The tide is out at Brancaster Staithe and the crisp, saline air whips across the tidal marshes, buffeting us as we pick our way along the marshy strand. “Mind your step! One foot wrong and you could be up to your armpits in mud,” warns Richard Loose, oyster farmer and my guide for the afternoon.
CRATE EXPECTATIONS Richard inspects the latest briny haul from his oyster beds
PHOTOGRAPHS: PAMELA FARRELL
Richard has been cultivating rock oysters here for around 40 years and he knows these marshes well. But oyster farming wasn’t part of Richard’s original game plan. The son of a mussel fisherman, he went into his father’s business after leaving school at 18. “Mussel farming’s a tricky business,” he says. “You have to rely on nature’s bounty to get stock, and they only have a six-month season for harvest so it was difficult to make a living.”