As a child playing on the beach in Southend, I used to think the hazy land I could see on the far horizon was France. It was actually the Isle of Sheppey, but the opposite shore of this wide estuary was so distant and unfamiliar, it might as well have been another country. My sense of geography has improved since then, but my knowledge of the mysterious outer reaches of the Thames estuary remains sketchy.
If the Thames between Westminster and Greenwich is the show that London puts on for tourists, the stretch beyond the Thames barrier is backstage, where the ropes and pulleys that keep the glittering spectacle in place are hidden. As the river widens to meet the North Sea, the city’s ornate bridges, Victorian warehouses and slick waterside apartments give way to petrochemical plants, power stations, cement works and landfill sites.
It ain’t pretty, but heavy industry is only a part of the story. For centuries the “edgelands” of south Essex and north Kent have been a place of refuge and inspiration for artists, writers, slum dwellers, religious sects and visionaries looking to escape the city. And it’s not just human migrants who have found a home here: the estuary’s marshes and mudflats are one of the country’s richest wildlife habitats.
Since moving back to Essex a couple of years ago, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the moody riverscapes and big skies of the estuary. So I plotted a journey that would take me around its outer reaches. Starting in Southend, not far from my home, I would walk upriver to Tilbury, catch the passenger ferry across to Gravesend and walk back along the north Kent coast, finishing at the Isle of Sheppey.
Before setting off, I arranged to meet Colette Bailey, artistic director of Southend-based arts organisation Metal. It’s the driving force behind Estuary, a new biennial arts festival that launches in September and will celebrate the stories and subcultures of the area, with an exciting programme of walks, talks, art exhibitions and literary and music events in venues as diverse as Southend Pier and Tilbury cruise terminal.
I ask Bailey what it is about this landscape that makes it so inspiring for artists. “It’s unknowable, it’s full of mystery, and it has endless stories, some of which are really hidden, quite literally under the water,” she says. “Before planes, this was the major route into the country, so all of history has passed through here.”
Southend to Benfleet
The attractive old fishing quarter of Leigh-on-Sea is the start (or the end, depending on which way you’re travelling) of the Thames Estuary Path, a 29-mile walking route that opened two years ago, linking Tilbury with the seaside town of Southend. For much of its length the path runs alongside the river and parallel to the C2C train line from London. The website and highly recommended app divide the walk into manageable station-to-station chunks and highlight points of interest along the way.
After a fortifying tub of cockles from the Osborne Bros seafood stall, I walk past the marina and wooden boat sheds and pick up the trail at the entrance to Hadleigh Country Park, an unexpectedly wild and beautiful strip of saltmarsh and hay meadow which is home to skylarks, reed warblers and rare emerald damselflies. I’ve been coming to Leigh since I was a child and had no idea this place existed. To my left are the tranquil waters of Benfleet Creek, to my right the hillside ruins of Hadleigh Castle and ahead, in the distance, are the soaring cranes of the new London Gateway port, built to handle the biggest container ships in the world.
Canvey Island
After four miles the path emerges from the country park at Benfleet train station. At this point there’s a choice between following the trail upriver, or taking a diversion on to Canvey Island. Reclaimed from the tides by Dutch engineers in the 17th century, Canvey is perhaps best known as the place that spawned pub-rock band Dr Feelgood. Their long-time manager, Chris Fenwick, runs occasional guided walks for fans and agrees to show me around.
We meet outside the Lobster Smack, a weather-boarded old mariners’ pub, once famous for bare-knuckle fighting, and Chris points out the spot where the sleeve for Dr Feelgood’s debut album, Down by the Jetty, was shot. We walk along the sea wall, passing one of the oil storage depots from which aviation fuel is pumped via underground pipelines from Canvey to Heathrow airport. As we pass, a siren starts to wail, adding to the eeriness.
One of the best insights into Canvey and the influences that shaped Dr Feelgood can be found in Julien Temple’s brilliant documentary Oil City Confidential. The film plays with the idea of the Essex mudflats, creeks and oil refineries as the British answer to the Mississippi delta, a notion that the band themselves were happy to buy in to. “We were great romanticisers,” says Fenwick. “We loved boats and the blues music of the American south. If you’ve got a bit of imagination, this could easily be the marshland of Louisiana.”
Chris tells me he likes the film because it “captures the barminess of Canvey”. And there is undeniably something quite bonkers about this place, where caravan parks sit in the shadow of petrochemical plants and children paddle in the river as huge cargo ships glide by. It wasn’t so long ago that Canvey was being promoted as the “Thames Riviera”. The Labworth, a handsome modernist building with cruise-ship curves designed by Ove Arup in the 1930s, is a hangover from those heady days and one of the best places to eat on the island. Just behind the Labworth, Chris points out the Monico, one of the nightclubs where Dr Feelgood cut their teeth in the 1970s. The home crowds were the hardest to play, as the islanders remained unimpressed by the band’s success. “It was a real straightener,” he says. “If you can front this lot up, you can front anywhere in the world.”
Our walk finishes at Canvey Heights, a country park at the eastern tip of the island, with far-reaching views towards Southend Pier and the North Sea. “The view is never the same twice,” says Chris, whose next public walk will take place on 30 September, as part of the Estuary festival. “The sky and the tides and the river traffic are always changing.”
Benfleet to Tilbury
At Benfleet, the Thames Estuary Path curves inland for several miles. Parts of this stretch can feel suburban at times, as you skirt around the edge of yet another housing estate, but it’s worth persevering for the Thurrock Thameside nature park, an extraordinary project which is restoring to wilderness one of Europe’s largest landfill sites and creating an important habitat for wading birds, brown hares, water voles, adders, butterflies and bats. The cafe in the striking new visitor centre is a good spot for a coffee stop.
On the approach to Tilbury the river starts to narrow, and the Thames’ historic strategic importance becomes apparent as I pass the Victorian Coalhouse Fort, a second world war radar tower and the Tudor-built Tilbury Fort in quick succession. Between these fortifications is Clinker Beach, where each new tide deposits a hoard of old porcelain fragments, medicine bottles, clay pipes and the odd human bone.
Ahead of me is Tilbury Dock, where the Empire Windrush landed from Kingston, Jamaica, in 1948. The cruise terminal is off-limits to non-passengers, but for the 16 days of the Estuary festival it will be turned into an art gallery and literary salon, giving visitors a rare chance to glimpse inside its historic buildings. A tall ship will be moored outside for the duration of the festival, renting out cabins for overnight stays, but in the meantime your best bet for a room is the Bell Inn (doubles from £80 B&B), a 15th-century coaching inn in Horndon-on-the-Hill, a 20-minute cab ride from Tilbury.
Tilbury to Gravesend
Boats have been ferrying passengers between the ancient ports of Tilbury and Gravesend for at least 500 years. Waiting for the ferry on the floating pontoon at Tilbury, I feel a thrill that I can’t say I’ve ever experienced queuing to enter the Dartford Tunnel, a couple of miles upriver. The boat that eventually pulls up is much smaller and older than I’d been expecting, but that only adds to the sense of adventure.
As we cross the river (£3 for an off-peak return), I get talking to a group of young people commuting to work in a shopping centre in Gravesend. I ask them what there is to see in the town. “Literally nothing,” comes the reply.
It turns out that this is a slightly downbeat assessment of Gravesend’s charms. The narrow, cobbled high street that leads uphill from the pontoon is festooned with bunting and lined with quirky shops selling everything from saris to Airfix models. But there’s no time for shopping, as I’m here to meet my friend Carole at Gravesend station, to begin the next leg of the journey.
The Hoo peninsula
Gravesend is the starting point for the Saxon Shore Way, a long-distance footpath that hugs the Kent and Sussex coastline. It starts off promisingly enough, with green footpath signs pointing east along the riverfront, but it’s not long before we’re wandering around a dismal industrial estate, wondering if we’ve taken a wrong turn. Fortunately, Carole knows how to read a map and assures me we’re going the right way. So we plod on through yards piled high with shipping containers, buoys and rusting anchors, eventually emerging onto a scrubby expanse of foreshore, grazed by piebald Irish cobs.
With the river to our left we stride out along the grassy embankment, gulls screeching above us. Charles Dickens, who lived near Rochester, was an avid explorer of these lonely marshlands and took his inspiration for the opening scenes of Great Expectations – in which young Pip first encounters the escaped convict Magwitch in a graveyard – from the Hoo peninsula. At the ruined Cliffe fortress we stop to watch a pristine white cruise liner head serenely upriver, while in the foreground the wooden ribs of a ship’s hull poke from the muddy riverbed like the skeleton of a beached whale. There are an estimated 1,000 wrecks on the bed of the estuary, victims of the Thames’ merciless tides and currents.
The footpath here is currently closed due to erosion, but we manage to clamber down on to the beach and rejoin it later as it heads inland past the Cliffe Pools RSPB reserve, which is famous for its nightingales, and into the village of Cliffe, where we stop at the Six Bells for a late lunch. From here you can follow the Saxon Shore Way all the way to Rochester and beyond, but with the afternoon drawing on, we decide to call it a day and catch a bus from outside the pub to Strood train station.
The Isle of Sheppey
The distant shores of Sheppey may have stood for all that was foreign and mysterious when I was a child, but the reality is slightly more prosaic. The island, which is cut off from the mainland by the River Medway, has its fair share of caravan sites and dubious looking “fun pubs”, but it’s also home to one the UK’s most important nature reserves.
Elmley is unusual on two counts: it’s the only farm-managed national nature reserve, with a cattle-grazing regime designed to keep the grass exactly the right height for the breeding lapwing and redshank; and it’s the only nature reserve in the country where you can spend the night.
If you’re coming by train the managers of the reserve can pick you up from the station at Swale Halt or Sittingbourne for a small fee. Within minutes of arriving we’ve spotted a heron, two swans, a hare and dozens of marsh birds and tiny rabbits.
The owners, Georgina and Gareth, show us to one of the custom-built shepherd’s huts, which sit overlooking the marshes (a fourth will open this summer). Ours, Vanellus (sleeps two, from £95 a night), strikes the perfect balance between rustic and luxe, with a cosy sheepskin rug, cabinets from reclaimed wood and an en suite bathroom with flushing loo. The attention to detail is impressive: the window allows you to birdwatch and stargaze without leaving the comfort of your kingsize bed.
The skies here are enormous, and as the sun starts to set we light a fire outside our hut, pour a glass of the sloe gin Georgina has thoughtfully left for us, and watch birds skimming the lagoon. The sense of peace and space are uplifting. As if on cue, a barn owl emerges from the tree opposite, drifting silently and ghostly white over the reedbeds. This may not be France, but it feels a long way from home.
