker and carpenter until his retirement, but he knew the sea well and held the speed record for rowing solo from London to Ostend. He told me stories about the Essex coast: about the fleets of collier-tugs that would assemble in the mouth of the Thames; about the dangers of easterlies blowing big ships onto the lee shore; and most often about the Broomway, of which he spoke respectfully but fondly as ‘an old friend’.
Patrick had read almost every available account of walking the Broomway, and he relished the grisly melodrama of its past. Whenever we spoke he would have fresh tales for me, dredged from Broomway lore: a nineteenth-century coroner’s account of the difficulty of identifying bodies once the crabs had been to work on faces and fingers, say; or a survivor who had written in a letter to a friend of the ‘sheer panic’ that he experienced as rain fell around him, and he wandered the sands in search of the right route.
‘He was convinced he was walking towards the Mouse Lightship,’ said Patrick, but ‘in fact, he was walking out to sea, towards his death, and he was saved only by the accident of stumbling into a fish kettle – copper-nailed so as not to rust – which he knew had to have its closed point facing out to sea, and its open mouth gaping perpendicular to the shore, such that fish would become trapped in it during the retreat of the tide. This gave him the orientation he needed, and he made it back along the path. He was a lucky man.’ Patrick sounded faintly disappointed that the death sentence of the Broomway had been, in this instance, commuted.
Until hand-held compasses became available to walkers, the safest way of navigating the Broomway in bad conditions, when it was impossible to see from broom to broom, was with stone and thread. Walkers carried a 200-foot length of linen thread, with one end tied to a small stone. They would place the stone next to a broom and then walk away in what they believed to be the right direction, unspooling the thread as they went, until they could see the next broom. If they went astray, they could trace the thread back to the stone, and try again. If they went the right way, they hauled in the stone and repeated the action. It was slow and painstaking work, but in this way people could notionally follow the Broomway in safety, whatever the weather.
‘It’s a weird world out there on the flats,’ said Patrick. ‘Nothing looks the same as normal. Gulls can seem as big as eagles. Scale and distance change. It’s very easy to lose your bearings, especially in dusk or dark. Then it’s the lights on the Kent shore that often do it. People think they’re walking back to the Essex coast, when in fact they’re walking across towards Kent and so out into
Patrick owed his life to the Broomway. ‘Let me tell you,’ he explained to me the first time we spoke, ‘there was a man called Mr William Harvey, and one day in 1857 he set out with a coach and horses to cross to Foulness. Well, he never arrived, and so they went looking for him. Of the horses no trace was found. The coach was discovered upside down in the sands, and there was William’s drowned body lying dead on the flats.
‘After she’d done with her grieving, William Harvey’s widow went on to marry a Mr Lily, and of that congress was born my great-grandfather. So while the accident was Mrs Harvey’s great loss – and indeed also Mr Harvey’s – it was eventually my great gain. In this way, do you see, I am grateful to the Broomway, and so I have devoted myself to walking and researching it.’
Patrick spoke with precision, and with faint hints of Victoriana. He was a man of quiet honour and exactitude, punctilious with his facts. He had worked onshore as a form-maker and carpenter until his retirement, but he knew the sea well and held the speed record for rowing solo from London to Ostend. He told me stories about the Essex coast: about the fleets of collier-tugs that would assemble in the mouth of the Thames; about the dangers of easterlies blowing big ships onto the lee shore; and most often about the Broomway, of which he spoke respectfully but fondly as ‘an old friend’.
Patrick had read almost every available account of walking the Broomway, and he relished the grisly melodrama of its past. Whenever we spoke he would have fresh tales for me, dredged from Broomway lore: a nineteenth-century coroner’s account of the difficulty of identifying bodies once the crabs had been to work on faces and fingers, say; or a survivor who had written in a letter to a friend of the ‘sheer panic’ that he experienced as rain fell around him, and he wandered the sands in search of the right route.
‘He was convinced he was walking towards the Mouse Lightship,’ said Patrick, but ‘in fact, he was walking out to sea, towards his death, and he was saved only by the accident of stumbling into a fish kettle – copper-nailed so as not to rust – which he knew had to have its closed point facing out to sea, and its open mouth gaping perpendicular to the shore, such that fish would become trapped in it during the retreat of the tide. This gave him the orientation he needed, and he made it back along the path. He was a lucky man.’ Patrick sounded faintly disappointed that the death sentence of the Broomway had been, in this instance, commuted.
Until hand-held compasses became available to walkers, the safest way of navigating the Broomway in bad conditions, when it was impossible to see from broom to broom, was with stone and thread. Walkers carried a 200-foot length of linen thread, with one end tied to a small stone. They would place the stone next to a broom and then walk away in what they believed to be the right direction, unspooling the thread as they went, until they could see the next broom. If they went astray, they could trace the thread back to the stone, and try again. If they went the right way, they hauled in the stone and repeated the action. It was slow and painstaking work, but in this way people could notionally follow the Broomway in safety, whatever the weather.
‘It’s a weird world out there on the flats,’ said Patrick. ‘Nothing looks the same as normal. Gulls can seem as big as eagles. Scale and distance change. It’s very easy to lose your bearings, especially in dusk or dark. Then it’s the lights on the Kent shore that often do it. People think they’re walking back to the Essex coast, when in fact they’re walking across towards Kent and so out into
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