Your best friend for a foreshore foray

It is 4am in mid-January. The Shipping Forecast warns of meteorological Armageddon from Gibraltar Point to North Foreland. Sleet like spittle taps the windows and a gusting north-easterly is making up its mind whetheror not to remove the shed roof.

In conditions such as this, mere mortals draw their duvet to their chin and return to blissful slumber, glad they are not abroad at this hour. Not so the wildfowler. Storms and gales and general nastiness are the conditions of choice for marsh and foreshore.

There is a hint of the masochist about every wildfowler, but we are not so daft that we would venture to the coast at dawn garbed in the natty attire seen on a driven day.

Things have come a long way since the days when shore