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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday, 26 March 2023

Sunday Walk - A place and a walk like no other: Canvey Island (Benfleet Circular)

Length: 23.2 km (14.5 mi) [much shorter walk possible, see below]
Ascent/Descent: 40m
Net Walking Time: 4 ¾ hours
Toughness: 2/10 
 
Take the 09.45 Shoeburyness train from Fenchurch Street (09.50 Limehouse, 09.56 West Ham, 10.02 Barking), arrives Benfleet 10.38. 
Return trains: xx.10 and xx.40 (fast) and xx.18 and xx.48 (not so fast), all to Fenchurch Street. 
 
A flat walk, that starts and finishes with a busy road stretch, features a fair amount of hard surface paths and some A-road noise near the end, and passes – in succession – a golf course, a static caravan park, an ex-landfill site, housing estates, another caravan park, a sewage plant, an LNG terminal, an oil product terminal, an oil refinery, the site of a never-finished oil refinery, another oil terminal and another – larger – landfill site?????? And yet, and yet…

This is one not just for the Industrial Romantic, or for fans of the Pub Rock legends Dr. Feelgood, or for students of the lives of the ex-East End White Working Classes.Without navigational challenges (as all you do is: walk to the seawall and follow it) you experience an ever-changing scenery of tidal creeks and mud flats, river marshes, salt marshes, flood barriers, sluices and sandbanks, get views of the Benfleet Downs, of Hadleigh Castle & Country Park, the Essex cliffs, Southend with its Pier, the North Sea and the busy river traffic, of ships big and small, boatyards, yacht clubs and marinas, pass sandy beaches and enclosed pools on the foreshore, jetties, extensive seawall murals telling Canvey Island stories and – post lunch – long tranquil stretches past grassy marshes with abundant birdlife.

Still a walk like no other. 

Shorter Walk: Canvey Island is linked to Benfleet station by many regular buses, enabling you to start or finish the walk at almost any point along the way (in the first half of the walk), as bus stops are often just a short distance from the walk route. For a route map of the bus network, you should check here: http://www.plusbus.info/benfleet.

The most logical shortcut to a bus stop, right after the late lunch stop, is described in the directions. It results in a 14.6 km/9.1 mi walk (rated 1/10). 
 
Lunch: The Labworth Beach Café (9.7 km/6.0 mi, food to 15.00), in its modernist building with panoramic views of the Thames estuary; The Lobster Smack (13.2 km/8.2 mi, food all day) is the oldest surviving building on Canvey and a classic pub which has so much history it even features in the Dickens novel ‘Great Expectations’. 
Tea: Three pubs and two sub-continental restaurants on High Street, just past the station (see pdf for details). 
 
For summary, map, height profile, photos, walk directions pdf and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.258

4 comments:

Kunal said...

Hi all, I only saw trains running from Fenchurch St not Liverpool St (mentioned in the description). Kunal

Thomas G said...

Indeed, back to normal: Fenchurch Street. Posting amended accordingly.
Must have had trackworks scheduled when I posted it, that subsequently got pp'd, or I made a mistake (heaven forbid...)

Thomas G said...

5 off the train, with 1 other a train behind due to severe delays on the Jub Line, so n=6. The forecast had been for heavy rain most of the day, only stopping after we would have finished, but as so often, this was wildly off the mark. In reality we had some drops of rain on and off initially, then none at all, so in summary: w=a-little-rain.
The other 5 had never or not for a long time been to Canvey, so the various sights, marinas, mud flats, river views, murals, beaches, industrial leftovers and even the caravan parks found some interest. It was a three-stopper for 4 of us, at the tea room in Smallboat Marina for elevenses, The Labworth for lunch and the Lobster Smack for refreshers. The other 2 skipped the Snack, claiming an Ocado delivery window approaching.

Fine day out, especially when compared to the weather forecast.

Thomas G said...

Oh, the bird life...
A bit disappointing initially, as the mud banks at low tide didn't have many birds in them. More luck when we got to the Thames, now at ultra low tide: black headed gulls, wagtails, turnstones. Later in the marshes, finally some waders, egrets and other folk.