Route overview
Expect to encounter Gunpowder, Dracula, reed-filled rivers and Fenlands on this walk which follows the Mardyke on London’s easternmost boundary. In spring when the industrial fields are richly green, when the hawthorn and cow parsley lace the paths, it is a lusciously rich walk of unexpected loveliness so close to the Edgelands of London’s border. After the blossoms, the choralling birds, and the large skies of the Fens, the walk enters Purfleet, a town which once served as London’s gunpowder depository. Dracula too used the town as a depository, as he buried his fifty boxes of Transylvanian soil near to Carfax House.

The Walk’ practicalities
START/FINISH: West Horndon/Purfleet DISTANCE: 31KM. TOTAL ASCENT: 160m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: gravel/forest trails and some busy-ish minor roads without cycle protection. In winter, or after heavy rain, this route can be very muddy MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: C2C services from Fenchurch Street, take you to West Horndon and back from Purfleet LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: NCN 13, Bayswater to Purfleet Gravel riding on the London Essex border, The Tower to Southend RECOMMENDED FOOD AND DRINK; There are no refreshment places on this ride until you arrive at Rainham Marshes; RSPB cafe,

This area is a great cycling area as well. How about visiting our sister website, www.wheremywheelsgo.uk for some choice routes in the area, including riding the full length of the Mar Dyke

Walk notes
You may well be the only person alighting from the London train at West Horton station and as it pulls away you are left if a void of sky and the bossy chirping of the sparrows. Turn into Station Road and continue over the bridge until you reach a style set into a hedge. Be very attentive as you walk the couple of hundred metres down this road, for there is no pavement.

Climb over the style which is set into the hedge on the left hand side just after the bridge. The way is straight across the first of several arable fields to Tillingham Hall Farm. Like many farms in this part of Essex, there is a medieval moat marked on the map, although in truth if you were imagining a fortified manor house of romantic delight surrounded by water and climbing roses, you’ll be disappointed.

Once past the modern farm buildings and the square lake which was once the moat, continue straight on the footpath to Fen Lane. The name gives a clue to the past, for until its draining in the 18th century, this was Fen land - full of channels, reeds and small islands of pasture. Today there is still that feeling of spaciousness - with the huge roof of sky and an uniterrupted horizontal landscape. After the closeness of the city, to be engulfed by such space is very pleasurable and freeing.

Turning right, you arrive at the start of the Mar Dyke Way. The river is in need of a great deal of love. It is reed and weed choked and has failed a Department of Environment test due to the wash-off from the industrial fields. There is little oxygen in the water and there are many other chemicals which should not be there. That said, nature is not giving up; there are dragonflies to marvel over, various warblers to tune into, luscious greenery to bask in. Depending on the season, there are numerous flowers which add sparkle to the walk; hawthorn and elder thrive as do loosestrife, ragwort, cammomile, poppies ox-eye daisies thrive on the banks. Water voles, marsh frogs (the largest of the European frogs) and kingfishers are local inhabitants. The reeds rustle in the breeze and the air is rich and country-heavy.

Hard to believe that, “until the late 19th century the Mardyke and its tributaries were wider than today and often navigable by boat. Shallow draught Thames barges would travel up the Mardyke and through the fens collecting corn and hay from farmers. The barges, often heavily laden with stacked bales, would be ‘poled’ through this flat landscape to take straw and hay to the large population of working horses in London. On the return trip, the barges would often bring the resultant manure, to fertilise the land.” (from the information panel on the Mardyke Way).

The walk continues between the verdant river and the fertiliser-soaked fields. Pylons stride across the landscape, and one field has exchanged grains for solar panels. At Stifford, woods which have been dated to pre-Roman times crowd around the river, and cliffs close in formed by the Thames when it washed over these parts after the melting of the ice, 12,000 years ago. In spring the woodland floor is full of bluebells, wood anenomes and primroses. You pass under the cathedral-like road and rail bridges, the art work as ecclectic as any of Chagal’s panels.

For all the grumbling noise of the M25 and the lorries making for Purfleet docks, the visuals are remarkable; water meadow draped in hawthorn blossom, fields strewn with buttercups, horses grazing. Above, buzzards and kestrels are not uncommon.

Nature stops at the door to Purfleet. The town has always had the cast-away feeling, being London’s gunpowder storage area until WWII, and in the nineteenth century, it served as an isolation centre for smallpox victims. In WWII, there was a POW camp near to the confluence of the Mardyke and the Thames.

The mouth of the Mardyke is closed by a sluice gate, which means that the river dribbles rather than flows into the Thames. That said, it is fabulous spot, with the Rainham Marshes stretching out before you, and the broad curve of the silvered Thames leads the eye upstream towards the distant towers of London. There’s river traffic, and the air becomes more ferrous and salty air. Steam stacks into the sky from industrial plants across the river and there are metallic clangs and bangs from other industrial plants from over the water.

To finish, walk along the Thames path passing the last remaining of the five magazines, each of which could hold 10,400 barrels of gunpowder. Walk on past the Royal Hotel which was famed for its whitebait dinners in the nineteenth century, when Londoners came to Purfleet for a day out in clean air. It was whilst staying in the hotel that Bram Stoker decided that Dracula too would come here. The actual place of Carfax House - where Count Dracula buried fifty boxes of Transylvanian soil - is disputed but was probably the grand house built by the Whitbreads, the brewers who owned a large estate here. The house “..is close to an old chapel or church…." You walk past such a chapel on the left, just before arriving at the railway station.

Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as the entire route covered, often more than once. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.

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