London LOOP Section 24 – Rainham to Purfleet 16th January 2011

It is a pleasant January Sunday.  What better diversion than to knock off another few miles of the LOOP?  This section is of particular significance as it is the last one before crossing the Thames.  The section starts at Rainham, a village described in some detail in an earlier account.  This time we opt to travel by car to Rainham and then after our walk, return by rail from Purfleet.

Anyone following our journey will realise that we are being opportunistic in our approach.  None of this starting with Section One and then progressing through to Section 24.  Nonetheless we have achieved some thread of logic in our approach, adding new sections to the front or back end of completed ones.  A bit like adding letters to the starting word in a game of Scrabble, to give an increasingly long string.  Like building a word up in Scrabble, as we add new sections, the meaning of the whole thing changes and our understanding of the LOOP increases.

We park the car close to the War Memorial and cut through the church yard of St Helen and St Giles.  As we do, the church doors open, disgorging the congregation, all dressed in their Sunday best and dashing home to rescue the roast from the oven.  We wonder if perhaps the vicar’s sermon was a little overlong, such is their haste.  Burnt offerings are all very well for Moses and other biblical characters, but not when it is the main sustenance of the day. 

Beyond the church yard we retrace our last steps of Section 23 by walking down to Rainham Railway Station.  What happens next is less obvious to us.  Ferry Lane is truncated by a massive wooden wall.  This monolithic wooden structure presents one with a sense of awe similar to that surely felt by the Trojans when they stood in front of the wooden horse so kindly left behind by Agamemnon and all his Greek cohorts.  Then again it could have come straight out of a science fiction or fantasy movie, The Labyrinth perhaps.  It just does not seem to fit in with the world around us.

Fortunately for us there is a footbridge, winding its way over the obstacle in question. From our elevated vantage it reveals itself as being not just a single wall, but two.  They comprise of two parallel wooden walls some thirty odd feet high.  Between the two walls a double set of railway lines whisk Eurostar trains to and from Paris or Brussels.  As a train approaches the rails start to sing, followed by a rush of air as one of these many-wheeled monsters thunders past worm-like through its burrow across the South Essex marshes.

As calm settles once again, we make our way down the other side to the truncated Ferry Lane.  Before us stretch the South Essex Marshes.  These are however crossed by yet more ribbons of human technology.  A string of 400Kv pylons runs parallel with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, followed a few hundred yards further on by the A13 carrying countless cars and lorries to and from London.  This is of course one of those sections designed to prepare you for better things to come.  Just beyond the A13 we start to relax as the noise disappears in our wake.  As we walk a mini drives past bearing the insignia of a driving school.  A young lady is in the act of instructing a young man on the finer skills required to pass his driving test.

The LOOP directions advise following Ferry Lane to its junction with Coldharbour Lane.  In hindsight this would have been a good idea.  Unfortunately for us we discover that someone has coughed up the funds for the creation of a board walk off to the left of Ferry Lane.  Now I’m a sucker for a boardwalk.  No matter what the direction signs might say, I just have to follow the boardwalk.  In this case we are treated to an elevated ramble across grazing marshes and ditches, before emerging at a road.  It is at this point that we decide to consult the map and realise that we are well off route.

The penalty for our adventure is a quarter mile walk along Coldharbour Road back to the junction with Ferry Road.  Here we pick up the LOOP waymarkers and continue our walk.  This is one of those forgotten roads, known only to the drivers of delivery lorries visiting the Tilda Rice factory or similar, in this hidden corner of London.  One of the flights of fancy I like to follow is to imagine other people’s perceptions of a given place and how the thread of their lives overlaps with mine at that place.  The driver delivering to one of these warehouses has a perception of how this area fits into his day.  Perhaps it is drop number 5 followed by a similar drop somewhere in Purfleet, or across the river at Erith.  Does he have any perception of our day, with this one being the latest of a string of today’s experiences from Rainham to Purfleet.  He sees what we see here on Ferry Lane, but can have no perception of our day, or possibly that the LOOP even exists.  Heady stuff, but fascinating to consider nonetheless.

As we penetrate further into the industrial estate the driving instructor returns.  This is obviously her chosen patch as she is now instructing another client, probably delivering an identical lesson.  Does she wonder about the man and woman walking along this rather unremarkable stretch of road, leading to the industrial estate.  Does she wonder at what our day is all about?  I suspect not.  She has better things to do with her time.  However, we who walk have the time to indulge in wider and deeper thoughts.  This is one of the joys of LOOP walking.

Eventually we turn off the road and pursue a gravel path that runs parallel to it.  A couple of ladies, dressed in walking gear and laden with backpacks are getting into a car.  It would appear that they too have been enjoying what this corner of London has to offer.  Are they pilgrims of the LOOP too, or just coincidentally taking advantage of the fine weather and enjoying what we have yet to discover ahead of us?

Eventually the path leads up to the sea wall, over which we have an impressive view of the River Thames.  It seems incredibly quiet for such a large river.  Where are all the boats one might expect to find on such a large river close to one of the main commercial cities in the world?  If this were the Rhine or the Danube it would be awash with river traffic.  However, down here we are upstream of the deep water facilities of Tilbury and too far from Central London for river boat traffic.  This vast expanse of water seems wasted.

As we follow the line of the sea wall we encounter the Tilda factory off to our left, with a long row of silo like containers apparently waiting for the next consignment of rice.  It is apparent that the basmati rice processed here must come by boat, judging by the position of the silos adjacent to a jetty reaching out into the deeper water.  Considering how little use is made of the Thames here as a mode of transport, you have to take your hat off to Tilda.

The riverside path squeezes between the factory gates and the jetty giving excellent views of the thick brown Thames mud that inhabits the intertidal area between us and the open water.  This estuarine mud is rich in burrowing ragworms, bivalves and crustaceans, which provide nourishment for the population of oyster catchers, redshanks and other waders that inhabit the tidal Thames.

Beyond the factory some rather unusual inhabitants populate the mud and salt marsh.  Concrete barges. 

These ageing old hulks look like a school of whales washed up on the beach.  However, they have an interesting history.  Some sources claim they were built as part of the Mulberry Harbour that was created for Arromanches immediately after the D Day landings.  Other sources claim there is no proof of this.  I suspect the latter to be true, since the concrete ‘barges’ sunk at Arromanches were much bigger and formed stable jetties for boats to unload at, whereas the ones at Rainham appear to be cargo carrying vessels, probably towed as dumb barges behind a motor launch.  Nonetheless they were probably built about the same time (early 1940’s), of steel reinforced concrete, which seems a most improbable material for boat building.  I always marvel at the concept of a lump of concrete, much denser than the liquid beneath it, floating on the surface of the water.  Can you imagine a fish made of concrete?  Then again we fly all over the world in planes made of metal.  Surely it’s not natural?  Shouldn’t be allowed!

Whatever their history, they now lie at rest awaiting whatever fate time and tide have in store for them.  The bay they occupy is largely mud, with an accumulated mass of reed stems and small plastic items which must float and settle with successive changes in the tide.  On a clear skied, sunny day in January the barges remind me of a herd of sauropod dinosaurs or elephants basking in the cool waters of the Thames.

A little further along we pass a jetty where a large proportion of London’s considerable waste is accumulated ready to be transferred into the adjacent landfill site.  If you walk the Thames Path upstream through Central London you will see giant metal barges stacked high with yellow containers full of tons of rubbish collected from the residents of that enormous metropolis.  On a day to day basis we hardly notice it, although if local government employees ever go on strike, the news is full of the problems this stuff creates for us.  So here is the evidence as to where it goes.  Barges carry the stuff down the Thames and unload it at this large jetty, where it is then buried underground, or turned into large hills, grassed over and disguised as rolling English countryside.

These hills are visible all around us, each with a myriad of small chimneys poking out.  A child would probably presume that teletubbies or hobbits must live here, but the chimneys do serve a vital purpose, allowing the outgassing of methane given off by the organic material Londoners have disposed of weeks, months or even years earlier.  Eventually I daresay this will be turned into a country park or nature reserve like the ones downstream at Mucking and Bowers Marsh. I just hope future families are fully aware that this is not the place to have a barbecue!

Just beyond ‘Methane Central’ we pass a large storage depot, before passing further waste mountains still under construction. 

It is with a sense of relief that beyond this area of human activity we are able to glimpse the tranquillity of the RSPB nature reserve at Rainham Marshes.   In reality this area is Aveley, Wennington and Rainham Marshes, but is now collectively termed Rainham Marshes. 

This medieval marshland would have once supported a population of marsh men eking a meagre living out of this desolate wildscape.  Reed cutting, wildfowl trapping and eel catching would all have been standard practice in this area, before London extended its tentacles eastward during the 19th and 20th Centuries.  Throughout the 20th Century the only activity taking place here would have been British ‘Tommies’ honing their shooting skills, before being shipped off to wartime Europe to face the horrors of warfare.  Thankfully we live in more settled, peaceful times.  As a result the military withdrew from the area in the 1950’s.  Numerous plans were then put forward in the late 20th Century regarding what to do with the land, including some by the creators of Mickey Mouse.  Had they had their way, this area would have been blessed with long queues of children awaiting their chance to have the vomit thrown out of them, down one of the high speed rides that now thankfully inhabit Euro Disney, Paris.  I suspect the vagaries of the English weather may have seen off yet another wave of invaders, along with Napoleon and Hitler.

The walk along the sea wall here gives contrasting views across marshland to the north and the Thames to the south.  This bleak landscape is perhaps the last place on earth that you would expect to see a flock of parakeets, but that is just what we encounter.  Green and yellow, squawking parakeets skip over our heads as we approach the RSPB visitor centre.  We will meet these little chaps many more times on the southern and western sections of the LOOP, but they are as yet less common in North and East London.

This is just the place for a cup of tea and a sticky bun.  The RSPB took control of the site back in 2000 and a marvellous job they have made of the site.  Tracks and boardwalks festoon the extensive area of marshland, drawing bird and wildlife watchers from all over the South East.  The jewel in the crown is the visitor centre, complete with restaurant, toilets and a shop that sells all things wildlife.  On most days of the year you can sip from a mug of hot steaming tea and watch all the funny little people with telescopes parading across wooden duckboards, like some kind of supply column at the Battle of the Somme.

Suitably fortified we toddle the final few hundred metres along the sea wall, past the former gunpowder storage building. 

This substantial building would have held some 10,000 barrels of gunpowder during the time when Napolean and his cohorts were looking greedily across the English Channel.  This and four similar buildings on the site would have provided a substantial stockpile of ordnance ready to repel him, were he to dare to sail up the Thames towards London.

Purfleet Gunpowder Magazine and Rainham Marshes have long lost their military functions, being little more than a reminder that this was once a busy area geared to the business of killing our fellow man.  Now Purfleet is a quiet commuter settlement, being the last point at which you can use your Oyster Card on the C2C rail line to Southend.

As we board the train back to Rainham and our waiting car, we are presented with an excellent view across to Erith and the south bank of the Thames, where the next section of the LOOP awaits us.