It's been a while, but our recce was inspirational. The Rotherhithe Tunnel is a delight. Newham Town Hall is majestic. The centre of Barking bursts with civic pride. Maplestead Road is an urban utopia. The A1306 could be on any frontier in Central Europe. (Skips lightly over MOTO services). The view of Tilbury from the Chadwell Bypass is the equal of any painting by Claude Lorrain, while East Tilbury is geometry made human. There's a relief on a bungalow in Stanford-le-Hope that puts one in mind of
He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close. Jewels more rich than Ormus shows;He makes the figs our mouths to meet, And throws the melons at our feet......
It was in Stanford-le-Hope that Conrad wrote his hymn to the estuary.....
And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires......
...but it is in Fobbing that we first see the estuary in all it's glory, the view over the refinery, Canvey Island and the Pitsea Flyover laid out as in a prospect by Kip and Knyff in 'Britannia Illustrata', and it is in Chadwell that we pass the grave of Kadzuo Yamazaki, a man who 'followed the sea' from another, faraway empire, only to die horribly in the Thames Estuary in 1899.
One should not say too much about Thundersley and the hanging nets at Old Leigh, nor dwell on the fearful dangers of the 'Cinder Path', but it would be negligent not to point out the exotic delights of Southend's Casino (the equal, surely, of any casino in Monte Carlo or Jounieh), the extraordinary furnicular railway, the Georgian trelliswork inspired by bamboo scaffolding in faraway India, the inch thick glass on an aerial walkway much beloved of small boys with catapults and, (dare I say it), a radio station that traces the path of Helios, the art of gunnery and the death of ships.
Before I forget. The weather will be great. Sort your spokes, brakes, tyres and lights out. See you no later than 23.30 on the glorious fourth of July underneath the arch at Hyde Park Corner.