Sloshing through the mudflats off Germany's North Sea shore

By Andreas Heimann Aug 10, 2010, 13:23 GMT

Luettmoorsiel, Germany - Hiking through the mudflats has become his passion: Lorenz-Thomas Feddersen is standing on the dike of Luettmoorsiel west of the North Sea coastal town of Bredstedt, and surrounding him are around a dozen vacationers.

Among them are a couple from the eastern German city of Chemnitz, as well as a family from the Rhine River region. They have no 'Wattenmeer' or shallow sea, back home.

And since Feddersen is aware of this, he explains right from the start of his tour a few things about the mudflats stretching away from the German coastline, a region which since 2009 has been listed as a UNESCO world cultural heritage site.

The 76-year-old erstwhile farmer, who has been a mudflats guide for three decades, knows the coastal area of the North Frisian region like his own back pocket. In his hands he holds a backpack and a small digging fork.

He is still wearing sandals. In the summer, however, it is best to walk through the mudflats at ebb tide without any shoes on: 'There can be places where many mussels are lying and you have to watch out that you don't cut yourself.'

Otherwise, walking through the mud in your bare feet is usually a lot of fun.

In crossing over the dike, one takes in surface areas where the water is still glittering. On the horizon, the rooftops of the houses on the Nordstrandischmoor Hallig - a tiny island amid the shallow sea - can be made out.

'Many people think that there are four halligs there, but actually it is only four mounds,' Feddersen explains, referring to the 'warften' or man-made mounds atop which the houses are built for better protection against flood tides.

Nordstrandischmoor is also small by hallig standards. All of about 20 people live there. A causeway of about 3.5 kilometres with a railroad line atop it links the mainland with the hallig.

The mudflat hikers, however, choose instead a longer route. The only sound is the splashing of the water when the hikers walk through the puddles - or the squishing and sucking sound when one's foot sinks into deep mud and is pulled back out again.

In some places the mud is deep: 'Oh goodness,' one woman explains when she suddenly sinks in beyond her ankles. But the fright is worse than the danger.

'As long as your head is still sticking out, you're okay,' Feddersen says drily. 'And nobody has ever drowned while hiking the flats.'

The guide points to the muddy ground with his pitch fork. 'This is unbelievably rich in life forms. You can only find anything similar to it in the tropics.'

Countless thousands of tiny organisms inhabit each cubic metre of the mud. 'These tiny black dots here, these are snails. And that over there is dwarsloper, a kind of tiny rock crab,' Feddersen says. Dwarsloper is the local German dialect which translates as 'cross- runner' in describing the sideways movement of the crab.

The time passes quickly and soon the group has reached Nordstrandischmoor. All the houses sit atop a mound. School has just let out and three children emerge from the house and jump up onto their bicycles.

Erk Lorenzen is the teacher at the elementary and middle-level school - and teaches all the subjects. The school building also serves as the island's church and as the teacher's apartment, he notes.

It happens several times every year that rising seawater completely washes over the hallig.

'We do have the internet here,' Lorenzen says. 'The federal hydrology office is stored under my favourites on the computer. When the water rises to above 75 centimetres above normal levels then the sheep are driven up onto the warft.'

Lorenzen says such conditions don't scare him. 'I'm sitting at home then and look out the window, totally surrounded by water.'

On another warft there stands the 'Hallig-Kroog' tavern. Tavern owner August Glienke also works for the coastal protection authority and is also in charge of picking up the island's mail from the mainland.

He says he welcomes some 20,000 visitors every year to his tavern - mudflat hikers and guests who arrive by excursion boat. 'Some people walk over here and then return by boat,' he says.

But mudflat guide Lorenz-Thomas Feddersen doesn't think very highly about this method. He grabs his digging fork and then starts rounding up his group for the trek through the mud back to the mainland.