So, we are doing our first ‘year of monthly short breaks’ in 2024, but just occasionally the opportunity arises for an interim one as well. This last weekend was a case in point: we wanted to attend the Essex Field Club’s Annual Exhibition & Social in the Wat Tyler Country Park, Pitsea, and east London is a good stepping-off point to get there by train. So we decided to revisit one of our favourite spots in ‘old Essex’, Barking Creek, for the night, preceded by a whistlestop tour of London in the run-up to Christmas.

When we arrived in the City, it was a beautifully sunny day, all the better to show off the edifices of glass and steel piercing the blue:

And nestled between them, historic fragments deep in the 21st century gorges, mostly churches and graveyards (including the tomb of one Sir William Rawlins, successful upholsterer, benefactor, Sheriff of London … and fraudster, convicted and jailed for electoral misdemeanours – some things never change!) followed by a lunchtime organ recital in St Margaret Lothbury, tucked behind the Bank of England.

Heading across to Kensington and Knightsbridge we then went to a (somewhat underwhelming) exhibition of Tube Maps at the Map House, though the V&A looked lovely as did many a roofscape in the sinking sun…

… before a potter across Hyde Park as the sun finally set, the trees and grazing geese oblivious to the racket from the Winter Wonderland just behind us!

Resisting the ‘temptations’ therein, and in the designer frivolity of Harrods and Selfridges, it was time for a very good meal in the Lamb & Flag, then out to a place we feel much more comfortable, Barking, full of life, diversity and real people…

The Ibis Budget hotel is not only well-priced, but right by the former mill at the point the River Roding turns into Barking Creek, ideal for a morning stroll along the Roding towpath.

Urban rivers like this are fraught with challenges, and the water quality seems pretty poor, no doubt from discharges both legal and ‘accidental’. But there is at least a veneer of nature, with Grey Wagtails and Moorhens, and it has recently been reported that Otters have finally returned to this area, one of the last watercourses of Essex to be recolonized following extirpation in the 1970s and 80s.

The riverbanks and towpath have fared little better, strewn with litter, the jetsam from the unthinking and uncaring. It could have been so different: in a moment of civic optimism some years ago, it seems attempts were made to create a pleasant riverside walk, but as is so often the case, ongoing maintenance and care has been lacking.

But the power of nature taking over, coating bricks with a patchwork of mosses and lichens, and paths and walls being subsumed into the urban jungle, just like the Amazon rainforest eating up some of its concrete incursions, does give hope that while the river may be ailing, its spirit will never quite be killed.

The EFC event at Wat Tyler Country Park was, as always, a great opportunity to meet up with friends old and new and also, as we headed back to the station, to witness a fly-past of at least 60 Pied Wagtails, on their way to roost.

And so back into London, the walk from Fenchurch Street to Liverpool Street gave us not only a fine pint and friendly company in the Windsor pub, but also the remarkable sight of the glass canyons transformed into works of art, transient masterpieces of colour, light and shadow.

A fitting end to an action-packed day and a half!

POSTSCRIPT

At the Essex Field Club meeting, we picked up this year’s edition of the journal Essex Naturalist, another bumper edition of 248 pages (as good a reason as any for joining the Club), covering a wide range of topics, including a paper from us:

GIBSON, C. & GIBSON, J. (2024) Observations on Saltmarsh Horsefly Atylotus latristriatus in Wivenhoe, North Essex. Essex Naturalist (New Series) 41: 149-151.