Walton-on-the-Naze put-in
The launch sits at Sunny Point on Walton-on-the-Naze's seafront, opening onto the open North Sea about a kilometre south of the Naze Tower, at the foot of cliffs whose fossils have made the Naze one of Britain's key sites for studying the early Pleistocene. Hamford Water, the sheltered tidal backwater behind Walton, lies on the opposite, landward side of the town toward Kirby-le-Soken.
The Naze Tower, standing on the cliff top about a kilometre north of the launch, is an 86-foot (26 m) octagonal brick tower built by Trinity House in 1720-21 to work with the former Walton Hall Tower in guiding vessels through the Goldmer Gap; it is Grade II* listed. The cliffs it stands above are protected as The Naze SSSI, a 22-hectare site notified for early Pleistocene invertebrate fossils that make it the type locality for the Waltonian stage, and for Eocene plant and bird fossils Natural England describes as significant to the study of bird evolution.
North of Stone Point, at the tip of the peninsula, lie the drying creeks and mudflats of Hamford Water. Natural England's proposed marine extension to the Hamford Water Special Protection Area has its southern boundary close to this launch, running north along the mean high water mark past The Naze SSSI; Hamford Water holds internationally important numbers of wintering Brent geese and waders, and a breeding little tern colony, which the SPA and Ramsar designations protect.
South along the seafront stands Walton Pier: the original, built in 1830, was one of the earliest piers in Britain, and an 1898 extension took it to 2,610 feet (795 m), the third longest pier in the country at the time. The RNLI's Walton and Frinton Lifeboat Station operates from a berth and wave-break built alongside the pier in 2005.
Nearby
Beachfront kiosk cafe close to the launch, off Old Hall Lane, CO14 8LE.
Kiosk cafe at Hipkins Beach, Naze Park Road, CO14 8JZ, serving sandwiches.
Cafe at the Naze Tower, Old Hall Lane, about a kilometre north of the launch.
WebsiteConditions to check
The beach here can be cut off by the tide: walking too far along it after the tide turns from low to high risks losing the way back to the promenade.
SourceCommercial shipping bound for the Port of Felixstowe, the UK's largest container port, and for Harwich passes through the buoyed approaches a few miles north of this coast.
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