Pin Mill. The name conjures up the classic images of East Coast traditionalism. Thames Barges, tan sails and the tales of Maurice Griffiths; tranquillity, mudflats and wading birds. Peace disturbed only by the occasional, smocked bargeman quietly sculling his clinker tender ashore to the pub. Ahh yes! That's how I thought it might be too as I rowed my Torch cruising dinghy towards the bay and selected a weedy mooring, close to the low water mark about half a mile upstream.

It was a Saturday evening in October and still a number of yachts were chugging against the ebb for their marina berths upstream as I raised my tent and got the evening meal under way. I looked forward to relaxing in my solitude, lulled by the call of the oystercatcher, the sound of the East Coast.

Only gradually as I settled did I become aware of the background hum, or could I call it 'roar' of road traffic on the A14 crossing the span of the mile-long Orwell Bridge? Living in or near to towns makes one unaware that silence is no longer heard (or not heard). What one takes for silence is in fact the constant low level hum of engines and tyres. Silent places are becoming difficult to find and the upper reaches of the Orwell now suffer so badly that they could well be a roundabout on a ring road. "Is there no escape from the intrusion?" I thought, as I snuggled into my sleeping bag early, for a well-earned rest.

I was awoken after a few hours in the black of night, by what I took to be an unsilenced diesel engine thumping very close to me. The several men on board the boat were shouting instructions to one another above the noise, as they searched for a mooring nearby. They circled me, checking first one then another with a strong light. I was pleased that I had selected the most heavily fouled one, which had clearly not been used for a very, very long time. This wouldn't be their mooring. Round and round they went, until with a torrent of 'expletive deleted' sentences those on deck managed to describe to one of their number inside the brightly-illuminated deckhouse of their little launch, the mooring that they had chosen. Eventually they even managed to convey to him how and when to select reverse, by the simple expedient of all screaming "Reverse!" in unison. To which he replied with forthright candour, "It's ****ing IN reverse!" The time was 10.20 pm.

Once secured on the mooring opposite to mine in the parallel row, the five 'country boys' settled in for their night's fishing with rod and line. The volume and content of their conversations did not diminish after the engine was turned off, but at least they doused the brighter of their deck floodlights. They had a degree of success and one in particular, according to his own judgement, caught a fish with every cast. Another weaker member who lacked experience of their bloody sport was taken to task "... for being such a ****ing Nancy! Wasn't it about ****ing time he learned to put his own ****ing worm on his own ****ing hook?"

I was gradually adjusting to their constant banter an hour later, when they started up their ear-shattering engine and commenced chugging slowly through the Pin Mill moorings searching at full decibels for another place to fish.

Would peace be established? For a while I had been increasingly aware of another sound; now, with their departure, it assumed a new level of importance. Outboard motors. It was 'chucking-out time' ashore and one after another, parties of people were making their way back to their boats. These days, one can find virtually silent outboards, but none of these came near that category. They were the old-fashioned type where one hears every throb from their little lungs.

It's amazing how the inebriated crew always know better where they are going than the people in charge of the motors. For another hour I listened to their shouted directions, their songs, their clambering aboard and their continuing parties, above the sounds of the road noise and the emptying of the pub car park. Some dinghies pop-popped endlessly off into the distance where the 'country boys' were still trying to get their helmsman into reverse.

I must have dropped off for a bit as I woke around the turn of the tide at 0330. I could tell that it was either a quarter, or a half-hour, by the striking of a local clock. I'm rather partial to such an evocative, rural sound, but this clock didn't have a regular 'peal'. Instead, it had a random series of discordant notes. There was no tune, nor could you tell what the next note might be, nor even if it had completed its striking sequence. There appeared to be no distinction between the introductory peal and the striking of the hour, if and when it followed. The effect of this was that one found oneself compelled to listen, hanging on each note and then trying to play the guessing game of quarter, half, or full hour? And if it was the hour, which one was it?

Amazingly, the traffic noise continued unabated. Even more amazing was that the 'country boys' were searching for another mooring, but the onboard parties had died away.

At 0415 I woke long enough to try to decipher the clock chimes and noticed that the traffic noise was gone. Instead there was a loud scrabbling on the tent roof. A gull was attempting to roost but finding little luck getting a purchase on the slippery cloth. It took up residence at the bow where it attacked the cloth from time to time as if seeking entry. The troublesome creature was determined to stay, and ignored my equally determined efforts to get rid of it by shouting (it was accustomed to the noise in these parts), shining a light on it (all the better to preen my feathers with), rocking the boat (it swayed at the hips), but it did respond to my attempts to swipe at it with an oar.

At five o'clock it was time for me to rise to catch the end of the ebbing tide down the river. The road noise was established again. I was up and getting dressed. The inside of the tent was more than usually heavy with condensation and needed wiping down, but what can one expect in October? I had my airbed deflated and breakfast on the go, when I unzipped the door to take a look outside for signs of the dawn. FOG! It was so thick that I involuntarily put my arm out to feel it. I couldn't see my hand. Sailing would be delayed and breakfast would have to be taken in slow and separate instalments. I made a mental note to look outside in future, before squeezing every last little bit of breath out of my airbed.

It was about 0730 when the foghorns started. Each foghorn had an engine to propel it. Why anybody wanted to move anywhere in such conditions eluded me as a back-to-basics cruiser. Maybe it was to demonstrate the combined efficiency of radar, G.P.S., power horns and deck intercoms which allow the skipper to speak directly to the crew standing on the bow (and everyone else still in bed on their moored boats). I suppose the crew was on deck just in case all that electronic technology should fail? Booming big ships or tiny boat bleaters, they were all equally invisible as they passed only a few metres away, sending ripples of wash across the smooth surface to say where they had been.

The morning passed. They said on the local radio that the fog would lift, but what can they know inside their little soundproof booths with their earphones on? They should have been where I was. I'd foolishly deflated my airbed again, upon their recommendation.

Just after lunch at 1245 it did lift sufficiently for everyone to get on the move once more. All the craft that had gone downstream had to return upstream; all that had gone up, had to come back down again. There was no wind. The river really did become a noisy roadway as everyone raced for home under the power of a hundred different engines. Did nobody else hear it?

I gave up the idea of my peaceful cruise and rowed back along the shore's edge to the slipway. Passing the yacht club, they were lifting boats out for the winter and scrubbing them off. Time-honoured traditionalism you might think. What! with a power-jet washer blasting clouds of spray high in the air, running off a big generator? It was deafening. A waiting boat was aptly named Cacophony.

I retrieved my boat onto its trailer and added my share to the road noise that has made the Orwell what it is today. The idyllic Orwell which one's senses might picture and hear in imagination no longer exists. Was there ever tranquillity or consideration for others after dusk? Did I just imagine it? Where has it gone to? When did it go? Where are we going to?

Sadly, silent solitude is probably no longer to be found in the East Coast Rivers. I subsequently spent another quiet night wriggled well into the saltings to the south of Sharfleet creek in remotest Medway, listening to the roar of the tractor units at the container terminal on the Isle of Sheppey. I'm thinking of adding ear defenders to the checklist of cruising gear. PC