Of the two rivers, the Orwell is the busiest, having a deep water channel maintained for commercial shipping to Ipswich and a number of marinas. You will see private craft underway every few minutes and hundreds of privately boats moored in the river. MS Brightlingsea enters the Orwell past the Port of Felixstowe, where you are guaranteed to see some of the worlds largest container ships under an army of gigantic cranes.

 

The river is wide for most of the trip with plenty of depth. The whole of the north side of the Orwell River between the Port of Felixstowe and North Ipswich is designated an Area of Outstanding Beauty . The estuary has long been classified as an Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the wildlife supported by its extensive mud-flats, low cliffs, salt-marsh, small areas of vegetated shingle and low-lying grazing marsh. Important birdlife includes the Hen Harrier, Black-tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Grey Plover, Pintail, Redshank, Ringed Plover, Shelduck and Turnstone. Other birdlife includes cormorant, Redshank, Great Crested Grebe, Curlew, Dark Bellied Brent Goose, Wigeon, Goldeneye, Oystercatcher, Lapwing and Knot. In summer, the site supports important numbers of breeding Avocet.

 

Suffolk Yacht Harbour emits a steady stream of craft on the north side. The Shotley Peninsular on the south side remains isolated and undeveloped but for its tip, where Shotley Marina and the former Naval Training Centre, HMS Ganges, are the two main features.

 

Levington, on the Suffolk side, is home of the famous fertilizer company. The locally abundant coprolite (fossilized dung) made great fertilizer, which was collected by locals until the 19th century. It was mined, shipped off to Ipswich and processed into ‘treacle’.  Levington cliffs and Nacton Shores are a renowned source of fossils, once yielding a complete sea reptile skeleton.

 

Pin Mill is a tiny village following the grindle (stream) to the hard (firm area) where two small boatyards have survived largely unmodernised since the days of barges and wooden boatbuilding. Today, Pin Mill is widely known for a mass of large houseboats, an enclave of alternative living unregulated by planning rules. The present owners first found the Brightlingsea here in 2001 in a sorry state. The remains of her sister ship, the Hainault, can be seen here looted and rotting.

 

The Orwell Bridge towers over the river with its constant stream of traffic just visible from the boat. Its graceful span and scale won it the approval of the Royal Fine Arts Commission. When the Orwell Bridge opened in 1982, it had an immediate effect on the MS Brightlingsea which had previously been the only practical link between Suffolk and Essex for thousands of people.

The River Orwell