Walk Porlock Marshes

Severe storms at the end of 1996 breached the shingle barrier between the sea here and the floodplain behind it, changing the nature of the marshes and creating a whole new ecosystem, providing a habitat for enough rare coastal plants and wildlife to merit making it a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 2002.

There is a line of trees over the hedge looking distinctly the worse for wear, as a result of saltwater flooding around their roots during the sea's encroachments. On the saltmarsh itself, just to the west of this walk, there is a plantation of stunted trees, long dead, raising their bare branches heavenwards like some primitive tribe turned to wood in retribution for some awful wrongdoing.