Phil Gyford

Right now I’m in San Jose, but I spent the first two days of the Easter weekend in a very windy Walton-on-the-Naze, a seaside town on the Essex coast I’ve visited pretty much every year of my life. My sister found some great aerial shots of the area at this site of Walton photos. This one is particularly fine, showing the “backwater” inlets in the centre of the image. The backwater is bleakly beautiful, and reminiscent of the landscapes in Lawless Heart, one of my favourite films of last year, shot in the Essex town of Maldon. The backwater was also the setting for the getting-stuck-up-a-pole-when-the-tide-comes-in antics in Arthur Ransome’s book Secret Water (US UK).