On the river Deben, was there really nothing to see?

The day before had been a near gale – less than ideal for beginners on the river. At the second attempt, we arrived on the banks of the Deben, near Woodbridge, to find a dead calm; from one extreme to the other.

Our skipper, a family friend and member of the Waldringfield Sailing Club, looked somewhat glum at the conditions. Still, she hoped to find a wind once on the water and we clambered into the sailing dinghy feeling optimistic.

Even in mid-stream, however, there was barely a breath. On the other hand, my son barely stopped for one as he grumbled at the lack of marine life.

“I want to see a sea animal,” came the refrain. I pointed out a seagull and some swans.

“Stop pointing out birds, Daddy,” he spat back. “I only want to see animals in the water.”

Specifically, it turned out, he wanted to see a turtle, or possibly a dolphin. Wind or no wind, disappointment beckoned.

Our beleaguered captain tried all she could to distract the ship’s boy. “Tristan, tell us what you can see,” she encouraged.

The less-than-able seaman glanced around briefly, taking in the gorgeous scene: the silvery estuary, myriad boats up river, a reed island to starboard, the sloping farmland hard ahead.

“Nothing!”

Ah, the resolute pessimism of youth.

Then again, it’s easily done isn’t it: to ignore what is in front of our eyes, either because we are rushing past or are being distracted by something in our nearer vision – a phone, or a whining four-year-old, for example.

open image in gallery

After half an hour tacking gently up and across the Deben’s wide expanse, we gave it up as a bad job and whimpered slowly back to the southerly bank.

In this part of Suffolk, water predominates. The rivers Alde, Deben, Orwell and Stour each sally forth into the North Sea within a few miles of each other. Boats entertain but they also employ: livelihoods rely on tides. Storms, which batter the coast with ever-increasing ferocity, can spell disaster in these low-lying areas.

Once we had disembarked, I walked downstream, first atop a dyke, then through a gap in a hawthorn hedge and into a field of potatoes. At its margins, the spuds had not been harvested and remained in the ground, slowly going green.

A row of oaks between the farmland and the river were stunted, dieback plainly evident. Further down river, I could see a completely dead tree, in the bare branches of which perched half a dozen cormorants, with their “India rubber necks” (as the Swallows and Amazons put it).

The path was muddy where the sandy soil had been churned by tractor tyres. I turned back.

Below the dyke, small eel-like creeks wound through the saltings, carving deep tracts in which seagulls shrieked at one another. In one of these gullies an oyster-catcher piped stubbornly, wondering why he only had treacherous gulls for company.

Had he peered over the samphire that covered his salt-marsh promontory he would have seen a little egret, posing in her dazzling white against the mud. And had he swum out into the Deben, he would surely have spied his oyster-catching pals, dawdling in the reed bank that splits the river.

These were the things I saw. What can you see?