Mudlarking along the Thames

I was brought up by my parents to be very much in touch with nature. We lived about a two minute walk from East Beach in Shoeburyness, Essex, and on brisk, sunny mornings, we'd put on our thick coats and trainers and stroll to the beach.

In all honesty, it's not the nicest beach in the world, if it's a 'beach' you're actually looking for. The patches of sand are so few and far between that in Summer it is completely necessary to wear something on your feet at all times; unless you like walking as if the ground is laced with bear traps, that is.

This was handy for us growing up, as it happened to be at the time when jelly shoes were the height of fashion. A shoe so diverse it could be worn on hot days, on cold days with socks, on sand, in the water, and the variety of colours and glitter meant they could also be dressed up for nicer, more fancy occasions - such as school discos. They were the more popular forefathers, I do believe, of Crocs.

But East Beach isn't a beach you go to for the sand. It has an air of history about it. A 1km long defence boom built in 1944 to prevent enemy submarines entering the Thames still lies in between the public beach and the MOD site next to it, once armed with anti-aircraft guns & searchlights. All that stands today of the 1km stretch are the concrete support pillars and iron beams, which my brother and I always used to see as a competition of 'who could walk the furthest on without falling off'. It wasn't very easy; neither of us ever got very far, given that the majority of iron between the pillars was rusted and falling away, but that never stopped us, or every other child approaching the beach, trying. It was like a pre-made adventure playground on the beach - one that would never, in a million years, pass a health and safety inspection.

On the beach itself there are lines of shells and pebbles, organised neatly by the waves in which lies a wealth of small objects. Before we left the house in the morning, Mum would give each of us a small plastic sandwich bag and we'd keep it safely in our pockets. When we got down to the beach, we'd walk onto one of the lines of stones and shells and begin 'Mudlarking'.

Mudlarking is the term for beachcombing, or in my case, looking for pretty things in the sand. In the early 20th century, a Mudlark was an official and recognised occupation, but now it's much more regarded as a hobby for keen beach-amblers, or people who have seen one too many episodes of the Antiques Roadshow and fancy themselves a bit of a treasure hunter.

Shoeburyness lies at the mouth of the river Thames where it meets the North Sea. From the shore of East Beach, Kent is visible across the water, some 5 miles away, but if it's a particular foggy day all you can see is the water (and we prefer it that way - all the factories on the shoreline look terribly ugly from our side of the river and are a bit of an eyesore. Sorry, Kent, but couldn't you have put your garden there instead?)

The mud on the riverbed of the Thames is made up of anaerobic mud, meaning it can perfectly preserve whatever it absorbs for hundreds of years. Back in Victorian England, the Thames was more seen as a giant rubbish tip than a river; things which you and I might take to the charity shop nowadays, for instance, the Victiorians would simply tip over the edge into the murky waters below. As the Thames is a tidal river, twice a day new hoards of these treasures are unearthed and strewn across the shoreline from London to Essex, ready to be discovered by anyone wanting to see a slice of the history of London.

This also means that twice a day, it's possible to walk out onto the mud flaps at Shoeburyness for over a mile and look back at the Essex coastline. It's an eerie sensation, walking into a muddy abyss with no sign of civilisation in sight. You feel lost in a strange world full of crabs, seaweed and there's a pungent smell of-

Actually, it's probably better not to think what it smells of.

But it is quite a strange, almost soothing experience, and the mud takes some getting used to. It's very, well... slimy. It oozes out between your toes and farts when you try and lift your feet out of it, and god forbid if you fall over in it; I don't care what Persil says, those stains will never come out.

Every Summer when we were young, my cousins, brother and sister and I used to trek out into the mud in our swimming costumes while our parents sat on the beach and we'd try and see how far we could get. Occasionally we'd come across a patch of mud - quite similar to quick sand - where all you had to do was wiggle your hips and you'd instantly sink up to your waist in mud. My cousin Catherine once wiggled all-too-ferociously and ended up so deep (boob level) my Uncle Keith had to come out and help fish her out because we were all to scared of getting stuck too. If you got stuck up to your thighs and managed to get yourself out on your own, it was almost like you possessed an unspoken bragging right in the group for the rest of the day.

In truth, I haven't been down to East Beach in quite a while, and I rather miss it. Compared with the glory that is Bournemouth beach, it does look a bit run-down, but there's just something about it that will always capture me. Many a day I spent walking along the sand, upset with my parents for not buying me Westlife tickets for my 11th birthday, or annoyed at my sister for borrowing my Hello Kitty jumper without asking. Those were tough times, but East Beach saw me through it. I'd distract myself by sifting through the sand and seeing what goodies I could find.

The most common things anyone would encounter (other than shells and pebbles) would be pottery and glass; little white fragments of old porcelain with blue detailing painted on, and lumps of blue, green and pink glass, smoothed by years of tumbling in the water. For years we'd collect bits and bobs we'd find and take them home. They lived in various places around our house, such as on top of the microwave in the 'bits and bobs' bowl (along with hairclips, safety pins, missing buttons and various screws which have just 'appeared' over the years, their previous location still yet to be determined, but were too scared to throw away just in case they're one day needed."You never know!"). The best finds go into a Vintage printing drawer my parents have hung up on the wall in the hallway to store all their favourite nik-naks (see below), and where my mum keeps her best earrings. She's also turned many of the shells she found along the beach into earrings, too, and used to sell them at the Christmas Bazaar at our Primary School, St Georges.

Some of our best findings, including a Victorian doll's head, a fossilised sea urchin and ammonite, an old coin (circa 1910) and a shark tooth.

Better still, my parents have recently 'done up' their garden (they're trying to do up a lot of the house at the moment, as you might have gathered - it's only taken them 25 years). Given the amount of times we'd been collecting down the beach, the pile of glass, porcelain and old clay smoking pipes my mum found herself in possession of was getting somewhat ridiculous, one of her favourite phrases being 'we really ought to do something with all of this, you know'.

And what do you know, she finally did.

On my last visit from Bournemouth back to Essex, I explored the newly paved garden, and saw she'd made several different mosaics into the floor in between the slabs they'd bought from Homebase. It was delightful, looking down and knowing that everything I could see was once part of someone's life over a hundred years ago, from a smoking pipe to a possible flower vase.

And now it'll be a part of my parents lives, for many more years to come.

My mum's quite the artist, isn't she?

So next time you go to London and walk alongside the Thames, just have a think how much 'stuff' there could be lying hidden at the bottom. Who knows, you could throw a coke can into the water tomorrow (this is merely hypothetical; I'm not actually condoning it), and it could end up as part of a water feature in someone's garden in 150 years time.

The power of recycling, eh?