Worthy of its salt: Martyn Kelly on samphire

‘It was my first exposure to the succulent, salty stems.’

by Martyn Kelly 17th January 2025

My first encounter with samphire coincided with one of my earliest encounters with Quakers.  I was heading to an undergraduate field course in Norfolk, and our lecturer diverted our minibus to the Friends School at Saffron Walden to collect his son, who joined us on the bleak shingle spit for the rest of the week. This spit is integral to the story because, by shielding the tidal stretches of the River Glaven from the ravages of the North Sea, it creates the conditions for a salt marsh.