THAMES In the last part of a trip along the Thames, this river-loving duo reach the sea
In the latest insightful instalment of their river-tracking tales, our dynamic duo journey from Shoeburyness to the Isle of Sheppey
Pulling onto Abbey Wood Caravan and Motorhome Club site, our intention was to trace the Thames from the barrier to the estuary. But Seán warns that there’s not much of a path from now on. Undaunted, I march him to the station for the third leg of our Thames odyssey.
At Woolwich, we jump on the Docklands Light Railway and travel past futuristic high-rises, above a marooned Victorian terrace, to Pontoon Dock. We gaze down at Thames Barrier Park’s sunken garden.
Yew, lavender and box hedges mimic the old dock’s waves. Sun glints on the barrier’s steel carapaces. A sign tells us of the waders that visit including the ringed plover, rare this far upriver. An aeroplane thunders above our heads from London City Airport.
Seán studies every strut and piston on the barrier before I drag him away. He plods behind me, around the Travelodge, to gaze at the massive bronze Athena gracing the roundabout by the airport. Like a boy again, nose to wire mesh, Seán surveys a private jet.
A crane unloads raw sugar straight from a ship to the Tate and Lyle factory. The advert ‘Keeping The Nation Sweet for 140 Years’ blazes with colour from the sootsoaked building.
On board the Woolwich Ferry we watch tugs chug upriver, pushing lighters laden with building materials.
At Woolwich Arsenal, Georgian terraces cosy up to apartments slick with steel. The Gibraltar Gun, a coastline defence from the 1900s, stands on the green. We read of how the arsenal was, at times, a Tudor manor, a launch pad for Henry VIII’s warships, an eighteenth century fireworks factory and a secret ‘munitions’ city in both world wars. WWI saw 80,000 people work here, half of whom were ‘Canary girls’ (the explosives dyed their skin and hair yellow).
Born beside Highbury Stadium, I pay homage to Arsenal’s emblematic cannon. The team started here as Dial Square FC before emigrating north of the river. Later, I stand amid the iron figures in Peter Burke’s Assembly, pretending to be one of them.
Seán steers me towards an imposing building; the Dial Arch. Its door is flanked by pillars topped with cannon ball pyramids and Seán ushers me into what has become an inviting hostelry.
Woolwich’s market is in full swing the next morning with vegetable sellers yelling and a Turkish barbers operating from a caravan. The surprisingly verdant Thames Path is signposted from here to Erith.
Gallions Reach Park is home to 800 young trees, from hornbeams to Turkey oak. From man-made hillocks, we scan the Beckton Alps and Dagenham’s Ford factory.
At Crossness, a Victorian water board building contains the famous pumps that spewed London’s waste into the Thames. A sign commemorates Sir Joseph Bazalgette, sewerage system engineer, who saved London from ‘the great stink’ of 1858. The modern ‘green’ incinerator burns sewage to power the site, its curved steel exterior mimicking boat sails.
Shelducks feed on the worm-rich shoreline. Two oystercatchers fly by, white Vs shining on black wings. Black-headed gulls crowd the water gushing out from the treatment works. Geese honk from the Crossness Nature Reserve’s reed bed.
At Erith Marshes, a heron takes flight.
Old landing stages’ charred bones stick up from the mud beside Conway’s asphalt factory. After our exertions, there’s only one way to end the evening and that’s with a smooth red and a pizza in the Abbey Arms.
We follow our sat-nav to Greenhithe’s Ingress Park. A Jacobean house, complete ³
with crenellations, grand staircase and towers, stands on the site of a medieval abbey. Opposite, the gantries of the London Gateway Container Port tower over a massive ship.
New Tavern Fort stands on Gravesend’s riverfront, where soldiers and their families lived in cramped conditions in the nineteenth century. The town’s gracious terraces and iron pier earned its place as the Victorian Royals’ favourite port. Wandering into St Andrew’s Mission Church, now an arts centre, we study the mosaic altarpiece depicting Christ among fishermen.
A statue of Gravesend resident and pilot, Mahinder Singh Pujji, remembers commonwealth citizens who defended Britain. The statue of Pocahontas, who is buried here, stands in St George’s churchyard. We explore the covered market ( founded in 1268) and the weatherboarded fifteenth century pub, the Three Daws.
The Dartford Tunnel takes us to RSPB Rainham Marshes, a treasure nestled among Havering’s industry. A sign lists the latest sightings, from widgeon to snipe, lapwing to avocet and ruff to Caspian gull. We wander through woodland to the car-alarm call of Cetti’s warblers.
The Ministry of Defence cordite store’s glass roof, designed to reflect the sky and which fooled bombers into thinking it was water, is now a wildlife haven. I study the hibernaculum, which provides shelter for lizards, grass snakes and yellow-necked mice. One of the lizards has left her ‘room’ and sunbathes by my feet.
A marsh-preserved Neolithic tree stump shines like obsidian. The capital’s infinite diversity strikes me as I gaze at the cargo ships on the river and the thriving wildlife set against the incongruous backdrop of the A13 raised on stilts.
Tilbury produces an image of lonely marshes and the fifteenth century traveller’s relief to see the candlelight in the Worlds End inn. I’m amused by the comic book tale of a pigeon shoot in 1843, which descended into a brawl between bayonet-wielding soldiers and civilians on the premises.
We follow the Two Forts Way downriver, watching the piebald Irish cob horses grazing and a gleaming freight ship docking. Charles II’s star-shaped and moated Tilbury Fort, built on the site of Henry VIII’s previous one, suggests a continual fear of invasion. Although the fort is closed (at the time of our visit), Seán spies an open door and sashays in but tortoise-crawls out when a caretaker appears. ³
We stand on the spot where the Empire Windrush arrived from the Caribbean in
1948 and imagine the shock of feeling that northeasterly wind whistling up the Thames.
The Wat Tyler Country Park lies a short hop along the A13. Gun cotton was washed in nitroglycerine to stabilise it here, the drying process causing fatal accidents, yet the ‘village green’ is peaceful with its thatched cottages.
A wreck sinks into the creek’s mud, a kite’s whistle is mournful and an early bumblebee feasts on a wildflower. It’s difficult to remember that this is a brownfield site, the meadow disguising pulverised fuel and rubble. Totem poles of Wat Tyler’s poll tax martyrs stand chained, their faces pained.
In Canvey Island’s park we discover how Dutch settlers built sea walls, dykes and windmills to reclaim the land. The murals on the sinuous sea defences commemorate this island’s history, especially those lost in the 1953 flood. Canvey’s motto is apt: “From the sea by Grace of God.”
Hadleigh Castle’s ruined towers speak of power struggles between Norman nobles and royalty who confiscated it, later fortifying it for the 100 Years War. Afterwards, we park in Fobbing village beside St Michael’s Church. Miles of smugglers’ tunnels radiate from it and the fifteenth century The White Lion pub. I imagine men huddled over their illicit brandy under its low-beamed ceiling.
A plaque remembers the poll tax rebellion “…what avail the plough and sail, or life, or land, if freedom fail.”
Sarcophagi-fashioned graves strike a Gothic note on our campsite near Southend. It’s easy to see how Southend became a fashionable resort in the Victorian era with its palatial villas and handsome cliffside parks. The train plying the length of the iconic pier is like a child’s toy.
Leigh-on-Sea is made vivid by Dickens’ description of “a hundred sailing decked boats trawling for shrimp”. Still a fishing village, boats are beached on the mud, the silver rivulets contrasting with green marsh.
There are cockle sheds and signs advertising oysters. Murals portray the passage of the Thames from the estuary to the London Eye, their sunset colours and black silhouettes bold against the white walls of the sea defences. Hostelries line the cobbled high street and The Peterboat lures us in. It sponsors the Endeavour, a cockle fishing boat that joined 700 small ships in May 1940 to rescue soldiers from Dunkirk, ³