Glorious mud
Question: While on holiday in North Wales recently I ventured out on the
Lavan sands, a vast area of mud that is exposed when the tide retreats from the
Menai Strait. In no time at all, I found myself up to my knees in mud and
eventually returned to shore extremely dirty and minus my rubber wellington
boots, sucked from my feet by the mire. Has anyone devised any footwear that
makes it possible to trek across soft mud? I would assume that the obvious
solution of round flat 鈥渄uck鈥檚 feet鈥� shoes would fail, as suction would make
them stick to the mud鈥檚 surface, making walking nigh on impossible.
A variety of solutions follow, most are traditional and all of them have
shortcomings. Some shoes are designed for sliding across the mud but have
problems with inclines and direction changes. Some are designed for walking (or
a mixture of walking and sliding) but are clumsy and have problems with suction.
Traditional attempts to deal with suction include ropes to help lift the shoe,
and open weave and frame designs that allow air to the base of the shoe. More
modern solutions include the use of air tubes and a winged shoe, but there seems
to have been no major progress in the past thousand years. We applaud the brave
experiments described below to use a pair of woks as mud shoes and hope others
will follow. If anyone comes up with a new solution, please write to us, but
bear in mind that mud flats can be dangerous places with rapidly rising tides
and quicksand. Do take care鈥抬诲
Answer: What you want is a pair of splatchers. These are essential equipment
in the marshlands of East Anglia.
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Splatchers are flat, oval pieces of board that strap onto your boots and look
like filled-in snowshoe. They have a smooth underside and you use them with a
gliding step (like ice skating). This takes a bit of getting used to, and you
also need to make sure that you don鈥檛 trap one edge under the other as you walk,
but with practice you can move remarkably fast over the softest, slushiest of
muds.
The gliding step helps avoid suction, but the trick is to keep moving. If you
stop and let your weight press the splatcher into the mud you will have to
slither it about to release the suction.
Jim Munro
Strathaven, Lanarkshire
Answer: A board called a patten, about 15 centimetres by 40 centimetres, is
fixed to each foot by a simple strap. A string from the front of each board is
held in the respective hand of the walker. Progress is made by lifting the front
of the board with the string and then sliding the board forward. The process is
known as plowtering and is (or was) commonly used by East Anglian wildfowlers to
recover shot birds that had fallen onto soft mud.
Malcolm Bishop
Norwich
Answer: Mud pattens help spread the weight of the wearer and have been around
for centuries. A frame beneath the board prevents suction, making it easier to
lift the patten free of the surface. Pattens are used by wildfowlers and
cocklers who venture out onto soft mud.
It takes practice to use them but, once mastered, they make it remarkably
easy to get about on the softest mud. Going up mud banks is more of a
challenge!
Gerald Legg
Booth Museum of Natural History
Brighton
Answer: Both the Dutch and the Germans have wickerwork mud shoes for walking
on soft mud or through peat bogs. The openings in the wickerwork prevent
suction.
Modern mud shoes may be woven, as prehistoric ones were, or tied together
with wire. Walking in mud shoes is like walking in Norwegian snowshoes
(trugers): the shoes have to be pulled straight up, swung forward and set down.
This makes progress quite slow.
A display of articles for mud and bog travel may be found at the Coastal
Museum in Wilhelmshaven, on Germany鈥檚 North Sea coast.
Ross Firestone
Winnetka, Illinois
Answer: We are a group of six surveyors, in our fifth year of an intertidal
survey of the coast of Wales for the Countryside Council for Wales.
As regular visitors to Lavan sands, we have found that there is a technique
for walking on mud. Leaning forward and sliding across the surface is more
effective then taking large steps. Avoid stopping if at all possible and in
really muddy conditions wear a drysuit.
Special winged attachments can be bought, but we鈥檝e found they are heavy and
the mud tends to collect under them.
Monica Jones
Countryside Council for Wales
Bangor
Other readers have much praise for these winged devices, known as mudders,
especially on extremely liquid mud.
Their design is inspired by the foot of the great blue heron and they can be
seen on vendors鈥� websites including www.benmeadows.com and
www.forestry-suppliers.com鈥抬诲
Answer: Two of my friends set themselves the challenge of walking at low tide
across the Mapua estuary, near Nelson in New Zealand, each deciding on a
different strategy.
Method one involved using woks, the idea being that the curved base of the
wok was unlikely to stick to the mud, and if it did stick it could be rocked
free. A golf shoe was bolted into each wok and a knee-high handle of wire
attached in case the woks needed to be pulled out of the mud. However, a trial
run found that woks tend to slide unpredictably, especially since their round
shape forced the wearer鈥檚 feet apart, causing him to waddle. They also tipped
slightly, and mud slopped over the edge until they became rather full and
heavy.
Method two involved old skis. The bindings were removed, and the golf shoes
(in one case) and an old pair of cut-down gumboots (in the other) were bolted or
wired at the toe onto the ski. The idea was to ski in a free-heel, cross-country
style and it worked perfectly. The journey across 3 kilometres of mud took about
half an hour to complete without incident.
Alison Ballance
Dunedin, New Zealand
Answer: Rubber boots stick in the mud because an airtight seal forms around
them. The simple solution is to securely attach a couple of vertical plastic
tubes (a centimetre or two in diameter) to the front and back of the boots,
giving an air passage to the bottom of the boot and so preventing the seal from
forming. The boots then lift easily from the mud.
Ben Green
Southam, Warwickshire