Taking a Walk Patrick Barkham
It was not beautiful – between hummocks of bramble and thickets of sallow, there was a dumped car seat and a rusted pipeline. It was not tranquil – the beep-beep-beep of a reversing lorry was carried on the wind, alongside the cackle of a green woodpecker and the repetitive thud of a drill entering concrete.
But the apocalyptic terrain of Canvey Wick was tremendously enlivening. Flat, bleak and rough, it is one of Britain’s most bounteous, improbable nature reserves.
Canvey Island’s Thames-side shores were once enjoyed by holidaying Londoners. Sediment from the river – sand, gravel, silt, chalk – was dumped on the grazing marshes of Canvey Wick at the eastern end of the island in the 1960s, as industry took over from tourism. An oil refinery was constructed at Canvey Wick but the oil price shock of 1973 saw the unused facility abandoned.
Rubble and asphalt gave rise to uniquely warm microclimates. Rare invertebrates arrived. Three insects, previously considered extinct in Britain, were rediscovered here. From the shrill carder bee, one of Britain’s rarest bumblebees, to spectacular, metallic bombardier beetles, nearly 2,000 invertebrate species have been found here. More are being discovered.
In 2012, after Canvey Wick was called a ‘brownfield rainforest’, this patch of brownfield land was bought by the Land Trust charity and saved for the nation.
Canvey Wick offered an intimate landscape of rough meadows, groves of sallow, and sunny clearings marked by asphalt circles like huge helicopter landing pads. An icy wind swept across the Thames Estuary but, when I put my hand close to the soft, black asphalt, I felt warmth. Reptiles – adders, slow-worms, common lizards – adore such conditions, as do insects. So do motorbikers, who somehow sneak through the heavy metal gates and add skidmarks to the circles.
The grassy clearings were rabbitgrazed and filled with common spotted, pyramidal and bee orchids in June. They were still floral in late autumn, with a strange blend of non-native species – tiny succulents that would look more at home in a pot plant, and the lurid pink blooms of everlasting pea, an important source of nectar for late bumblebees such as the shrill carder. (Listen closely, and its buzzing is unusually high-pitched.) I could see why Canvey Islanders are proud of their homeland – they’ve just declared they want to break from ‘mainland rule’ and win independence, Catalonia-style.
A container ship passed up the Thames, big and close. Following a path over the sea wall revealed a different landscape: a vast expanse of mud and silver water where curlews called. Beyond were the white and grey cylinders of oil refineries and gas storage depots.
Back in the shelter of a miniature sand mountain, I admired tiny volcanoes made by the hairy-legged mining bee, also known as the pantaloon bee because females collect great sacks of pollen on their hind legs. Baggy trousers.
Loitering in any estuarine edgeland risks encountering a psychogeographer, poet or questing nature writer – but the only beast I bumped into was a demonic Alsatian pulling a friendlier owner. ‘Looking for bugs?’ said the dog-walker. ‘How could anybody be interested in bugs? I like snakes, them sorts of things.’
That’s fine, because Canvey Wick has something for everyone.