August 9, 2007: Harold Wood to Rainham via Coldharbour Point

Reed beds accompany any stretch of rural water.

The day came, at last, for a final expedition along the London Outer Orbital Path. Day 14, in early March, had been the first walk Tosh and I had undertaken since Harold’s sudden death, following a heart attack, at the end of October. Exactly four weeks ago my Dorothy had died as well – a victim, in her case, of an aggressive lung cancer. I had been unable to contemplate any walking for months because, in her enfeebled state, she often fell down in the house, and I needed to be at home just to restore her to her feet. Today’s walk, therefore, was another very melancholy occasion and my thoughts were never far from my dear dead wife; Dorothy had walked 727 miles in her own time on British footpaths, but she had not been on the trail since May of 2003, when fear of falling, and the consequence of her history of osteoporosis, had put an end to her walking career.

Tosh and I had agreed to enter the transportation system at 9:00 and to make our way to Liverpool Street for a rendezvous beneath the big board. It took me just thirty minutes to make the journey from Maida Vale but Tosh was delayed somewhere within the system and I had to stand around like a dummy for over fifteen minutes. When she did arrive we set off for track 18 and the 9:52. Here Tosh dropped her sunglasses and did them a serious injury – for she soon discovered that one of the lenses was missing. She persisted in wearing them anyway; the remaining lens covered her bad eye and glare was bad for the cataract growing there. Outside it was a bright and sunny day and I was glad I had my dark glasses – fortunately intact.

We left the train at the Harold Wood station at 10:24 and climbed up to street level. This had been the spot where, in March, I had reached my 4000^th mile. “Four thousand and twenty-five feet,” I said, as we headed south (our dominant direction today) over a railway bridge. We turned left into Oak Road and right on Archibald Road, an unmade road with allotments and views of the valley of the shallow River Ingrebourne on our left.  We reached a road and took a jog to the right, continuing forward on Brinsmead Road. We next entered Harold Wood Park, but here the waymark posts did not agree with David Sharp’s instructions – a small correction having taken place since publication. I decided to follow the signs on the ground and in this way, after passing a number of dog people, we reached a footbridge (which was mentioned in the text).

We now had the elusive river on our right as we headed south, making good time on paved paths and other even surfaces. It was warm and sunny, but not oppressively hot – which was just as well since there was often no tree cover. (I was dressed in the livery of the Michigan Film Office, tan cap and blue t-shirt.) We turned away from the river for a bit and confronted the first in a line of electricity pylons – useful landmarks since they are also on the OS map. After a while we sloped off to the left to leave the river behind for a while and to reach Hall Lane – where we headed south. We crossed to the opposite side of this busy road, where there was a bit of pavement that lead down to the even busier A127. We used grass verges and crossed several slip roads to continue our usual line of direction, with The Strawberry Farm now on our left.

After some distance on Hall Lane we reached a little roundabout, crossed back to the west side of the street and turned right on suburban River Drive. This led us downhill and into woods and over another Ingrebourne footbridge – this one somehow stuffed with hay. More harvesting was going on as we walked with the river on our left but signage here let us down. Sharp sends the walker uphill at this point, but there were no signs confirming this or suggesting any alternative. So there was nothing to do but follow the guide book instructions, which brought us by the Emerson Park School and forward on Wych Elm Road and out to a very busy highway. We turned left and after only a few steps left again, on Rayburn Road. At the bottom of this cul-de-sac we reached some woodland and here, at last, I spotted a LOOP sign (useful only for those heading north) that confirmed my suspicions that a more direct alternative had been put in place.

Just guessing, I put us on a path through the trees and we were soon in open territory again, heading along the top of a field toward Upminster. We travelled between garden fences and soon rejoined the motorized madness, continuing over a railway bridge and turning left into Munster Road. This avenue turned right itself and brought us down to the Upminster Road, where I let the flow of momentum take us across this busy highway at a pelican crossing. This was a mistake because after walking beneath the Upminster Park railway bridge I spotted our noontime pub, the Bridge House, back on the side we had just come from. So, after passing a line of fast food emporia, we waited our turn and dashed across to the pub – which had a serving food all day sign in its front yard. It was 12:20 and we had walked four and a half miles.

Not so fast there. Before we could even finish our drink orders the lady publican informed us that cook had broken her finger and there would be no food today. Our landlady could see our disappointment but she had a solution: she had no objection to our bringing food in from off the premises and so we waited out the traffic a second time and dashed across to the Atlantic Fish Bar  (the two local Indians being closed) and ordered cod and chips twice. The Levantines who ran this place kept up a constant line of chatter, not only with us but with the other customers as well. Our food was cooked from scratch, the good news; it took forever for it to arrive, the bad. We escaped with our prize and waited for the traffic to thin a bit, arriving for a second time at the pub – and this time actually getting some liquid ordered.

I had a pint of Carlings and Tosh a pint of bitter shandy. No sooner had we sat down then I noticed that my sunglasses were now missing. This meant that I had to cross Upminster Road twice, suspecting that they might have been dropped back at the chippie. No luck, but when I returned to the pub (for the third time) Tosh had retrieved the missing object from the floor; indeed she told me that she had probably knocked the pair off when she sat down at our table. The lady publican now brought us salt, ketchup and a real knife and fork and we were able to tuck in at last. After a filling repast we used the loos and made our farewells at about 1:15. We had five miles to go before reaching our next pub.

Of course we had to cross Upminster Road one last time but this time a lady driver took pity on us and waved us across. We turned left for a block or two, turning right on Bridge Avenue and soon entering the precincts of Hornchurch Sports Stadium. Once through its parking lot we were launched on another long stretch of walking on metaled paths, with the invisible trickle of a river nearby. Tosh had suggested that it would take her some time to recover her former pace after heavy food and alcohol had added their contributions to her system and I must say that I had slowed considerably too. The warmth of the afternoon didn’t help either but I just plugged along doggedly. There was a lot less litter about than on the previous day on this path and surroundings were pleasant enough, though unspectacular. There were lots of people walking their dogs or taking kids on family outings and they all paused to give us a greeting.

A footbridge brought us over the river, which now took its place on our left, and we climbed up to a set of traffic lights, where we could cross a road and continue forward, in a southwesterly direction. In Hornchurch Country Park we climbed up to a plateau, with views of the water on our left; ponds and reed beds dominated the scene for the next mile or so. We passed a number of World War II pillboxes, thoroughly graffitied, and climbed up some more to reach a little lake, where a mom was just checking on the whereabouts of her sub-teen, who was clutching a mobile phone in one hand and a bicycle in the other. Around the corner we had a bit of a rest on a shady spot by the side of the road and then, fearing that any longer on the ground would cause us to rust, we continued forward past tidy Albyns Farm.

There is some talk about a rerouting of the LOOP hereabouts but the development of a huge landfill site on our left is needed first. So we had to return to suburbia, following a bunch of moms and their kids out to Avelon Road, where we turned left. At Grove Park Road we turned right and this lead us up to the busy South End Road, a busy artery heading toward Rainham. Sharp actually suggests taking a bus here but of course we pressed forward to Rainham Road on foot, passing a pet shop that offered a free baby hamster with the purchase of any cage.

Again there was a long wait for the lights to usher us across the busy junction, where we turned left. A local lady, perhaps spotting my new map case, wanted to know all about our walk. Rainham Road turned south and ushered us down to a roundabout at the A13. Again signs on the grounds were not quite in accord with guidebook instructions but the former were useful in getting us over a series of slip roads and into Rainham village itself. We crossed the Ingrebourne for the last time and reached a series of pubs. I chose The Phoenix, across the street from the late Norman church of St. Helen and St. Giles. It was about 3:45 and we still had four and half miles to go.

Tosh had another pint of bitter shandy while I switched to lemonade on ice. Tosh was fascinated by the local accents (technically we were still in the London borough of Havering) but the rail system says that Rainham is in Essex. At the end of the bar to our left a young man was using his mobile phone to tell her indoors that he wouldn’t be home tonight as we was planning on getting drunk and having a few fights as well. After half an hour, our loins suitably girded, we headed out and turned right to reach the train station.

The gates were down and while we were waiting Tosh had time to find out that when we returned to this spot our platform would be on the other side. “When we returned” has an odd ring to it, but the LOOP, which should one day continue on to Purfleet, would end for us today two and a quarter miles from Rainham at Coldharbour Point. This means that walkers in search of the nearest public transportation point had would have to retrace their steps to this station – duplicating a stretch of substandard territory that began after we had negotiated a complex system of ramps designed to get the pedestrian away from a second set of tracks. This concrete jungle went on forever and we had two encounters while negotiating it. First we had to pass a hangout for local teens, who were sitting on the steps in a vain attempt to find something of interest to do with the next fifteen minutes of their lives. Then we met a fellow LOOP walker, back from Coldharbour Point, and full of complaints that the signs on the ground encouraged the walker to think that he could make it all the way to Purfleet ­– though this was not possible on the ground itself.

We headed south on Ferry Lane, making our first acquaintance with the factories, junkyards, container skyscrapers and bus graveyards that provided the only scenic variety. We crossed under the A13, gingerly negotiating the slip roads, and continuing on Ferry Lane South past more factories and so, at last, up to an embankment which provided views of the Thames below. It was low tide and so we now had mudflats on our right as we passed the Tilda Rice factory (where I chose to ignore a ribbon stretched across our path). A junk sculpture stood on the strand as we crossed a sludge pipe near a wall – one that local art students had also turned into a mural. Across the river we could now see Erith, our starting point in 2001. And I could now easily see some of the riverside scenery (more factories) that Dick and I had walked in March of last year, when we were completing a new stretch of the Thames Path, from Charlton to Erith.

At 5:00 we reached Coldharbour Point (much of this hillside is landfill too) and in this fashion we also came to the end of the London Outer Orbital Path in its 2007 incarnation. We sat on a bench for a few minutes and then had to begin a real journey of despair, back to the Rainham train station. Both of us used a little strip of foliage beneath the raised embankment for a last, quiet pee. There was more traffic whizzing off the slip roads and around the roundabouts now but we persevered. My feet, still in my old cracked boots, were like pieces of raw meat and I had rubbed a hole in the top of my right little toe. I told Tosh that there was no one else in the world who would have agreed to undertake such a strenuous journey in such depressing surroundings just so her walking partner could say he had completed the London Outer Orbital Path. On Ferry Road we were approached by an African chap in a lime green vest; he was looking for directions to an industrial estate but he wouldn’t believe me when I told him to take the road opposite. Tosh kept up a constant line of chatter, though by this time I had sunk into a weary silence.

There were even more teenagers on the ramp as we repeated our alpine adventures but these now lead up to a westbound platform at last and just at 6:00 we had completed the last of the day’s fourteen miles. We had a fourteen-minute wait, hunkering down on a bench ­– which a man on the opposite platform warned us was too far down the platform to be of any use in using the C2C train, which had only four carriages. At least the latter was on time and soon heading for Fenchurch Street. I phoned Linda, who was minding Fritz today, and gave her an e.t.a.

But who wants to go to Fenchurch Street, which doesn’t even have a tube stop? So we decided to switch at Barking and head west on a Hammersmith and City train (much confusion over where to find its platform). Barking is the starting point for this train and after fifteen minutes a train pulled in and we were again allowed to sit down. There were many stops and the train soon became crowded with commuters. I said goodbye to Tosh at Baker Street and switched to the Bakerloo Line. It was 7:45 by the time I had trudged back to my empty flat (though Fritz arrived a few minutes later). I was so glad I would not have to return to Rainham ever again.

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way | The Cleveland Way | The Coast-to-Coast Path | The Coleridge Way | The Cotswold Way | The Cumberland Way | The Cumbria Way | The Dales Way | The Furness Way | The Green London Way | The Greensand Way | The Isle of Wight Coast Path | The London Countryway | The London Outer Orbital Path | The Norfolk Coast Path | The North Downs Way | The Northumberland Coast Path | The Peddars Way | The Pennine Way | The Ridgeway Path | The Roman Way | The Saxon Shore Way | The South Downs Way | The South West Coast Path | The Thames Path | The Two Moors Way | The Vanguard Way | The Wealdway | The Westmorland Way | The White Peak Way | The Yorkshire Wolds Way