April 2 2006. On going to Chalkwell Beach this morning at low tide the water in the paddling pool was warm and proved to be 50°F (10°C) to disprove my earlier remarks about not bathing there. This winter the snow has melted above the water level there. The sampled water was not below 37°F (2°C), but ice has build up at that spot in colder years in a similar way to the reeds now shifted up the beach by several high tides since my last observation of it spread on the now clean lower sands. Quite recently (?Jan 1991), I noticed a Canadian-style ice-float above the tide mark cementing the sands there. A set of photographs taken west looking towards Chalkwell station, out towards ice rafts coming from Canvey Island, the Crowstone to the east and of boats at Old Leigh, show the sea nicely frozen on the morning of 26 January 1963. My father took them on a morning described as a thaw in my diary, when the tide due about 13:10 hours G.M.T. had not been so high for 14 days. One can see the height at the time the photographs were taken from the ice flows around the inscription plate on the Crowstone, to be lower than at that high tide.

Today the most interesting find was a intact, buoyant coconut with one 'eye' missing to expose a hole through the underlying endosperm produced either by decay in the sea, or during the Hindu ritual? It was below the strandline at the usual spot for stranded birds at the station, perhaps because it had rolled back with the tide or been kicked there. A husk of coir, almost certainly of the same coconut was in the latest strandline of reeds about 100 m to the east (beyond one breakwater). A Breast Cancer Charity walk to the Halfway House and back (from Leigh Station) was going on. It was hopefully over before heavy rain arrived in the west wind at 3 p.m.