Good morning. It's the morning of stage 5 of the Tour of Britain and I find myself looking

out over the wider reaches of the Thames Estuary. Is it even the Thames Estuary at this point?

I don't know. We're in Suffolk, albeit right hard up against the Essex border in the east

of Suffolk and we have reached the Port of Felixstone, which is a fine thing. It's an absolutely

perfect morning. There's not a cloud in the sky. I'm all on my own pretty much on the Schingley

Beach down here on the on the waterfront. In the distance I can see a great big ferris wheel,

slightly akin to the one that stands in the Garda, Jardin de Twery in Paris actually on the

Rudy Riverley. I can see the pier just to my right and the cliffs with the elegant Edwardian

villas on the top and in the distance, so the hazy distance I can see a huge container ship that

is just making its way up the estuary, perhaps having unloaded or loaded at Silbury Docks. Is

that right Silbury? Yeah, down there somewhere, isn't it? And by the way, while I'm on the subject,

can I heartily recommend to all of you a book by a writer called Rachel Lichtenstein

called Estuary, which I may have mentioned before actually, which is a series of vignettes and

accounts for the history and the present day of the Thames Estuary, which is a remarkable stretch of

water. As I say, I don't know if technically this is the unrambling, I'm rambling. But I have

just read about the the Battle of Landguard Fort, which is a castle just up about one and a half

miles up the road from up the coast from Felix Stowe. And in the mid-17th century during the Anglo-Dutch

Wars, an assault was made by the Dutch who landed in the shallow waters near Felix Stowe and then

came a shore on the Schingley Beach, 1500 of them, dragging their heavy cannons, etc,

slightly on the wrong part of the coast. And then they tried to lay siege to Landguard Fort

in an attempt to then advance on Harwich as well. And they were repelled variously. And at one point

they got a bit stuck on the beach and the British were firing into the Schingle and the Schingle

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