On the edge of Maldon District, nine miles from the town, lies one of the Essex coast's most unusual landscapes. The extraordinary patchwork of salt marshes, with narrow walkways weaving between a maze of tidal pools, was unknown to most people outside Essex until the opening seconds of the ITV drama 'Liar' gained it national attention with an extraordinary aerial shot.

Like Maldon, the tidal marshes were once the site of salt production in Iron Age and Roman times, leading to the characteristic red hills found nearby. The marshes are now designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest with 590 acres of saltmarsh, mudflats, reed beds and grazing marsh teeming with wildlife.

With Maldon having the nearest custom house, Tollesbury was a popular landing place for smuggled goods, which, even if customs officials threatened, could easily be dumped into one of the tidal pools to be collected later.

An eight-mile light railway, the Kelvedon and Tollesbury Light Railway (known as 'The Crab and Winkle Line') served the nearby village for less than 50 years, closing in 1951.

In the 1900s the famous sail lofts were built to serve as stores for the big racing yachts which sailed from Tollesbury. The culmination of this was the J Class yachts built in the 1930s for the America's Cup. These large and graceful single masted yachts are still regarded as iconic thoroughbreds of the yacht racing world, and a number have been lovingly restored, and others built anew to the original plans.

A more obvious piece of nautical heritage at the site is the bright red lightvessel 'Trinity' which is moored at the end of a footpath running through the marshes. Built in 1954, the vessel is now the permanent base of the Christian outward-bound centre, Fellowship Afloat.

The magic of Tollesbury lies in the way sea and land coexist – a ship apparently sitting on dry land, footpaths that become inundated at high tide, boathouses built on stilts, sheep grazing close to tidal pools. In fact, the area holds a lesson for how we deal with global warming and rising sea levels, because it was one of the first areas chosen for 'managed retreat' – deliberately breaching sea walls to allow selected areas of meadow to become saltmarsh. The result benefits wildlife, while allowing farming to continue.