Weather: Bright and warm.
Distance: 32 km (19.9 miles) Total
Distance: 2286 miles
Because
Southend is a bad place to get to from Coventry I traveled down the previous evening and
stayed with my aunt and uncle in Rayleigh.
The next morning I drove and parked off the promenade and walked back to the pier, my starting point for
the day. The first three miles was along
the promenade before having to cut inland at Shoebury Ness to avoid the MOD
property. After going through a park and
an industrial estate I ended up in the village of Shoebury Ness and was pleased
to find a bakery where I bought a cake.
I wandered down to the sea again and ate my cake on the promenade. The next part of the walk took me through a
park where I watched two men taking photos of their posh car. Then I once again
had to cut inland up to the main road.
After a mile or so I was able to go over scrubland down to the sea defenses. I had made some inquiries before setting out
on this walk and realised that it would not be possible to get out onto
Foulness Island very easily. The path on
the map was called the Broomway but was not walkable because of the mud and
tides. The rest of Foulness Island was
only accessible with MOD permission. I
therefore gave the island a miss, justifiably I thought for my own safety. This
was reinforced when I got to the point on the sea defenses where the Brooomway
started and was not at all visible!
Much
of the remainder of the day was along sea defenses. There was one huge inlet before getting to
Barling Marsh that seemed to take an age to get around. For the last three miles I came inland onto
farmland along well-marked paths, which was a relief because I was starting to
get tired. I stopped just before
Rochford and wandered up onto the main road and caught a bus back down into
Southend to collect my car.
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