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 Leigh-on-Sea train from Liverpool
Street (09.52 Stratford, 10.03 Barking, 10.12 Upminster),
arrives Benfleet 10.32.
Return
trains: xx.18 and xx.48 to L’pool 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), 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
1 comment:
n=7 walkers in w=sunny weather.
We started with low-ish tide, so initially had plenty of mudflats, wading birds and abandoned car tyres lying in the mud to look at. Egrets and a curlew were among the confirmed bird types seen. As the going was pretty fast, we had time to potentially add the out-and-back to Canvey Point along the low-lying marshes. At the decision point though, 1 of the 7 mentioned an afternoon appointment with her husband, so walked on, 1 other didn't quite fancy it, so she waited for the other 5.
We thus followed the intermittent path in the slowly incoming tide and were rewarded with the small lonely beaches at the Point, the views of Southend Pier and the North Sea and a very large (500?) flock of oystercatchers, initially sitting on the beach to the north, then moving to the other side as we approached. After the taking of pictures had subsided, it was time to go back to the safety of the seawall around Canvey, but we now found that the incoming tide - had indeed come in, and quite quickly at that. Some of the formerly dryish paths were now properly wet, some channels were twice as wide as before, and some were twice as wide and twice as deep as well. Despite that, we got close to safety and close to walker 6 and also a couple of people from the adjacent Coast Watch station watching proceedings, without too much wetness in boots and trainers. But that's where the widest and deepest channels were, on the final 20 metres or so. So, we waded (without waders), and we all got plenty of water in our shoes. Thankfully, we couldn't stop laughing and there were no recriminations (no emails have come in yet to the SWC complaint line either, so far at least). Some had change socks, others didn't. And on we walked.
There are several interesting, new murals along the Thames-facing seawall to take in (Covid-19, The History of Wall Murals etc.), as we were walking into the sun, the wind (not too bad, some of us never put a jacket on all day) and the view.
The Labworth Bistro was predictively full (and with a waiting queue of people), so our lunch stop was to be the Lobster Smack, as it usually is. Leaving from there just before 15.00, we knew we'd beat darkness easily and could thus soak in the relative quiet of the marshland and the inland creeks that followed without rushing. 16.48 train for 6.
Post a Comment