Regretfully, as a result fo the author's stupidity, photographs from the Essex walks are very limited. There are none for the first three days, as I lost my camera somewhere in Maldon and I could only take a few limited photographs on my phone for the rest of the journey. Powering up my phone was a constant problem because so much of this trip was camping and for a lot of the journey I had no access to a power supply.
The surface geology of Essex is comparatively young compared say to some of the outcrops of the Scottish Highlands but beneath these layers there is very old bedrock. The geology is also varied with a number of layers, consisting of a range of different materials including among others alluvial deposits, sands and gravels, brickearth and loams and glacial tills, laid down towards the end of the last Ice Age. A substantial number of fossils have been found throughout the county. The lower levels or bedrock consists mainly of paleozoic rocks which can be up to over 400 million years old; the Gault level consisting mainly of marly clay and above the Gault, chalk levels that are exposed in parts of Essex, Kent and Sussex. The chalk levels, which originate from a large sea thought to have covered most of Northern Europe, forms part of the foundations for the geological structure known as the London Basin. The chalk rises in the Chiltern Hills above High Wycombe and runs under London and Essex to emerge in Kent and Sussex in the form of, among other things, the majestic cliffs. Above the chalk levels there are numerous layers laid down over the centuries by drift activity.
Sitting on St Osyth Beach, Seawick contains the largest collecction of static caravans in Essex. There is not much more I could find to say about the place. Any charm it may have had is squahws beneath the wieght of caravans and static homes. Inland from Seawick, the village of St Osyth was the scene of witch persecutions in the 16th and 17th C, with up to ten women hanged. It is also home to the remains of the 12C St Osyth Priory and its history is thought to stretch back to 8C (circa) with the founding of a convent by Acca, Bishop of Dunwich. The first Abbess was Osyth, about whom there are many myths and legends.
I set about puttiing up the tent and getting the rest of the equipment in and managed it just before the rain came. There was just time to brew up a cup of tea in the front of the tent and to eat the pastries I had been given. With the onset of the rain my plan for a wee wander to stretch the muscles went by the wayside and I had to make do with just a walk to the shower block. Shortly after, about eight o' clock, I was in the sleeping bag listening to the rain on the canvass. I didn't move again for the rest of the night.