WTEC - South bank of the River Crouch

The Crouch estuary is so long and thin I’ve renamed it the Peter Crouch. The river rises on Little Burstead golf course near Billericay, flows in a culvert through Wickford, and is navigable for seventeen and a half miles east from Battlesbridge, the lowest bridging point. It flows into the North Sea between Foulness Point to the south and Holliwell Point to the north. For a river that is just a piddling little stream near Billericay, the Crouch is quite majestic and is nearly half a mile wide at its mouth. The river is very popular with all kinds of pleasure craft as well as cargo boats and ferries to and from the Baltic. The Crouch estuary is an important wintering area for seabirds like Brent Geese, who seem to be very fond of Essex. A colony of grey seal lives in the mouth of the estuary.

Most of the river bank is accessible along the sea wall, built by Dutch engineers in the seventeenth century, who drained the marshes and changed the nature of the landscape. The first three miles of the southern bank is on Foulness and ipso facto, inaccessible. I got to within a mile of the coast when I visited Foulness Heritage Centre, near enough to see tantalising glimpses of large sails floating by. The Crouch is joined by its main tributary, the Roach, between Foulness and Wallasea Islands. The next three miles west on Wallasea Island is covered in a previous blog.

I walked the ten or so miles between Wallasea and Battlesbridge in three separate trips over couple of weeks. In the main the weather was pretty good, with lots of sunshine, the occasional shower and a chilly easterly breeze. Sometime between the middle of April and the beginning of May, the rape seed had blossomed bringing a splash of colour to the last part of the walk. The footpath along the sea wall varies quite a lot; at first it was grassy, then it became a concrete path with an odd angle, which made it quite difficult to walk along; then a broad concrete strip and then it disappeared altogether into the river. The path through Brandy Hole and Hullbridge was gravelly and quite popular with the locals; west of Hullbridge it was back to grass and quite deserted.

Lion Creek lies between Wallasea and the mainland and is so twisty it took nearly forty five minutes to get to the start of the sea wall proper just across the creek from the campsite. Lion Creek has silted up and is now a nature reserve. Between Lion Creek and South Fambridge, about five miles, there was just birdsong for company and the occasional passing yacht. At low tide there were wading birds like oyster catchers feeding and I spotted a kestrel hovering. The beautiful little church of St Nicholas, Canewdon, dominates the skyline on top of a little hill. It was clearly visible on my walks further south and must have been a landmark for smugglers in the past. I had a very nice lunch at the Chequers pub in the village.

About a mile west of South Fambridge, the footpath came to a rather abrupt halt. The map indicated that it crossed a small stream, continued along the sea wall on a small island and crossed another stream and headed into Hullbridge. It may be possible to achieve this at low tide but I seriously doubt it.
I tried picking the path up from the Hullbridge side, following the footpath along the sea wall until it too disappeared. At one point I even had to walk the plank. Following the footpath east from Hullbridge, it petered out on a little strip of land surrounded by water.

The river near Hullbridge was full of yachts at their moorings and a huge group of swans who seemed to live on the northern bank. At one time there must have been a ferry between Hullbridge and South Woodham. There were some very fine houses with moorings and a several permanent holiday camps, popular with retired folk. There was even a street called the Esplanade, which clearly had delusions of grandeur. I could have used a tea room at this point having walked about ten miles on the day

West of Hullbridge, the estuary becomes very bendy. I got a view of the inaccessible northern bank with yet another large static caravan park. Nobody was very keen on walking this part especially as it was raining at the time. The footpath ends about a mile from Battlesbridge, easily identified by a very large mill that is now an antiques centre. I had to trudge back to my campsite in the gathering gloom along a very busy road as the return footpath seemed to have vanished into some farmers show jumping ring.

To see more pictures of the Crouch Estuary click here.
To see pictures of the Thames Estuary click here.