I was fortunate enough to be taken around the as yet unopened Bowers Marsh reserve today by Marc Outten. This huge area is part of the South Essex Marshes that already include West Canvey Marshes, Vange Wick and Vange Marsh . It is still in the fledgling stage with dumpers, diggers and other JCBs all over the site but hopefully it will not be too long before it opens its metaphorical doors to the public.
Nicole and Dhruti (our new Rainham Marshes wardening team) and myself were left speechless at the scale of the project and some of Marc's 'scrapes' would neatly take up most of Aveley Marsh at Rainham!
Mr Outten, Lord of all he surveys... a thorn between two.....
'Yes, all of that is the new freshwater 'scrape'............
It really does go as far as you can see and was already covered in countless gulls and amazingly a family of Avocet that successfully (and secretly) bred amongst all the construction traffic! Imagine gravel islands, reedy fringes and permanent water of varying depths!
New car park....
and 6km of trails!
... and this huge hole is the Saline Lagoon... that is the A130 road onto Canvey Island behind.
Saline Lagoon works...
The enormous sluice and slip way through which salt water from East Haven Creek will be channeled into the lagoon which stretches to the dark bank in the top left hand corner of the image...
As you may have gathered from the list of superlatives, all three of us were humbled by the scale of everything and I urge everyone to keep an eye on progress over there over the coming months. This is landscaping on a grand scale and I think that it will be simply stunning... Really is a case of watch this space...