Advertisement
Published: April 17th 2021
Thames Estuary at Purfleet
The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf can just be seen at around ten miles upstream in the distance.Dear All
Greetings from London! It has been a while since I last wrote a Travel Blog entry, as like many of us, I haven’t been doing much travelling for the past year. It’s been wonderful seeing and reading people’s travel blog entries on here on their local travels, or previous travels that they had not hitherto been able to write up. It has been a breath of fresh air during these times to read such stories and adventures, and see such lovely pictures from exotic, distant places around the world. Thank you to those who have written such stories, and inspired me to keep trucking on and looking forward to travelling again at some time in the not-too-distant future.
So here is my entry on a local travel destination. Unfortunately I haven’t done much local travels this year, as since October of last year, the UK has been under some form of lockdown or other, which only this past week is just beginning to lift.
And thus, on Wednesday of this week, I ventured out once more into the unknown. This involved no plane ride or international visa application, but a trip just outside the boundaries of
Thames Estuary at Purfleet
Closer view of the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf East London – to a place called Purfleet.
The inspiration for such a visit began with a clip I’d seen on TV of some local birdwatchers in the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) reserve in a place called Rainham Marshes, on the north bank of the Thames Estuary just on the outskirts of East London. The place looked interesting, and coupled with my recent watching of two film versions of Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations”, which begin with the main character Pip and his rather poor and humble beginnings in life somewhere in the marshes of the Thames Estuary east of London, my interests were stirred. Although I believe Pip came from the southern, Kent side of the Thames Estuary, I was still inspired to visit this place of England which I had never been to before, and thus on Wednesday morning, I packed my day bag and headed out to explore. I was bound for a small town on the northern, Essex side of the Estuary, called Purfleet.
Having stopped off to say hello to my local barber, who has only just opened this week as hairdressers have been closed since December, (and incidentally I
have just now returned from having my first barber-cut for four months, it feels wonderful!), I began my journey at my local London train station Selhurst. It was quite a journey, around one-and-half-hours in total. I took a Southern train first to Balham tube station, where I took the Northern Line tube to Bank and then changed to the Circle Line at adjacent Monument station, one stop east to Tower Hill. Here, it is a short 200m walk to a really quite famous, but very little-visited, station called Fenchurch Street Station. This is where the train to Purfleet leaves from. I was so excited to be in Fenchurch Street Station, as in all my years of living in London (around 20), I had never been there before. It really is a small station, with only four platforms, and only one trainline running east out of the city towards Southend-on-Sea on the southern Essex coast, but it has been made immortally famous for having its own property to purchase on the original Monopoly board game. I was glad to have visited it!
From Fenchurch Street Station, I caught a 25-minute C2C train eastwards towards a place called Grays, getting off
Old House
Apparently built in 1896, Purfleet. the stop earlier at Purfleet, or rather Purfleet-on-Thames as it has been known officially since 2020 to attract fortune and investment to the town, ready to begin my explorations for the day.
Although my main destination for the day was nearby Rainham Marshes, I hadn’t realised until arrival that there was really quite a bit to see in the town, with quite a bit of history. Purfleet is a town of around 12,000 people, and sits just outside the Greater London Authority area, and just within the English county of Essex, although it is still located within the M25 London ring road. The station had a small-town feel, with a level crossing, and about two other people getting off the train. I walked into town past a very large building development area, evidently about to take advantage of the town’s easy access to London.
In town I sat down on a bench overlooking the Thames Estuary, around 600m wide at this point, and enjoyed the rare sunshine and seaside-prom-like-vibe of the riverside path. There were dogwalkers and cyclists, and everyone seemed friendly and happy to smile and say a “hello”. It was a lovely place to be, and
The Royal Hotel
Victorian Lodgings, Purfleet I quickly learned that there was quite a lot to take in in this local area alone.
First of all, in the far-distance about a mile-and-a-half downstream to the east, stood the imposing Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which along with two underground road tunnels together called the Dartford Tunnel passing pretty much directly underneath, constitutes what is known as the Dartford Crossing. This is the section of the M25 which crosses the river here, used by around 130,000 vehicles every day, and notoriously clogged up with traffic jams. The other place in which the M25 crosses the River Thames, on the west side of London near Staines, crosses the river at a mere 50m wide. Here the bridge is a whopping 812m long, and certainly makes an impression. The Thames itself here is also quite a different sight to behold, with marshes and reedbeds on the banks giving it quite a rural feel, but with the gleaming skyscrapers of London’s Canary Wharf visible at around 10 miles upstream, reminding one of the importance of such a river, and how built-up it gets the further upstream you go. This was indeed the gateway of England to the world, and was
St Stephen's Church and War Memorial, Purfleet
In the grounds of this church once stood "Purfleet House", said to be "Carfax House", which Count Dracula purchased upon arrival in England particularly significant in the times of the British Empire, and also both World Wars, as I was to learn.
Just behind me stood the Royal Hotel, dating back to the early 19
th century and a popular Victorian riverside destination, where guests would paddle in the Thames below on its river beaches. Behind that stood a war memorial in front of the local St Stephen’s Church, in the vicinity of which once stood “Purfleet House”, built in 1791 but demolished in 1920 to make way for the church, and whose bricks were used to make said building. It is believed that Carfax House, the building which Count Dracula bought when he first set foot on English soil after his journey from Transylvania, was in actual fact this “Purfleet House”, and thus Carfax House links Purfleet to Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel. There is in fact a plaque in the area which mentions this, but I unfortunately didn’t take a photo of it as I only learned it was there after I had left Purfleet. Just to the west of the Royal Hotel stands Purfleet's very own "Armada Beacon". The south coast of England is scattered with hundreds of these, built in
the 16th century all along the coast, to warn of the potential invasion of the Spanish, during the Spanish Armada in Elizabethan times. Apparently, during the Spanish Armada of 1588, the invading fleet was sighted off the coast of Lizard Point in Cornwall. The beacon there was lit, initiating the lighting up of the impressive beacon communications system all along the south coast of England, and it is said that thirty minutes later, London knew about their arrival. I find this feat of early communications engineering ingenious and very impressive.
Further on along the river bank stands the Purfleet Heritage and Military Centre, which unfortunately was closed during my visit due to the situation. But it is in fact housed in the fifth of five large gunpowder storage bunkers called magazines, built in 1760. The other four magazines have since been demolished, but this solemn structure stands testament to the area’s historical importance during the days of the British Empire. The British flag outside was flying at half-mast, due to it being our eight-days of national mourning for the passing of our Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, last week, and whose funeral is taking place today. It was in
these five “Government Royal Gunpowder Magazines” that the British government’s store of gunpowder was held, ready to load onto naval vessels as they set sail from London and out to roam the vast global seas. Each of the five magazines was capable of storing over 10,000 barrels of gunpowder, and were apparently very busy during the Napoleonic wars and the days of the British East India Company. They were under heavy military guard at the time, due to the fact that if any of them were successfully attacked, the explosion would have devastated several square miles of land around.
My riverside walk took me past magazine number five, and onto my main destination for the day - the beautiful and serene Rainham Marshes RSPB reserve, where I happily spent a couple of hours walking around its peaceful two-and-a-half miles of marshland trails.
I am not a birdwatcher myself, but I can see the attraction of the pursuit, and particularly enjoy walking around RSPB reserves as they are generally very peaceful slices of natural beauty, filled with beautiful bird sound and song from all around. While the riverside path continued westwards, with its dogwalkers and cyclists, I entered the
Purfleet Heritage and Military Centre
Housed in magazine number five, British flag at half-mast due to the mourning of our Duke of Edinburgh. RSPB reserve to sheer bliss and solitude, accompanied only by nature, as well as a handful of quiet birdwatchers who I came across every now and then. I donned my travel binoculars around the neck, partly to look the part, but also partly to try and spot some birds, and was in my element for the next couple of hours. The highlight sighting for the day for me was seeing a couple of lapwings flying around, diving towards the water every now and then and back up again, in some kind of show of display, and making their distinctive “peewit” call. Aside from this, I spotted a number of varieties of ducks, some geese, lots of small songbirds, and a pigeon or two. I’m afraid my birdwatching knowledge cannot go into more detailed nomenclature here though, and I only learned the name of the lapwing after asking a passing birdwatcher. In one corner of the reserve, particular attention by a group of twitchers (an informal British term for birdwatchers) was given to an unknown bird in the distance, with no-one being able to name it – it must have been a significant sighting!
As well as birds, Rainham Marshes
is also famous for having been a military training ground during both World Wars, with decaying remnants of war-related buildings strewn all around. Most notable were a couple of brick-built target ranges, and long bunkers used by those employed in setting the targets to avoid stray bullets when target practice was happening, but now housing a number of bird and insect nests apparently. I read some fascinating pieces of information on a few tourist boards here and there, including the fact that during World War One, when German zeppelin aircrafts were used to drop bombs on London, one of the zeppelins, called LZ15, was successfully shot down over the marshes by a British machine-gunner, presumably saving countless English lives in the process. In addition, during World War Two, fake houses were also built in the area and purposefully set alight during the Blitz, to fool Nazi bombers into thinking this was London itself and to drop their bombs early in this sparsely populated area instead.
After having enjoyed a blissful couple of hours wandering around the reserve, absorbing both natural wildlife and fascinating history, my visit to the Rainham Marshes RSPB reserve was coming to an end. After a
RSPB Rainham Marshes
Visitor Centre, Purfleet brief dekko in the Visitor Centre’s gift shop, I headed back to Purfleet train station, to make the journey once more back to Croydon again. After taking the same train back to Fenchurch Street Station, I took a different route home by walking about a mile from there to London Bridge Station, passing a few notable buildings on the way, some of them may be recognisable from the photos here (!) I found it remarkable that these buildings were just places to walk past for me at the time, as I had spent my day sightseeing at a much lesser-known location. I do like to explore off-the-beaten track places, and I have learned that in recently exploring more of my own country, this still rings true. At London Bridge Station I boarded a slow-stopping train back once more to Selhurst and my lovely home again.
I was very happy to have explored another part of this lovely country again, and reminded myself that there are countless opportunities around here for similar types of day trips. Having written this blog entry on my travels this day, I have gotten a brief glimpse into what my travelling days were once like,
full of excitement and adventure, and I am renewed once more with a sense of hope that these days will resume again at some point hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
I’m afraid I don’t have too many photos of my visit to Purfleet and the Rainham Marshes to upload here, as I didn’t intend to write a blog entry on it, and didn’t take my camera with me. Thus, I only took a few fleeting shots on my mobile phone, whose images are in fact uploaded here. Still, I’m very glad that I did take these photos, and have been able to write a blog entry on my day there upon my return.
Thank you for reading, and hopefully we will all be travelling again at some point soon.
All the best for now.
Alex
Advertisement
Tot: 0.134s; Tpl: 0.028s; cc: 19; qc: 36; dbt: 0.073s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Local travels
Many people around the world are sharing your experience of seeing and exploring things close to home. Congratulations on the hair cut. Rivers create life are so important to work and expansion. Dave and I have been attracted to birds on our travels. I doubt we'll ever become birders but as you say we can see the attraction.They are often in amazing, serene settings. I had to look up lapwings. It turns out we've seen them but didn't know what they were called. Next local trip you may need to take your camera.... however your phone did a very nice job. I'm glad you are fulfilling that travel need again.