Against the odds, the seaside pier endures, but its long-term future is far from certain

摘要

I once walked along the length of Southend Pier. There's not much to distract the casual promenader apart from a couple of windbreak shelters looking out towards London, some 40 miles upstream. In one, someone had painstakingly carved the epithet 'nobhead'. But to be suspended above the Thames Estuary between sky and water was a distinctly otherwordly experience. On a boat there is always noise and movement. Yet on this slender umbilicus of iron and timberthere was nothing -just an elemental sense of stillness and isolation, like a kind of estuarine space walk.