Estuary Escapade

5th April 2019

Thursday evening watching John Rogers on Youtube walking down the estuary coast through Leigh-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea and thinking I have 4 days off work, what should I do? 

30 minutes later I've booked a night in the Premier Inn in Southend and a return railway ticket to Southend East. I've only been to Southend once, years ago for work and didn't see the seafront because I was booked into a hotel at the airport, a few miles inland. So I'd never been to the world's longest pleasure pier with its railway. Time to put that right.

The Journey

To get to Southend I chose to leave London from Fenchurch Street, arguably the capital's prettiest terminus. Another first for me.

Settled on board a late morning C2C train - no trouble getting a seat - and connected to the excellent free on-board Wi-Fi without having to part with excessive amounts of personal data. Other TOCs please take note.

For the first part the journey runs out through East London, then into the undulating and mostly flat Essex countryside. Between Leigh-on-Sea and Chalkwell the line runs right alongside the water, as close as does the GWR at Dawlish, and affords interesting views across the estuary. Arrived on time at Southend East station and walked down to the coast about three quarters of a mile through Southend's suburbs.

The Pier

First distant sight of the pier. Walked along the seafront to the pier and bought a return ticket for the pier train. 

Trains run from the shore end on the hour and half past the hour so I had a 20 minute wait. I thought I was getting the whole train to myself for a while ( I was visiting outside the busy season) but soon a gaggle of young Mums with pushchairs and pre-school age offspring joined the queue (at the front naturally).

There was only one of the two trains in use today but there was plenty of room - I made sure to be in a different carriage from the Mums & pushchairs. Although once electrified, train service is currently provided by two diesel trains, running on 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge track. Each train consists of a diesel-hydraulic locomotive at the southern end, five trailer coaches and, at the northern end, a driver control unit with passenger space. One train is named Sir John Betjeman, "the Pier is Southend, Southend is the Pier" , and the other Sir William Heygate.  I assume the latter refers to the local Baronets rather than Billy Butlin but I could be wrong.

A mile and a quarter of in places spectacularly bumpy train ride later the train arrives at the far end of the pier.

On the way it passes quite a bit of repair or building activity on the pier, getting ready for the summer season.

It was a fine if breezy day with the Kent shore on the other side of the estuary visible if a bit hazy and its a good spot to watch passing ships.

At the far end of the pier is the RNLI lifeboat station, museum, and shop on the bit that kinks to the east.

Between that and the railway station is a very modern building containing a cafe, with outside seating.

Tea and cake were consumed. The outside seating area is fairly sheltered and was pleasantly warm in the sunshine.

Unusually it was not necessary to defend one's cake from marauding seagulls. I don't recall seeing a single gull anywhere on the pier, and very few in Southend itself. Very strange. There were pigeons on the pier though they are much less trouble than gulls.

There was also a flock of birds sitting on a slipway on the east side near the cafe, all facing east. It would have been easy to walk past and not notice them, as I did the first time.

Apparently they're Ruddy Turnstones and have been something of an obstacle when it comes to carrying out any building or repair work on the pier.

They don't try to steal cake though.

Most of the other pier end attractions, mainly housed in wooden huts, were closed on this early season Friday so after taking lots of photos it was time for the return train trip and then go and check into the hotel.

The Seafront

Cannot be at the seaside on a Friday evening and not get fish and chips, can you? A little online research suggested that rather than the seafront fish and chip shops better was to be had by walking back up towards Southend East station and locating Brothers Fish Bar in Woodgrange Drive. The research was correct and the results excellent.

I took them back down to the front and enjoyed them there.

The tide had gone out and with it the earlier clear skies, the setting sun heavily veiled by clouds.

I walked eastwards along the seafront to Thorpe Bay past many small craft lying stranded on the mud by the receding tide, then up the long gentle slope through the straight streets of neat bungalows and past the shops and restaurants in The Broadway to Thorpe Bay station.

Where I was feeling lazy enough to get a train the two stops back to Southend Central in search of the bright lights.

I had thought there was more of Southend seafront than there actually is - it's no Great Yarmouth to be sure - but there were bright lights, a few bright young things, some rather odd "local characters" and The Borough Hotel which appeared to be the most pub-like bar on the seafront and the one most obviously serving real ale.

Pint of Fullers ESB, reasonably priced and perfectly acceptable. At least it wasn't the ubiquitous Doom Bar.

I had another and then a wander back up to the hotel, watched the latest from All The Stations Ireland on Youtube (Premier Inn free Wifi ✅) and slept like a log. It had been a long day.

Shoeburyness

The next morning I took a train to Shoeburyness. There's quite a lot of historic defences on the coast there though as it turned out mostly not accessible to the public as they're on MOD land.

The biggest and most obvious though is the northern end of the Anti-submarine Boom that went from here to Sheerness on the Kent coast.

Originally built to protect the Thames and London from Nazi U-boats the current structure dates from the Cold War.

There's really not a lot else at Shoeburyness. As the catering van on the beach was not yet open (at 1030) I grabbed a sandwich in the local shop and headed back to the station.

More Trains

The train back to Liverpool Street (Fenchurch Street not being served at weekends) had about half a dozen passengers on it leaving Shoeburyness but was standing-room only by the time it arrived in London.

For once the trains all ran OK and Paddington to reading was on a good old HST rather than the new IET, that won't be the case for long.

I even managed to get within 100 yards of home before the rain started!

So that was an enjoyable if brief excursion to Essex and I can now say I've visited Southend properly rather than just the motel at the airport which honestly really resembled that in Crossroads 😀

As ever there are more photos from this trip in this Flickr Album