Andrea has an app on her phone which alerts her to exceptionally high sea tides. The reason she cares about such tides is that the local salt marshes flood, leaving hundreds of deep clear pools of water, which are great for splashing and swimming in.

With a >10m tide forecast for midnight, Andrea packed her truck for an early start and by 7am the next morning she was on her way. It was a still and warm, albeit rather cloudy, Autumn day. No one else was at the coast and she enjoyed the walk along the foot of the cliff as she headed out onto the marsh. Riding boots, denim jodhpurs with a suede seat, and a waxed mid-length Welligogs riding coat were the order of the day.

After a negotiating some of the muddy gullies she splashed through the high-tide puddles that had formed along the edge of the coastal path enjoying the trickles of warm water than ran into her boots as she waded across. She laughed out loud as she slipped and slid on the slick mud in the gullies that separated the coastal path from the flat grassy marsh; in places the water was knee deep, turning her jods a deep glistening blue colour. After another 10mins of negotiating gullies and getting soaked to her upper thighs in the process, she was out on the salt marsh proper, and this is where the fun really began. There were hundreds of pools, typically 3 to 5 feet deep, they were still and clear and surprisingly warm. Run, jump, splash, swim, submerge, repeat it was just fantastic fun! After an hour she was exhausted, not to mention soaked to the skin with bulging coat pockets full of water and her hair plastered to her head. It was time to head for home before the incoming tide cut her off, but this was an experience that just had to be repeated, and soon.