The Seawalls of Canvey Island, Sunday 7th June.

Torrential overnight rain and thunderstorms at dawn led my wife and I to roll over and go back to sleep last Sunday, while Jane Rosoux enjoyed Caryn Mackenzie's walk on the Essex Coast.

Shamefaced, I give you her walk report...

"Only four of us travelled to Benfleet for the Sea Walls of Canvey Island walk, perhaps because there was quite a lot of overnight rain and the weather forecast for the rest of the day was not good. However the proverb "rain before seven, fine before eleven" as usual turned out to be true and we had a fine day with quite a lot of sunshine, although in the morning we found ourselves wading through long, wet grass on the dykes at the western end of the island and I for one regretted not wearing waterproof trousers or gaiters.

However, by the time we reached 'The Lobster Smack' where we stopped for lunch we had dried out in the sun.



Shortly after lunch we reached the beach at Thorney Bay



and soon afterwards we passed the graffiti shown below...



On reaching the sailing centre we decided to divert from the route and walk to Canvey Point and were rewarded by the experience of traversing the salt marsh



and having a good view of Leigh Marsh and Leigh-on-Sea on the far side of Benfleet Creek






It was agreed that the section of the walk from Canvey Point back to Benfleet Station, with a continuous stretch of salt marsh on our right and Hadleigh Marsh and Castle in the distance was the most scenic part of the walk and that the walk would be well worth repeating on another occasion.

For the record the distance was 15.5 miles, including the detour to Canvey Point and we walked for 5.5 hours - an average speed of around 2.8 mph."

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