Kent adventure....

Today we've been working on an area of grazing marsh close to the infamous Kingsnorth Power Station on the Hoo Peninsula, in Kent. At lunch time we made a quick hop over the ea bank to visit a tiny remnant of Medway saltmarsh, with masses of sea purslane and proper little muddy creeks.



It was good to see a sizable population of the silvery sea wormwood Artemisia maritima growing at the base of the sea bank.

I think we finished our fieldwork just in time, from the look of the sky and the showers that were developing over the higher ground!

To avoid the rush hour we took a short trip across the peninsula to Allhallows-on-sea, and village mostly comprising holiday chalets. But we found a small car park next to a grazing marsh and walked to the sea bank to get a view of Southend, on the other side of the Thames Estuary. The view looking west was quite idyllic with a tiny shell beach flanked by wildflowers...

...and to the north there were splendid views of the muddy isolation of the Thames Estuary as it flows into the North Sea.

But to the east there were views of the industry at Grain, including the Power Station and the new gas storage tanks, all lit up by the evening sun with the storm clouds behind them...

The sea wall was quite interesting botanically, with masses of narrow-leaved bird's-foot-trefoil Lotus tenuis and sea clover Trifolium fragiferum. At the base, between the sea wall and the grazing marsh, the dampish track had huge populations of sea barley Hordeum marinum, curved hard-grass Parapholis incurva and annual beard-grass Polypogon monspeliensis.

Annual beard-grass Polypogon monspeliensis

Sea barley Hordeum marinum

And then it was time to go back across the grazing marsh, chat to the cows and head north for Peterborough again. But I enjoyed my very short Kentish holiday!