User:Qneiform/sandbox

The Broomway is a public right of way over the foreshore at Maplin Sands off the coast of Essex, England. When the tide is out, it provides access to Foulness Island, and indeed was the only access to Foulness Island until a road bridge over Havengore Creek was built in 1922. It has long been notorious as "the most perilous byway in England", owing to the disorienting nature of the environment in poor visibility, quicksands, and the near inevitability of death by drowning for a walker still out on the sands when the tide comes in.

The Broomway leaves the mainland at Wakering Stairs, where there is a causeway over the band of mud (known as the Black Grounds) which separates the mainland from the firmer ground of Maplin Sands by means of a causeway. Once upon firmer ground, the Broomway heads in a roughly north-easterly direction, and then makes landfall on Foulness Island by means of a series of further causeways crossing back over the mud. The Broomway was formerly marked by a series of posts (hence its name), but it is now largely unmarked. There is no actual track, and for the majority of its route the Broomway is nothing more than a compass bearing over Maplin Sands.

Access to the Broomway is restricted because both the mainland at Wakering Stairs and Foulness Island itself are given over to military purposes.