Abandon shipment: how an Amazon van got marooned on the UK’s ‘most dangerous path’

2026-02-17 - 18:23

Driver reportedly checked with base and was told to continue when GPS directed van on to Essex mudflats People thought they were looking at an AI image: an Amazon van half-submerged at the mouth of the Thames estuary where it meets the North Sea. “I thought someone had just knocked up a photograph,” says local guide Kevin Brown about first seeing it online. It turned out the image was genuine, and it proliferated. There was something delightfully primordial about it – such a dominant sight of modern street life, just out there on the mud, vulnerable and surrounded by nothingness. Banter followed, images of an Amazon package floating in sea water: Amazon has made your delivery. Yet you couldn’t help but feel for the driver, who seemed to have descended on to the Essex mudflats in the darkness of Valentine’s Day in some kind of panic. They were attempting to access the Ministry of Defence-owned Foulness island, and the usual entrance via a road bridge was closed for the evening. Their valiant mission to ensure the delivery was still made was thwarted after the concrete access road on to an ancient tidal byway known as the Broomway – claimed as the country’s most dangerous path, no less – broke up until it was nothing but gloop. Continue reading...