Essex: Southend to Fobbing 9/7/2009

 

We arrived by train at Southend Central.  On our way to the front we were able to buy some lunch and a new map.  The first part of the walk from the pier was then straightforward tarmac and concrete around “Adventure Island” and along the prom tiddly-pom.  Some Mediterranean gulls mixed with the black-headed ones on the muddy sands.  Southend merged into Leigh-on-Sea.  We walked beside the railway which ran along the front.  At Leigh-on-Sea there was a much more pleasant collection of pubs, cafés, restaurants and shops in a tiny seafront quarter, including a museum showing a “typical old fisherman’s cottage”.  There were prominent seafood firms here and we had already seen cockle-pickers far out on the Thames mudflats.  By Leigh-on-Sea station we left the railway-side and followed a path through wasteland and by pools overlooking Two Tree Island.  At the west end of the island were a number of large pools with avocets, little egret, terns, black-tailed godwit, sanderlings, oystercatchers and lapwings in large numbers.  The avocets had chicks.  As we continued along the embankment we faced Canvey Island and entered Hadleigh Castle Country Park (the castle ruins clear on the hill above).  The vegetation was uninteresting, bastard cabbage frequent, and we could not find the hartwort supposed to be along here, but we did find stone parsley for the first time this trip.  Eventually we entered the Benfleet Creek marina, where there was a convenient seat to have our lunch overlooking the stationary boats.  We were directly beside the railway again and passed a large flood barrier across the creek before joining the road to Benfleet station, from which a footpath ran further alongside the creek towards the sewage works.  Here mountain cycle and motorcycle tracks completely obscured the way, the ups and downs of what was apparently a disused tip making excellent terrain for them.  We rediscovered the path after the sewage works just in time to follow it along the river to the point where it passed under the major A130 road.  The path then crossed agricultural land in a meandering way before it gathered its senses and headed due north to Rookery Farm, past a long belt of completely dead white elm trees that were regenerating as green undergrowth.  The farm was a stables and the path obstructed, but we managed to get through a broken gate and gain access to the bridge over the railway.  The path followed the north side of the railway along the narrow margins of rape and wheat fields.  It was rather a surprise when we suddenly arrived in a churchyard, belonging to St Margaret’s Church, a handsome building far from any current settlement.  Crossing Church Lane, we walked beside rough arable land until we entered a “set aside” area where we found hairy vetchling yet again (TQ751874).  We found more hairy vetchling (TQ743875)in the next field of coarse plants just before the beginning of the Basildon conurbation at Pitsea.  Then we followed an unpleasant dark track between railway and garden fences to the road near Pitsea station., from which a rough track led to the A13 looming overhead.  We found a path away from the road to cross Vange Marshes rather than have to try to walk along dual carriageway.  The path was not signed properly, but we found our way into an RSPB nature reserve with a permissive path just below the railway, saving us digressions by the public right-of-way.  We managed to find our way around Vange Wharf, but the continuation of the footpath through the next farm was unsigned and unclear.  We found the way to a footbridge into the next field, which had obviously been unused for years.  Grass was head-high and the ground full of large tussocks, while patches of nettles and thistles stung and pricked us.  There was no sign of the path and we had to make our own way for half a kilometre through this at a very slow pace.  At the end was a gate that had obviously not been opened for a long time, as there were blackthorn bushes growing in front of it!  Nevertheless we managed to get through and could take the continuing track meandering through farmland again.  The footpath which was meant to diverge from this was not evident, but it did not matter, as we could follow the track further to meet with it again at a large isolated barn.  A snipe rose crying from this marshy pasture.  From the barn the footpath south was again unmarked, but we navigated ourselves through more rough grassland and ditches to the corner of a river embankment, where an old stile hidden among tall vegetation led us straight into a reed marsh!  We found tubular water dropwort here and climbed up on the embankment, walked along it a short way and navigated by two rows of pylons shown on the map.  A path eventually turned directly towards Fobbing, arriving at the bottom of the hill at the end of Marsh Lane, but the footpath supposed to continue south underneath the hill was overgrown and unsigned.  We therefore climbed up Marsh Lane to Fobbing High Road, which we took south past houses to the village itself.  Unfortunately the White Lion pub here was closed, though gone 5pm, and we had to sit without drinks to await the taxi to our hotel.  Today meadow browns were surprisingly few, but there were more peacocks than usual and many marbled whites had just started emerging in quantity, we having only had our first record the day before.

 

 

Southend seafront from cliff gardens     Leigh Marshes

Hadleigh Castle     St Margaret's Church

Stone parsley   Marbled white