Down where the Thames widens into its estuary, the Essex shore becomes a strange, flat, huge-skied place of marshes, sea walls, container cranes and old forts, and Stanford-le-Hope sits just back from it. The town is a commuter place of nearly thirty thousand people, but a few minutes' ride south the land opens up into creeks and mudflats where the river meets the sea, with ships gliding past towards London.
There is no polite way to say it: this is not swimming water. The estuary has strong tides, deep mud that can trap a person and heavy shipping traffic, and swimming here is dangerous. Come for the space and the light rather than a dip. Thurrock Thameside Nature Park, built on top of an old landfill site, has views across the estuary and lots of birds, and at East Tilbury, Coalhouse Fort is a Victorian gun battery built to defend the river, with marshes and beaches of shingle around it.
The history here is about the river as a gateway. Tilbury Fort, further west, is where Elizabeth I gave her famous speech to her troops in 1588, as the Spanish Armada approached. The writer Joseph Conrad lived in Stanford-le-Hope for a time in the 1890s, and anyone who has read Heart of Darkness will remember how it begins, with men on a boat in the Thames estuary at dusk, looking at the lights of London. Today the vast DP World London Gateway port dominates the shore, its cranes visible for miles.
The roads are a mix. The A13 is a busy dual carriageway linking London to Southend, quick but dull. The smaller roads around Horndon on the Hill, a pretty village with an old woolmarket and a good pub, and Langdon Hills, where a country park rises to one of the highest points in south Essex with views over the estuary, are much more enjoyable, with short climbs, gentle bends and green views.
Stanford-le-Hope has fuel, shops and cafés, and Basildon, a few kilometres north, has everything else. On a summer evening, when the tide is out and the mud gleams, ride down to the river's edge and watch a container ship slide past. It is an odd and beautiful sight, and it shows you how close London still is to the sea.