by Nick Corble
As the shops petered out a long line of identical houses replaced them, probably pre-war, all with bay fronts. They’d avoided the curse of being broken down into flats, although without exception the front gardens had been sacrificed to take cars. I regained my diagonal at Goodmayes, where I headed due south at a Millennium Clock, inscribed with the opening lines of Genesis, and no, I don’t mean ‘Follow You, Follow Me’. As I headed down this new road the housing became more varied, with purpose-built flats, some bungalows and roads off with suffixes such as ‘Drive’ or ‘Gardens’ – all quite suburban. The buildings looked newer, suggesting this had been fresh housing after the war, filling in gaps left from the bombing. A garlanded tuk-tuk sat in front of one, the flowers made of plastic. Was it a wedding vehicle, a bit of fun, or used to deliver curries? There was an advertisement for Kingfisher beer on it, so I guessed the latter. It was then, just as I was concluding that this was clearly a more affluent area, that a rat scuttled past my feet.
Welcome shade presented itself in the form of a tree-lined boulevard which brought me into Becontree on the edge of Dagenham, crossing my diagonal again as it went. The pavements presented heavy going, and the lack of seating meant it was difficult to get a proper rest anywhere. I’d resorted to sitting down at bus stops waving away the regular flow of red buses dutifully slowing down to pick me up. I could see how I might look – sweaty, tired, dusty and dry. The drivers were probably pleased I didn’t want to get on, although I was sure they’d seen worse. By the time I saw the familiar sign for the Underground, I decided it was time to call it a day. The District Line was calling.
*
A train arrived, and I lifted off my rucksack and took a seat. Another section of the walk was complete. It had been a good one. The heat, and its impact on the landscape (as well as on my sweat glands) had been a defining feature, but there’d been more to it than that. The ripening crops, the beginning of harvesting and active wildlife had reminded me of some of the constants of the English countryside. Our fields and hedgerows still, to some extent at least, defined us. So too did our towns, even if these were having a tougher time of things. I’d endured the Badlands of Luton, and experienced the surprise of WGC and parts of East London. I’d also experienced a number of encounters along the way, including the uplifting ones with Gordon and Martin.
The walking had also taken place at a time when the practicalities of Brexit started to come to a head. Most of the time, I’d been insulated from the headlines by my own priorities, not least keeping one foot moving in front of the other during what was turning out to be the hottest summer for at least forty years. Every now and then, the outside world had bubbled to the surface, generating a maelstrom of emotions, few of them positive. Whichever side of the Brexit divide one stood, what was happening wasn’t pretty. In fact I was reminded of my conversation with Siobhán back in Toddington, when we’d agreed that the word ‘ugly’ was perhaps the best way to sum the whole process up, and that had been before it had escalated into another gear of hideousness.
The newspapers presented a story of a nation divided, but that hadn’t been my experience. Like me, most people were wrapped up in their own day-to-day, their work, their family, surviving, thriving, getting ready for the school holidays. The subject was either a topic for behind closed doors or one people had become simply exasperated by. It had become impossible to know who to believe, who was credible, such were the starkly different scenarios being presented. It was little wonder that people, both in the UK and in Europe, were metaphorically throwing their hands up in despair. What was clear was that whatever happened a sizeable proportion of the population was going to be left angry and, perhaps, to use a word much favoured by some, betrayed. If the process was ugly, it was equally certain that the final outcome wasn’t going to be pretty.
I picked up a discarded Metro newspaper and read the latest. The new Minister for Exiting the EU (was there ever a more cumbersome job title?) had effectively been side-lined by the Prime Minister, who was going to lead the Brexit process personally. Meanwhile, the minister’s job had become one of contingency planning for a ‘No Deal’ scenario. There was talk of food shortages and use of the army. Welcome back to reality I thought.
Or maybe I’d just left it?
Stage 5
Dagenham
to
New Romney
83.2 miles
189,374 steps
13
Gateway to the South (East)
The school holiday weather curse had done its thing. Within days of the schools breaking up the heatwave ended. It had been replaced by Heatwave 2.0, which carried more of a north/south divide feel about it and was altogether more mercurial. The ‘normal’ English summer had returned, and sure enough, the day I picked up my route again something happened that hadn’t happened to me for a very long time.
I was rained upon.
At first I was in denial and I stepped out onto the streets of Dagenham in the firm belief that this couldn’t be happening, or that if it was it would surely stop. It didn’t. For the first time since Liverpool, way back in April, I was obliged to don my wet weather gear. It wasn’t exactly hammering it down but it was enough to guarantee a drowned rat impersonation if I didn’t take preventative measures. The familiar problem of nowhere to sit, this time to don my waterproof trousers rather than take a drink, resurfaced, and I was back to finding the nearest bus shelter. Naturally, a bus came along just as I was fiddling with the fly area, making it look as if I’d used the shelter for other purposes.
Back walking, it occurred to me that whatever I did, I was destined to carry out my diagonal walk in a lather of sweat. Where the blistering sun used to create a sauna, I was now experiencing more of a Turkish bath of my own making.
Having stretched the hood of my cagoule over the brim of my hat, I was able to take in my surroundings through a screen of falling droplets of rain. The streets were understandably empty, and I needed to watch out for passing buses and trucks keen to levitate the gathering pools of water around blocked drains and send them in my direction. There was little to distinguish the neighbourhood. Only an unexpected date palm in the front garden of one house, its leaves decidedly droopy, provided any interest.
For many people of my generation, Dagenham is synonymous with car building, much like Halewood outside Liverpool had been earlier on the walk, and Luton after it. Like Halewood, Dagenham had been the site of a major Ford plant. In Dagenham’s case it still is, even if much diminished. In its heyday in the early fifties, Ford Dagenham employed over 40,000 workers. It was also notorious for the stranglehold the unions exerted over management, to the extent that they’d even resisted equal pay for women. This became a cause célèbre, later dramatised in the film Made In Dagenham. Car production ceased in 2002, and these days the plant produces only engines, employing just over 3,000. Quite what the future holds for this rump in a post-Brexit England, in an industry that relies on just-in-time delivery across Europe, it was impossible to know.
The landscape was alleviated by a large expanse of open land to my right. This was the Beam Parklands, an open space primarily offering flood protection, although in so doing it also provides a wildlife sanctuary and bit of greenery for the locals. An information sign boasted it could hold water equivalent to 180 Olympic swimming pools, an Olympic swimming pool one of those measures used widely to describe a volume of water, but which no one can really comprehend. Unfortunately for me, the parklands were balanced by a stretch of dual carriageway on my other side, where the danger from passing puddles was suddenly multiplied.
By the time I reached the outskirts of the appropriately named Rainham, I was ready for my lunch, and I stopped off at Jack’s Café, where I opted for a jacket potato before plunging back into the rain, my route now heading south with all the determination of a swallow at the approach of winter. Passing Ingrebourne Hill – in reality more of a hillock, but I could s
ee how that didn’t carry the same ring – I was now back on a section of the London Loop, leading me into the attractive heart of Rainham. There was a kind of compactness and village-like feel here, with a church, shops, station and even a clock tower doubling as a World War I memorial and a focal point. It was easy to imagine a time when Rainham existed in its own right, rather than as part of London, especially as I headed further south, under the A13, and into Rainham Marshes.
If Beam Park could manage 180 Olympic swimming pools, I couldn’t imagine how many Rainham Marshes might hold. These separated the village from the Thames, which was going to be my next major landmark, and once defined the area economically. Initially, the area acted as a floodplain, but over time, Rainham, like Formby earlier on the walk, became a final dumping ground for human waste, making it a centre for market gardening, as well as the raising of livestock. There are still some cows grazing there today.
Later, wharves along the Thames once helped supply local chemical and fertiliser factories. One of these was Murex Limited, once Rainham’s biggest employer. Murex took raw materials from Africa and South America and extracted rare metals such as vanadium and the wonderfully named molybdenum. The fleeces of sheep still grazing during that time turned black from the pollution arising from the site’s furnaces. I was pleased to see that the site wasn’t yet another redundant plant. The rice company Tilda now uses it to sort, mill and package rice from Italy, Canada, India, Thailand and Uruguay.
An asphalt path took me through the marshes, offering alternative routes, and thereby pulling me off the London Loop for a while. Streams criss-crossed vigorously growing shoulder-high reeds, brambles, elder and stinging nettles. Of more interest were the thousands of tiny, less than thumbnail-sized snails, some with brown shells and others, even smaller, with more of a vanilla-coloured shell with a chocolate swirl through them. Following a posting on Facebook, it was suggested that these were white-lipped snails. It never failed to amaze me how much other people knew about wildlife, or maybe they just enjoyed more ready access to the internet?
Rainham Marshes also hosted rifle ranges used to train British soldiers as late as the 1960s, and also had another military connection. For a while, rusting metal signs had directed me towards some ‘concrete barges’, but by the time I actually reached the Thames the last thing I’d been expecting were actual barges. Made of concrete. Stupidly, I’d imaged either a work of art or barges once used to transport concrete. Not barges made of concrete.
These were abandoned lighters, sixteen of them. Scattered around like beached whales. Amazingly, these boats were lighter than the water they displaced, and were made of ferro-concrete, that is, concrete reinforced with iron, a cheap material at the time. That time was during the last war, when five hundred of these beasts were built, mainly to transport water and fuel, playing a significant part in the D-Day landings. Most found a final resting place in the English Channel, but these were dumped here in 1953 and sunk on the shore to beef up the flood defences. These days, they are popular with wintering rock and water pipits.
As I left the barges behind, a briny tang filled the air, albeit one balanced by a distinct whiff from the massive, and thankfully invisible, landfill site inland. I supposed it was as good a place as any for landfill, and was probably preferable to sheep-defacing furnaces. Apparently, the site can accept up to 1.5 million tonnes of waste a year, and no, I’ve no idea of how many Olympic swimming pools that represents.
The rain was still falling, more heavily now, but at least I was walking beside the Thames rather than a dual carriageway, and my progress was counted down in regular 200m way-markers. The water was murky olive in colour and was moving quite fast, even if there was little traffic on it. In the distance, I could make out the spindly, slightly humpbacked, Dartford Crossing, which I needed to cross the next day, with a towering chimney on its far shore. The last mile or so of the walk followed the line of an old sea wall. The practice of building a sea wall to protect land from the effect of salt was apparently known as ‘inning’, a phrase, along with Paul Theroux’s ‘embayed’ that did what it said on the can. The current sea wall can be dated back as recently as the 1980s, so flooding was clearly still an issue, which made sense when I stopped to think of it.
Eventually, I reached the other destination point highlighted on the rusty signs, the RSPB centre at Purfleet. Up until then, the only wildlife I’d seen were ducks, perhaps because it was such lovely weather for them, but I supposed a body as venerable as the RSPB knew what they were doing. Maybe a concrete barge or two for passing pipits? Over the previous hour the rain had stepped up a gear, and for what seemed like the first time in months (and it probably was), I actually felt cold. I was more interested in a chuffing coffee than seeing choughs, and if it could be accompanied by cake, then so much the better.
The centre duly delivered, a wonderful Americano and an unusual zucchini and lime sponge. I cradled the cup as a small puddle of rainwater formed underneath me, reasoning the café’s staff were probably used to it. Glass cabinets offered all sorts of binoculars, binocular holders and binocular stands for sale, more variations of binocular-related merchandise than anyone could reasonably think possible. Suitably refreshed, I wandered towards the door to explore the reserve, but it looked intimidatingly big, wet, and decidedly barge-free. I’ve never been much of a twitcher. I appreciate bird life, but not enough to undertake additional mileage after a long day, only to take inadequate photos of them. Besides, I was a binocular-free zone.
A sign outside the Centre invited visitors to donate the number of steps people had done that day, which they were accumulating to illustrate the distance a swallow travels in a year. I offered mine, by then around the 25,000 mark and thought they’d be pleased, but it turned out they’d stopped collecting them the day before.
My hotel stood a mere five minutes away, and the thought of a warm shower had become intoxicating. So I crossed a welcome footbridge over a muddy inlet and headed slightly uphill into the Royal Hotel. The only hotel in town, the Royal Hotel was so-named because it was allegedly frequented by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. What he got up to there is probably best left unasked. Clean, warmed and fed, that evening I went for a light stroll. The rain having finally stopped, the skies had parted to reveal a strange yellowy-orange thing sinking into the horizon. Purfleet didn’t take a lot of exploring. There was some history, including an old Magazine Building, and I’m not talking about last week’s Radio Times. This long, virtually windowless oblong was built in the mid-eighteenth century and was used to store gunpowder and ordnance for the army until as recently as 1950. In its day, it held 10,400 barrels of gunpowder, that’s 460 tonnes of the stuff; goodness knows how many Olympic swimming pools.
It was difficult to imagine, but the riverfront was once a tourist destination and popular ferry point. Then again, it was difficult to imagine how Butlins holiday camps were once seen as the apogee of family fun. In the distance to my right, the twinkling light at the top of Canary Wharf Tower could be seen, and in the other direction, the Dartford Crossing was now much more prominent. I wandered along the promenade, an attempt to spruce the place up a bit, and it was clear there was now more traffic on the water; possibly because of the tides. The sunset was actually rather glorious, so I lingered and took a few photographs on my phone for the Instagram account.
*
The next day began much sunnier, and I decided to reassess Purfleet with an open mind. Overnight, I’d read a review of the place on the internet which described it as a ‘home for chavs, druggies and jobless layabouts’. Whilst that might have been laying it on a bit thick, the place clearly had an image problem. A report in that day’s Thurrock Gazette described an attempt to rename it as Purfleet-on-Thames, which carried more than a whiff of desperation about it. Kingston or Richmond it wasn’t. Earlier in the year, plans for a £1 billion regeneration scheme including a new town centre, a medical centre, parks, a cinema
and a revamped railway station had been announced. Inevitably, the scheme also included plans for a creative quarter, with a film and TV studio facility. I’d heard it all before on a number of occasions along the walk, but good luck to them all the same. Without ambition, we are nothing, and this was nothing if not ambitious.
There were echoes of the Thames Gateway, an earlier, similarly ambitious, project to regenerate the area along the route of the HS1, the high-speed rail route from the Channel Tunnel into London. This included not only Purfleet, but Thurrock and, south of the river, the towns of Dartford and Gravesend, both along my diagonal route. Labelled the largest regeneration project in North West Europe (a wonderfully precise definition, with more than a whiff of the marketing department behind it), the scheme was set up to redevelop both marshland (I’d seen plenty of that), farmland and brownfield sites, the latter nothing to do with human waste, thankfully. The jury was still out on its success.
The path through Purfleet weaved amongst new housing, although whether this was a result of the Thames Gateway initiative I couldn’t tell, as well as threading through commercial parks populated with all-too-familiar large grey soulless boxes with long articulated lorries parked outside.
I followed the roads along a series of roundabouts to the Lakeside shopping centre. A huge development of more than 2.5 million square feet (take it from me, that’s a lot, especially if you end up walking three quarters of the way round it trying to find a bus station), this opened in 1990, before the whole Thames Gateway thing. It took me over an hour to get there, only to discover it was shut. It opened at 10 am. As my bus was at 10:05 I took a rain check, almost literally, as it turned out. Yes, a bus, because, for the second time on the walk I was obliged to use public transport to negotiate a major river. First the Mersey, now the Thames.
