The River Dee, North Wales was once a major departure place for emigrants to America. It is a beautiful wild place but now is very silted up and muddy. There are small towns along it banks now land locked but they still have the old dock walls and mooring rings for large ships very visible. I had to trample through a lot of mud to gain this viewpoint and I have tried to emphasise this in the painting. There are very deep cuts in the mud where you can come across boats, lying in secret out of sight from the shore just waiting waiting to pop up and float again on the next tide.