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The footpath is marked on the maps by a confident straight line just north of the mouth of the mighty River Thames and its estuary, running for six miles through a vast delta called the Maplin Sands.

The word “sand” doesn’t sound so bad? But skimming the travel essays and local histories, one discovers some of these sands are the quicksand ones, far from shore.

Then there is the equally disturbing caution of the “Black Grounds,” closer to land, described as a kind of jellied pudding of mud that swallows people and animals.

So, please, let’s avoid those spots.

One of the charts advised, “Seek Local Guidance,” and that is what we did.

We met Brian Dawson on a recent Sunday evening at the entrance. Dawson is 76 years old, with one new knee, awaiting a second. He herded us half-dozen ramblers in rubber boots into a tight flock and, clucking about the tides, said, “Can’t wait. Let’s go. We’ll turn back if the wind picks up.”

So we began: out onto the wooden wattling of the Wakering Stairs, down a descending causeway built of sticks and stones that transitions the walker from the low marshlands of Foulness Island onto the Maplin Sands.

Dawson was pleased with the first 100 yards. “The walking’s good, the sand is hard, but please keep up with me,” he said. “Don’t go wandering . . .”

We clung to him like barnacles.

The path is called the Broomway, Dawson explained, because walking the Sand Bar at low tide was once the only way to get to Foulness Island without a boat, and farmers erected a line of rushes and reeds as signposts to help them get back and forth from market.