Seymour Tower

Seymour Tower is a coastal defence tower built on a rocky tidal island called L'Avarison, located 1.25 miles east of the south east corner of Jersey.  It can reach it on foot during low tide, but walkers must take care when walking to or from the tower as the tide comes in very quickly (see below!).  If you are used to roughing it you can rent out this "delightful" tower. Facilities are minimal. There is some electricity but no running water. Guests must bring back all waste (including bagged toilet waste) for disposal on shore. Guests staying overnight must bring their own sleeping bags and must be accompanied by a registered guide! Not really our idea of a holiday!  You can see below a doorway on the left hand side which is approximately four feet from the base and only accessible by a rusty iron ladder.  Before we even knew about the lack of facilities this put Rebekah off straight away!  Once at the tower you can only leave once every six hours due to the tides so no quick trips to the supermarket for those forgotten eggs!

As you can only access this at low tide we check the tides for the first weekend of February and these combined with sunny weather made the perfect combination so off we went with camera in hand!

Love on the beach!

As mentioned before the tides come in VERY quickly, at a rate of 10 kph (6.21 miles per hour).  The contours of the land vary and from the shore to Seymour Tower the land rises around half way then falls again.  Click here for a real time film of how quickly the tide comes in a half tide (three hours after low tide).  We experienced this at a beach just a mile up from here and its quite amazing how fast the tide comes in! We just managed to escape with dry feet!

These are markers to guide you around the smoothest parts.

If one should happen to be out walking and get cut off there is an emergency tower around half a mile from the shore.  The wait is around 3-4 hours before the tide is low enough to walk back to shore or the coastguard comes to rescue you!  The same sign as above is displayed on the slip where the walk begins to warn walkers of the danger of the fast incoming tides.  Its best to walk out with the tide if you have small children so that you have more time to walk out and return in good time without being stranded.  We walked there and back in just over an hour and the tide is slowest at the turn of the tide so we were safe!  It was also a very low tide as a result of an exceptionally high spring tide. 

Mussel beds!