Local Links

Caledonian Canal 1999

Other Links

Arthur Ransome Society

Cambridge Canoe Club

Canoe Camping Club

Walton Backwaters 1999

Walton backwaters are a salt marsh area to the south of Harwich on the East coast of East Anglia. My Dad lives nearby so we walked across the fields to launch near Kirby Quay. He joined us for a short paddle around the bay before we headed out with the tide to Stone Point. The backwaters are a fantastic area of hidden creeks and was the setting for Arthur Ransome's Secret Water.

	Stone Point Camp
	Stone Point Arrival
Route Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.	Crossing The Wade

We paddled out through the tiny creeks around Horsey Island. Finding the creeks is often hard when you are so low in the water and at high tide many of the saltmarsh banks are covered by a few inches of water - sometimes enough for a kayak, sometimes not. Route finding is much easier once the tide has dropped a few inches to clearly see the channels.

We crossed the current at the top of the Walton Channel to reach Stone Point. To our horror we found that it was being used by dredgers on the Harwich approaches to dump sand. It was a noisy operation with flood lights and there would be another tide in the middle of the night! We got back on the water and headed further around the South of the island. Water was getting low by now. We paddled as far as we could and then dragged the kayaks over the remainder to camp on the sand.

Next day as the tide came in, we explored further up the Walton channel and then as water permitted paddled across to The Wade, the old causeway to Horsey Island. We carried the boats across here and rejoined the narrow channel of water that would take us back to Kirby.