Saxon Shore 3

 

Winter lurks, off stage, unseen. Announcing its presence with chill clear mornings. Biding its time, to make a theatrical entrance. Warm woolen hats are donned. Sails un-bent and stowed, in anticipation.

Yet there is still strength in the sun, once it has clambered to its favoured mid morning vantage point. Warming the Kentish weatherboarded cottages of Oare, as it looks down benevolently.

Shoal draft craft, of all stripes, nestle on mud their berths, in Oare Creek: A clinker built, centreboard, Finesse twenty four. Varnish work glistening gold.

A broad shouldered, Stephen Jones designed, lift keeled Southerly. Twin rudders splayed to hold her upright.

And motor craft of all persuasions. A sea worn, carvel planked, fishing boat lies alongside a diminutive, rust flecked, ex-dockyard tug, named Joker.

Beside the path, a riot of brightly coloured berries adorns the bank side bushes. Still bearing their summer leaves.

Over on Ham Wharf, Greta has struck her spars and begun her hibernation. Lady Daphne holds out, in hope of winter passages, her sails brailed up. Waiting for the moment, when wind, tide, and her skipper's whim, serve

I walk seaward, skirting the marsh. Houses perch precariously on its rises, moated by wetlands alive with raucous migratory birds.

Across Oare Creek the listing boardwalks, of Hollowshore, bridge the gap between terra firma and mare incognitum. Shore life and sea life. The streets, of a cosmopolitan shanty town, in the saltmarsh. 

Aromatic woodsmoke billows, from stove pipes, in wind blown skeins. Here lie pelagic, liveaboard boats. Well found and ready to put to sea, come spring. 

Leaving the houseboats, 'projects' and hulks (listed in descending order, of their degree of decrepitude), to be slowly subsumed into the body of the marsh.

Devoured, mantis-like, until only a skeletal carcass remains.

Downstream, Oare Creek and Faversham Creek unite and flow on together. A varnished clinker cruiser, its winter coat on, lies tethered in the rippling tide, sheltered by tall sedge; which dances in the breeze.

Abruptly, the course and the character, of the combined creeks, changes. The channel swings through fully forty five degrees, to the north east. Its point of divergence marked by a starboard hand pole; and the bones of a boat, which did not heed it. Gone are the cosseting close knit reed beds. Replaced by open vistas and a beckoning horizon, to the east.

To the north, across the indigo expanse of The Swale, the Isle of Sheppey, green and pastoral, offers a bulwark against winter storms.