Purfleet & West Thurrock: Pictures taken on a ride along the Essex bank of the Thames on Tuesday 22 April 2003, the day following the Easter Bank Holiday.
I only put these pictures onto My London Diary around a year after I made them and wrote nothing about them when I did so.
But these are more pictures that I took on a ride mainly along a footpath beside the River Thames where I rode on my Brompton folding bike.
My ride started not at Purfleet which is just on the outside edge of Greater London, but at Rainham, which was the last station coming out from London where a Travelcard was still valid.
Part of my reason for coming to this area was the building that was taking place of the Channel Tunnel rail link, which tunnelled under the river at Swanscombe in Kent to West Thurrock in Essex. I had previously photographed on the Kent side, You can see some of the work on this high speed rail line in these pictures of this, particularly some from my return journey to Rainham where I followed its route as closely as I could.
The pictures were made with my first digital SLR, the Nikon D100 and a 24-85mm Nikon lens.
As well as riverside industry, including a detergent works at West Thurrock which overshadow an ancient church, there are also images of the QEII Dartford Bridge, container parks, oil storage depots and the CTRL viaducts as well as fairly desolate riverside and a giant pylon.
You can see more pictures from the ride on My London Diary at Purfleet & West Thurrock.
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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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