At the early morning high tide the water lapped the shore like brown Windsor soup slopping in a bowl carried by a doddering waiter. The sea retreated leaving a smooth chocolate desert finish to the beach. Determined parents desperate to find firmer sand and the sea carried their children through ankle deep gloop. Elsewhere the accumulated mud was riven by sinuous channels into islands and isthmuses waiting for colonisation by saltmarsh plants.
This has never been a resort of silver sands, but why so much mud? Too much rain, probably. This winter Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Rutland had over 170% of the normal seasonal rainfall and much of this drained into the Wash through the Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse bringing silt with it. Good for the curlew, redshank, oystercatchers; not so good for holidaymakers