Length: Up to 15¾ km (9.8 miles). Toughness: 1/10
10:23 Southend Victoria train from Liverpool Street (Stratford 10:30), changing at Wickford (arr 11:00, dep 11:05) for the Southminster service waiting on the adjacent platform, arriving Althorne at 11:25. Buy a return to Burnham-on-Crouch.
Trains back from Burnham-on-Crouch are hourly at xx:09, again changing at Wickford.
Sunday is the last day of the week-long Burnham Art Trail and there are many venues dotted around this charming riverside town. By starting the walk from Althorne instead of North Fambridge you'll reach Burnham at about 1pm and have plenty of time to view the exhibits. If you want a pub lunch you'll see that our diligent walk author has produced an impressively long list of its hostelries (one source claims that this small town has 22 licenced premises, so it might have been easier to list the places where you can't get a drink).
You've got several options for the afternoon. If you can drag yourself away from the exhibits there's a 7 km extension to the east of the town which you might not have done before, including a fairly obvious place where you could take a short cut along a permissive farm path and reduce it to 4 km. The walk route takes you back through Burnham on the way to the station so you'll have another chance to peruse the art, but bear in mind that most of the venues will close at around 4.30–5pm.
Additional Walk Notes: From Althorne you simply go down the lane from the level crossing and turn left onto the riverside path in front of the marina. Ignore the walk's out-and-back stretch up to the pub in Althorne and carry on towards Burnham. The written directions for the afternoon take you out along the riverbank and back along farm paths, but I'd be tempted to do this loop in the other direction if only to split up the riverside stretches.
You can view the suggested route and/or download a gpx from the New Walks page, but I'd still recommend bringing the walk notes from the L=swc.162.a
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N=4 on a w=hot-humid day. A sea breeze did little to mitigate. The morning was almost entirely along the sea wall. This gave opportunity to look across the salt marsh at the occasional duck. ( There was other stuff as well like egrets, and, apparently, oystercatchers - but you needed your bins for them).
Plenty of butterflies, of which marbled whites were most prominent. A large number had gathered on one particular knapweed.
And so to B on C and the White Harte.They say you shouldn’t drink too much in hot weather but Mr Tiger downed 2 ciders before you could say “evaporashn”. Then on to the Anchor where two faster walkers were having nosh that looked posh. There were spare chips.
The Art Trail was in progress Some on stalls, but most in shop windows. The two faster walkers decided to concentrate on that in the afternoon. The slower walkers did the afternoon loop through fields then back along yet more sea wall, finishing up with yet more cider.
A quick look at the kiddies’ scribbles at the station, then home.
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