Brightlingsea put-in

Brightlingsea Creek is one of the short, branching arms of the Colne Estuary. Its buoyed and dredged main channel runs to about a metre below chart datum, but outside that channel the creek dries to soft silty mud at low water, so a return to the hard at low tide is over mud rather than firm ground. Cindery Island, an uninhabited pair of low mounds at the creek mouth, submerges only on the highest spring tides; dredged silt is being added to it to regenerate saltmarsh.

The whole creek lies within the Colne Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest, Ramsar site and Special Protection Area, and forms part of the Colne Estuary National Nature Reserve, notified for its saltmarsh, mudflat and shingle habitats. It is internationally important for wintering dark-bellied brent goose and black-tailed godwit and nationally important for breeding little terns and other waders; Cindery Island and the surrounding mudflats form a key high-tide roost used by redshank, lapwing, curlew, shelduck, avocet, golden plover and grey plover.

The hard sits on the site of the former Aldous shipyard, a Brightlingsea boatbuilder founded in 1875 that ran three slipways here until it closed in the 1960s. The community jetty on the hard itself is anchored onto wartime concrete beneath the mud, part of a former facility used to maintain naval vessels. Bateman's Tower, a grade II listed tower built around 1880, stands at the mouth of the creek and is visible from the water.