THE BROOMWAY

BAREFOOT ON THE 'DOOMWAY'

A trail run along Britain’s deadliest path Words Mark Rainsley

Adim red-orange semicircle crept above the horizon. The sun’s subdued appearance found me running atop a grassy sea wall, alone and bleary-eyed (from a night of fitful sleep in the car). I was wrapped up warmer than normal, on account of the chill that rolled in across the expanses of mud and sand to my right; somewhere out there, unseen in haze, was the North Sea. The sea wall brought me, before long, to a slipway pointing directly out to sea. This dilapidated concrete structure reached 50 or 100 metres offshore, before suddenly and inexplicably tapering out. A photographer was sitting here with camera and tripod set up to capture the dawn: the first person I had seen on this winter morning. I greeted him and turned to run down the slipway, but he halted me in my tracks with a warning hand.

“You can’t go out there! I've lived here all my life, but I wouldn't go out there. There is mud and quicksand, you’ll get lost, plus I'm pretty sure that the tide is coming in now. You do know that is Britain’s deadliest path, don’t you? They call it the ‘Doomway’.”

This dire admonition was, admittedly, pretty off-putting. Nevertheless, I put a brave face on it and assured my photographer friend that I absolutely knew what I was getting into, that I was prepared and that I’d checked the tide times. With butterflies in my stomach, I ran down the slipway, trying to stride as confidently as possible. Passing the slipway’s end, my trail shoes sploshed through wet mud and briny pools but I forged ahead, not allowing myself to look back towards shore and betray uncertainty. Suddenly and without warning, I was engulfed in dense disorienting fog: where did that appear from? Just 10 minutes into running the Broomway, an infamous trail which has claimed many lives, and I was already completely lost.

What is the Broomway?

The Broomway is an ancient route in the North Sea, leading from the coast of Essex across Maplin Sands to Foulness Island. The Broomway is only accessible at low tide and is so-named because historically the route was marked out by ‘brooms’: bundles of twigs sunk into the sand. No trace of the brooms remains today and now this legal byway – confidently marked out on Ordnance Survey maps – just consists of unmarked and featureless wet sand, which of course is covered over and swept clean by the tide, twice a day.

Is the Broomway really Bri