An extract from Estuary, a collection of essays by Lydia Fulleylove
9 February 2011
I want to see how close I can stay to the river – I start on Freshwater marsh where the Yar stream springs. It can’t seep through to Freshwater Bay so it splits in two to wander through the reeds, lapping back gardens, turning rivery when it meets the Causeway and ducking under into the estuary into a channel through mud: bubbles, hills, pits of mud. Mud that is mud enough to be marked on the section of OS map, 1.5000, showing the River Yar estuary, the flanking salt-marsh, woods and fields from the Causeway to Yarmouth. I pinned my copy to my workroom wall. At first it’s there as a reference point, an indication of what I might want to explore, somewhere I can tentatively pencil in discoveries, including the names of each of the fields. Later it seemed to acquire a life of its own, reaching out to the real river, yet also turning into a twisting, many legged lizard.
Lydia Fulleylove is an author and poet. Estuary is available to purchase here.