'Wilderness,’ said the American essayist Edward Abbey, ‘is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit.’ He was right — and there is no wilderness like the wilderness of wet sand all around you.

Depending on where you draw the upper limit for an island, Britain is the ninth largest in the world with, according to some reports, the 13th longest coastline. However, it is only when you come to understand that, thanks to our huge average tidal range, we have the largest intertidal area of any island on Earth that you begin to grasp the sheer magnitude of the ‘land in-between’ — the land that is neither wholly wet nor wholly dry. Our estuaries alone extend to more than 2,000 square miles, an area only slightly smaller than Devon. Variously dotted with starfish, snipe, sea defences and sa

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