Greetings from London! It has been a while since I last wrote a Travel Blog entry, as like many of us, I havent been doing much travelling for the past year. Its been wonderful seeing and reading peoples travel blog entries on here on their local travels, or previous travels that they had not hitherto been able to write up. It has been a breath of fresh air during these times to read such stories and adventures, and see such lovely pictures from exotic, distant places around the world. Thank you to those who have written such stories, and inspired me to keep trucking on and looking forward to travelling again at some time in the future.
So here is my entry on a local travel destination. Unfortunately I havent done much local travels this year, as since October of last year, the UK has been under some form of lockdown or other, which only this past week is just beginning to lift.
And thus, on Wednesday of this week, I ventured out once more into the unknown. This involved no plane ride or international visa application, but a trip just outside the boundaries of
The inspiration for such a visit began with a clip Id seen on TV of some local birdwatchers in the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) reserve in a place called Rainham Marshes, on the north bank of the Thames Estuary just on the outskirts of East London. The place looked interesting, and coupled with my recent watching of two film versions of Charles Dickens Great Expectations, which begin with the main character Pip and his rather poor and humble beginnings in life somewhere in the marshes of the Thames Estuary east of London, my interests were stirred. Although I believe Pip came from the southern, Kent side of the Thames Estuary, I was still inspired to visit this place of England which I had never been to before, and thus on Wednesday morning, I packed my day bag and headed out to explore. I was bound for a small town on the northern, Essex side of the Estuary, called Purfleet.
Having stopped off to say hello to my local barber, who has only just opened this week as hairdressers have been closed since December, (and incidentally I
have just now returned from having my first for four months, it feels wonderful!), I began my journey at my local London train station Selhurst. It was quite a journey, around in total. I took a Southern train first to Balham tube station, where I took the Northern Line tube to Bank and then changed to the Circle Line at adjacent Monument station, one stop east to Tower Hill. Here, it is a short 200m walk to a really quite famous, but very station called Fenchurch Street Station. This is where the train to Purfleet leaves from. I was so excited to be in Fenchurch Street Station, as in all my years of living in London (around 20), I had never been there before. It really is a small station, with only four platforms, and only one trainline running east out of the city towards on the southern Essex coast, but it has been made immortally famous for having its own property to purchase on the original Monopoly board game. I was glad to have visited it!
From Fenchurch Street Station, I caught a C2C train eastwards towards a place called Grays, getting off
the stop earlier at Purfleet, or rather as it has been known officially since 2020 to attract fortune and investment to the town, ready to begin my explorations for the day.
Although my main destination for the day was nearby Rainham Marshes, I hadnt realised until arrival that there was really quite a bit to see in the town, with quite a bit of history. Purfleet is a town of around 12,000 people, and sits just outside the Greater London Authority area, and just within the English county of Essex, although it is still located within the M25 London ring road. The station had a feel, with a level crossing, and about two other people getting off the train.
