All the Grid Squares: Mardyke & Aveley

The first thing on my blogging agenda is to catch up with my project to walk in/through all the OS grid squares in Thurrock. This has lain fallow since September and my last outing is unblogged. The map on the right is an outline of Thurrock: my home is in the purple square; I've walked in the dark green squares since last August, and the light green squares in the past; the grey and blue squares are land and river borders.

I've walked east, south and west so far, but little north of my home square so I decided to rectify that with a jaunt along part of the Mardyke Way, which threads its way between the A13 and the southern edge of South Ockendon. It could have been an out-and-back but I sought to maximise the square-bagging by walking around part of Aveley and then back along the B1335 (see map below and yellow squares above).

I parked in Davy Down Riverside Park and revisited a heron sculpture which I remembered from my last visit in 2014; the vegetation has grown considerably since then.

This is Stifford Pumping Station, built in the 1920s to house the diesel engines which were used to extract water from a borehole.

I crossed over the Mar Dyke, very slow-moving at this point,

and passed under one of the 'fourteen arches' of the Victorian railway viaduct,

leaving Davy Down behind me and following the Mardyke Way west. The path runs between some rough land used for grazing horses and the ancient woodlands of Brannet's Wood, Millard's Wood and Low Well Wood, following the fence-line in the photos below. 

The Mar Dyke itself is all but invisible, but the whole area floods in heavy rain.

Under the A13,

past the back of Thurrock services

 and then under A282 sliproads of Mardyke Junction,

before I ended this section at Ship Lane.

The Mardyke Way does continue to Purfleet-on-Thames but it follows roads rather than the river from this point and I have no need to walk the rest in terms of grid squares.

Instead, I turned north, crossed over the A13

and entered the town of Aveley. 

We're definitely still in Thurrock, but pretty close to the border with the London Borough of Havering, and Aveley is served by TfL's 372 bus as it wends its way from Hornchurch to Lakeside Shopping Centre.

I walked an L-shape of residential streets before joining the main road, with its pubs and shops. 

To be honest, Aveley doesn't have a very good reputation but I found it to be clean and tidy with all the shops you need plus what seemed to be an active community forum.

St Michael's Church is set well back from the main road, 

with the war memorial in front.

From here, the road leads out of town, joins up with the B1335 and crosses over the M25 en route to South Ockendon. 

The B-road skirts the southern edge of that town, running along the northern edge of the woods bordering the Mardyke Way. I could see into Hangman's Wood from the road,

and there is a footpath through there, but the oft-repeated signs to keep out rather put me off. Instead, I kept going until Brannett's Wood (which was much more welcoming) 

where I headed south to rejoin the Mardyke Way near the railway viaduct and return to the car.

This walk knocked off seven new squares bringing my total to 33 out of the 204 in Thurrock (including boundary squares and potentially inaccessible squares). The project then stalled but I shall be going back to it. The river squares are calling me, but it'll be squelchy there in winter so it's probably more sensible to tramp the streets of Grays next.