{"id":17372,"date":"2025-05-11T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T08:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=17372"},"modified":"2025-05-07T11:15:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:15:35","slug":"rainham-and-hornchurch-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=17372","title":{"rendered":"Rainham and Hornchurch – 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rainham and Hornchurch<\/strong>: On Thursday 11th May 2006 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train for the journey across London to Rainham Station. The journey, around 31 miles in a straight line, though rather longer on the ground, took me almost two hours on three trains, one Underground. As usual I took a book to read and relaxed on the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rainham
Containers on Rainham Marshes<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rainham is in Havering, part of Greater London and is the last station out to the east on the C2C rail service where the Travelcard I used covered. I did several rides and walks from here into Essex over the years, but I on this one stayed inside Greater London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rainham
Mural of previous industry in the area and Tilda Rice works<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first part of this bike ride followed the route of the London Loop path around the outskirts of London, which at that date came to a dead and desolate end at Coldharbour Point. The path now continues to end in Purfleet, and if you have the stamina you can continue walking on a riverside path which ends at Tilbury Docks before having to retrace your steps to Grays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rainham
Derelict concrete barges in the Thames built for the Mulberry Harbour used for the D-Day landings<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2006, and I didn’t ride very far. After returning from the end of the path I had a short ride west along the A13, which I don’t recommended as it is certainly not cycle friendly with much fast-moving traffic. The Mardyke Estate, where I went after that is now called ‘Orchard Village’ which at least avoids confusion with the Mardyke, a small river a few miles to the east. I continued roughly north through South Hornchurch, finally ending my ride at the District Line station of Elm Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rainham<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The sculpture in the river<\/a> facing the barges and the Tilda Rice plant is Diver: Regeneration<\/em> by local sculptor John Kaufman, who died in 2002, not long after it was placed here in the mud in 2000. Some of the funding for it came from the landfill company which carried waste here to raise parts of the marshes above sea level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Waste Transfer Jetty – Landfill is raising much of the below sea-level marshes<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My pictures don’t reflect the nature of the area which has large areas of open with marshes and country parks and two rivers flowing through it, the Beam River and the Ingrebourne which flows into the Thames at Rainham Creek. I think it is also an area which has seen considerable regeneration since 2006 in the London Riverside area of Thames Gateway redevelopment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Coldharbour Point and the barbed wire where the London Loop then ended<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here’s my account with the usual minor corrections from 2006:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Rainham is at the eastern edge of London, an area of marsh, industry, warehouses, container stacks, dereliction and landfill on the Essex (north) bank of the Thames, cut across by the elevated A13 trunk road which sweeps across the creek and on over the marshes to Purfleet, alongside the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Rainham Creek from the A13<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

One day the Thames Path will continue past Coldharbour Point, but for the moment it’s a dead end. I eat my sandwiches and then turn back, making my way up onto the elevated roadway, but the views are disappointing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Mardyke Estate, South Hornchurch<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

At the next roundabout west I take a look around, leave the main road and then head north, past disused areas of the Ford Dagenham site and up through the Mardyke Estate and South Hornchurch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

At Elm Park the heat of our first hot day if the year – 25 Celsius in the shade, but I’ve been constantly in sun – gets to me and I give up and take the Underground towards home.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
One of many houses decorated for the Cup Final. Unfortunately West Ham lost to Liverpool<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

The heat has buckled some of the rails and the District Line train has to crawl along, more or less at my cycling speed, but at least I can just sit and rest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There are more pictures from the ride here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Flickr<\/a> – Facebook<\/a> – My London Diary<\/a> – Hull Photos<\/a> – Lea Valley<\/a> – Paris<\/a>
London’s Industrial Heritage<\/a> – London Photos<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All photographs on this page are copyright \u00a9 Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rainham and Hornchurch: On Thursday 11th May 2006 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train for the journey across London to Rainham Station. The journey, around 31 miles in a straight line, though rather longer on the ground, took me almost two hours on three trains, one Underground. As usual I took a … Continue reading Rainham and Hornchurch – 2006<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[3387,12148,20427,20430,20429,3386,20434,20425,20424,20436,9899,17,12559,1343,20432,10443,20428,20435,83,13634,20426,200,20433,12397,20431],"class_list":["post-17372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-londonphotos","category-my-own-work","tag-3387","tag-a13","tag-coldharbour-point","tag-concrete-barges","tag-d-day-landings","tag-dagenham","tag-elm-park","tag-havering","tag-hornchurch","tag-john-kaufman","tag-landfill","tag-london","tag-london-loop","tag-london-photos","tag-mardyke-estate","tag-marshes","tag-mulberry-harbour","tag-orchard-village","tag-peter-marshall","tag-rainham","tag-rainham-marshes","tag-river-thames","tag-south-hornchurch","tag-thames-gateway","tag-the-diver"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17372"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17375,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17372\/revisions\/17375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}