I have written here before about my rather too many years of commuting by rail into the smoke and the highlight of my journey being the approach to Manningtree from the North.

I still marvel at the presence of fragile and very rare salt-marsh so close to a toxic factory site at Cattawade. I have been revisiting this site recently with a view to making new work for my extended Edgelands series and I was after yet another viewpoint, a viewpoint afforded by the track bed of the railway line. I know the track bed is out of bounds but the other night after a very long day in Kent I travelled past the site that now resembles something akin to a WW1 battlefield. Piles of rubble, fires burning and excavated trenches full to the brim with water, or water mixed with something. The dyke surrounding the site would, it seem, be a suitable vantage point.

So it was a check of the forecast on Saturday evening and an early set on the alarm. I was up and out at 0430. Now 0430 is still a tad late at this time of year for the light I usually go for but this was also a test of a new bit of wood and metal so I could live with the the fact that that that red glow of dawn had already been lost to me.

I travelled light but it was still bloody heavy. One camera case and one rather heavy tripod but could I find a way past the razor wire onto the dyke. Not a chance so I stood back and saw something that was not on my radar. The tide was out, the mud was glistening, the light was changing by the minute and the wind was getting up. My focusing cloth nearly went flying off a few times. This is the first image I made with the new bit of wood and metal.

The second from a few yards to the right

Drizzle arrived and I packed up. Wood and calf-skin bellows and wet don’t mix for me. So I trundled around to Manningtree to check out the other side as it were. What a difference an hour makes!

All the while I was making the image above these geese were chomping their way into the scene.

I was back home by 0830 and as high as a kite. The dark slides unloaded and negatives all boxed up to post on the Monday morning.

I’m still high as a kite. I could get used to the wood and metal camera.