Trending:

Mud, glorious mud: Why we should get down and dirty in our wet earth

Deborah Nicholls-Lee

We loved it as a kid, and we should love it as an adult. Mud is fun to walk through, play with and has real scientific benefits for our health to boot.

On a beach in Dorset, where the earthy hillside merges with a small stream, I spot a young boy playing quite at peace, covered top-to-toe in mud. As the wet dirt dribbles through his fingers, he’s the picture of contentment. It’s no wonder that people immerse themselves in mud baths or come back grinning from an unexpectedly muddy dog walk — there’s something about that sludgy brown goo that makes us feel really good.

‘There’s a whole mixture of physical feelings involved,’ explains Liz Edwards, the founder of Muddy Faces, an organisation that promotes outdoor play and that campaigned to make mud-play part of most Early Years settings. ‘It feels fantastic. You can squidge it through your fingers, you can run through it and you can swirl it round.’ As the mud sticks to your limbs, there’s also the sensation of ‘the water evaporating,’ she says, and ‘the tightness of the soil drying out’.

The joy of mud also has to do with the setting. ‘It’s because you’re outdoors,’ continues Mrs Edwards. ‘You’re freer to make a mess; you’re freer to get dirty, crawl, touch.’ The enjoyment, she says, goes back to our origins. ‘It’s very natural for us to put our hands and feet back in the earth.’

There’s a kind of unacknowledged ‘alchemy’, she believes. ‘When you’re mixing water and soil and creating mud, there’s something very, very magical about that.’ She directs me to the book Making a Mud Kitchen, co-written with her colleague Jan White. ‘There’s little more important in our physical world than earth and water,’ writes Prof White. ‘They’re truly intriguing things, especially when they interact.’

‘Squishing mud between fingers and toes — it can be really calming. It’s what connects us to the physical world and helps us feel more present in the moment.’

Recommended videos for you

Adults, of course, also feel the benefits of a bracing dose of mud, despite, perhaps, an initial reluctance. ‘We’re so used to muddy walks, with our main routes being in the Peak District, but we’re all about embracing weather in all forms,’ notes Lucy Hird, who, with her walking partner Emily Thornton, coined the term ‘soft hiking’, popularising walking among people of all fitness levels by sharing their gently paced walks on social media.

‘Mud is very grounding and normally means it’s rained, which means the air is full of positive ions that make us happy,’ Miss Hird adds. ‘We laugh so much as we wade, slip and slide through mud,’ agrees Miss Thornton. ‘It adds to our bank of memories and makes us even closer as friends.’

‘It’s down to the sensory experience. Mud and soil are very tactile,’ observes Lincolnshire-based Karin Alton, a scientific researcher at the University of Sussex who is also a forest bathing guide, leading meditative walks in Nature. ‘Squishing mud between fingers and toes — it can be really calming. It’s what connects us to the physical world and helps us feel more present in the moment.’

For Dr Alton, we’ve been ‘so disconnected from Nature with urbanisation, it is, in some ways, as if our bodies can recognise and respond positively to that touch of earth’. ‘That’s why we are a nation of gardeners. We love getting out there and being tactile.’ There’s science behind it, too: ‘Physical activities, such as playing in the mud, release endorphins, these natural feel-good chemicals,’ she explains. ‘It lifts your spirits.’

Neuroscientist Christopher Lowry has undertaken extensive research into the positive effects of mud, first at Bristol University and latterly as associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the US. Bacteria found in mud were discovered to suppress inflammation, such as allergies. ‘We reasoned that this bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, should be able to prevent negative outcomes relevant to stress-related psychiatric disorders… in which inflammation is a risk factor,’ Prof Lowry explains.

‘This has been supported by a series of studies that we’ve conducted over the past 25 years. Mycobacteria are one of the most common bacteria in soil and mud and, although it’s unlikely that most people are exposed to Mycobacterium vaccae per se, anyone exposed to soil or mud is likely to be exposed to other mycobacteria that function in a similar way.’ Other studies, on community gardening and on forest-based daycare for children, for example, have also pointed to the benefits of regular contact with mud and soil. In short, says Prof Lowry, ‘evidence suggests that a country life puts us on a path toward improved physical and mental health outcomes’.

Pigs have known about the health benefits of rolling in the mud for thousands of years. Be more like pigs.

The British countryside offers a wealth of gloopy spots to fill up on mud’s benefits. The fertile mudflats of The Wash estuary between Lincolnshire and Norfolk are a bird-watcher’s paradise, for example, and trails through the squishy boglands of Northern Ireland’s Co Fermanagh feature boardwalks for those preferring dry shoes. If that sounds far too clean, Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire is one of many country estates staging mud runs that send participants splashing through knee-high sludge.

Some of our most fascinating wildlife also thrives in mud. The intertidal mudflats that cover about 270,000 hectares of the UK’s land conceal frilly ragworms ensnaring food with a mucus net and delivering a nasty nip to predators. Medicinal leeches with striking leopard-like markings lurk in muddy ponds awaiting juicy victims and tentacled fireworks anemones explode from the muddy floor of west Scotland’s dramatic sea lochs.

For many creatures, the mud is a larder. Leggy curlews probe it for buried goodies, such as crabs and other small invertebrates, and oystercatchers use their long bills to extract mussels and cockles, jabbing at the shells to prise them open. For some, mud is a construction material. House martins combine it with their saliva to build their bobbly nests under the eaves and mason wasps take a similar approach, sticking their cellular homes to nooks and crevices.

Some mammals prefer to see mud as an open-air spa. A roll in the mud can be good for a horse’s skin and help to repel insects. Pigs, of course, make a real bath of it, rubbing off irritating passengers, such as ticks and lice, and wallowing in the mud to regulate their body temperature.

Whatever it is about mud that helps us feel good, it’s available in abundance. ‘We’ve got it all on our doorstep,’ enthuses Dr Alton. ‘We just have to step outside and feel it and touch it and smell it.’

Deborah Nichols-Lee is a freelance journalist and feature writer whose work has been published by the BBC, The Guardian, Sussex Life and The Times, as well as Country Life.