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ThurrockWalk Details: Top details: The Walk: |
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We’d all been fancying a trip to the seaside for some time and this weekend was the first chance that we had. Jim and I had suggested Southend – not because there were county tops we needed to bag nearby, oh no, nothing to do with that, no, honest guv. Well, maybe it influenced us a little… In the event my wife felt a little under the weather on the day and decided not to come, so the bagging party – I mean, beach party, of course – consisted of me, Jim, and my sister-in-law Fiona. Fiona had never been to a county top before, so it was a bit of a shame that the three we’d be doing looked so poor from the maps. Of the three, our first target, in Thurrock, looked to have the most potential – at least it was situated in a country park. The car park had a very tight entrance, but after I’d squeezed the car through we set off for the top in bright sunshine. It was no more than a few hundred metres from the car park, but I needed to stretch my legs a bit after the drive, so I planned out a modest circular walk around the country park taking in the top on the way (and, more to the point, taking in some public toilets – I’d been crossing my legs on the way, which had made driving a bit awkward!). I led the other two a little further up the B1007, crossing Dry Lane on the way. A little further on what was marked as a footpath on the OS map turned out to have been developed into the access road for the main car park for Langdon Hills Country Park. On the left were my longed-for public toilets; on the right a radio mast which (in our experience) suggested that a county top couldn’t be too far away. Beyond the car park were several paths advertised on nearby signs as being “easy access” – this just seemed to mean that they were made of yellow gravel that unaccountably freaked out Fiona. They led onto the open(ish) top of Langdon Hill, which, considering its low altitude, had pretty good views in several directions – especially across the Thames Estuary. Being so close to a car park, it was heaving with the local trainer brigade. Unfortunately the hilltop was not the county top – it lay in Essex, and the highest point in Thurrock lay where the unitary boundary crossed the slopes of the hill a little lower down. These new easy access paths didn’t match up with the paths on the OS map, but nevertheless we quickly found our way down to Dry Lane and crossed it into Coombe Wood. Here the path network was – as is so often the case in woodland – vastly more complex than shown on the OS map. Many of the paths were of the kind that can come and go in a season, and we swiftly wandered off the “official” public footpath through the woods. Fortunately, with the help of my GPS we were able to find our way to the Thurrock unitary top – a completely undistinguished point at a slight summit on a woodland path – the unitary boundary runs just to the side of the path at this point. From here (according to the map) we should have been able to follow this very path all the way back to the B1007, emerging very close to the car. However, the path bought us out a lot further south on the B1007, meaning that we walked a much greater distance with greater ascent than we’d planned. On what was rapidly becoming a hot day, this didn’t please us greatly. All in all though, it had been a pleasant walk – if only they could shift the border to the top of Langdon Hill, this’d be a surprisingly nice top. I think Fiona had quite enjoyed her first top!
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