Posted on 01/19/2017 9:49:44 AM PST by Ciaphas Cain
If you consult a large-scale map of the Essex coastline between the River Crouch and the River Thames, you will see a footpath – its route marked with a stitch-line of crosses and dashes – leaving the land at a place called Wakering Stairs and then heading due east, straight out to sea. Several hundred yards offshore, it curls northeast and runs in this direction for around three miles, still offshore, before cutting back to make landfall at Fisherman’s Head, the uppermost tip of a large, low-lying and little-known marshy island called Foulness.
This is the Broomway, allegedly “the deadliest” path in Britain, and certainly the unearthliest path I have ever walked. The Broomway is thought to have killed more than 100 people over the centuries; it seems likely that there were other victims whose fates went unrecorded. Sixty-six of its dead are buried in the little Foulness churchyard; the other bodies were not recovered. Edwardian newspapers, alert to the path’s reputation, rechristened it “The Doomway”.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Has anyone let Ragnar’s sons know about this? Ya know, before they seek revenge on his death.
so what is killing them? Rising water? Quicksand?
Somebody give that boy a horse! :)
I’m guessing the landing.
It's downright amazing how humans seem determined to lay down a road across the most forbidding terrain possible.
According to the article, both. Rising water is the most likely, but a person who wanders off the solid path can go down in quicksand.
“God protects fools and Englishmen”
Ragnar’s sons got their revenge last night.
I am pretty sure this scenario, if not exact place, is in at least one of not more of Ragnar’s adventures.
People don’t realize that the muck will precent them from escaping what is an unexpectedly rapid rise in the tide.
There is a place like this in Alaska, from alaska.org:
“Don’t stop with just one.You can watch the bore go by at the first pullout, then drive your car down a pullout or two and watch it come by again. It takes over five hours for the bore to travel from the mouth of Turnagain Arm to the end of it.
Never walk out onto the mud flats. People have died by getting stuck in the glacial silt and being drowned by the incoming tide!”
Too late. They started last night. And Ivar even brought the chariot Floki made for him.
“Foulness Island” doesn’t sound like a place I’d like to visit.
Reminds me of the story of King John of England losing the crown jewels. He was in a hurry to cross a marsh, so even though the tide was coming in, he sent his baggage train across one of these paths that is only barely above sea level. When the tide rolled in, the wagons got washed off the path and the crown jewels sank into the marsh, never to be found.
Gotta go to “on demand” to see it. I was out past the start time last night. The first rerun was at 0100 hrs. Chose bed instead.
The alaskan bore tide is cool because Beluga Whales and seals ride it in.
There was a mass drowning of 19 shellfish gatherers in Morecomb Bay in northwest England in 2004 - another extensive tidal flat. They were mostly immigrants who didn’t know the danger, and I believe their employer was held liable.
Fantastic! Thanks for posting.
A GPS might help.
So much for climate change and rising sea levels.
Any prepared hiker would confidently and safely (except for the buried land minds) travel this with apriori knowledge of the local tides, and a walker's GPS. OTOH, any foolhardy writer in search of a story would not even think of it.
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