All the Grid Squares: Watts Wood and Sandy Lane

I'm continuing with my project to walk in/through all the OS grid squares in Thurrock. At the end of my last post, I was going to focus on six unvisited squares in the south-west of the borough.

I started with square TQ5678, the single square at the bottom-right of the map, and plotted a rectangular walk round the upper part of the square. 

I started with the footpath on the right of the square, which took me through Watts Wood and into a grassy field behind the wood. I followed a well-trodden path through the grass until it turned back into the wood and fizzled out, then made my way back to the main road. The second part was more urban, following a couple of alleyways and another road to complete the route.

I then relocated for a second walk, in the top two boxes of the map. 

You can see there's one orange B road running across the squares as far as the black line which is the Thurrock boundary. All the white space is landfill, which is securely fenced off, and the little green wooded part was inaccessible behind the same fencing. Thus my route for ticking off these squares was just an out and back along Sandy Lane/B1335 from nearby Aveley. This was the first time that I'd walked over the boundary on a road, so I took a photo of the 'Welcome to Thurrock' sign.

Now my map of Thurrock overall looks like this:

My three new squares are yellow, and I've previously visited all the green squares (since August 2022). The grey and blue are the land and water borders with Essex and the Thames. The I square at the bottom is within Tilbury Docks and inaccessible to the public.

My next outing will be to Rainham Marshes to tick off the two grey squares on the left (which are grey because the border runs through them), which are the left two of the middle row of the OS map segment at the top of this post.

All the Grid Squares: Cely Woods & Kenningtons Park

I'm documenting a couple of recent walks in which I resurrected my old project to walk in all the OS grid squares in Thurrock Borough. I'd started this in 2022 but it fell by the wayside in 2023, and now I'm going back to it.

I've blogged previous walks in detail, but my blog is primarily for me and I don't need that detail. I'm more interested in recording which squares I have ticked off, so this post will be a quick summary and a few photos.

My first walk started in Cely Woods and continued through the neighbouring Warwick Wood and White Post Wood. This is all ancient woodland, now managed by Forestry England.

The main track is about 2.5km long but I wandered off deeper into the woods on more minor paths at some points. I was primarily looking for bluebells but made sure that I passed through all four possible grid squares.

My second walk was in Kenningtons Park which is a little way south of Cely Woods. It wasn't clear from the maps online just how much land was accessible and it turned out not to be a huge area, though a notice board in the car park shows their plan to construct new paths in the future.

I explored all the paths, including several dead ends and found myself back at the car park in no time, so went round again to make the walk worth the drive there. 

Small though the area is, I completed two more squares here and also walked a short way into a previously visited square.

I've marked the Cely Woods walk in orange and Kenningtons Park in yellow on the map below; the green squares are ones that I had previously visited; the purple one is my home square; the grey and blue squares are the land and river borders of the borough. The square with a red outline is inside Tilbury Docks and inaccessible.

This leaves me with a small, isolated block of squares in the west of the borough which I will be attempting to visit next. I've outlined them in red here, and marked the borough boundary in black.

A visit to RSPB Rainham Marshes will get me two of them, the left two in the row of three, but I'll need to do some more research to see whether I can use parks or footpaths through the other squares or if I'll have to resort to walking along roads.

All the Grid Squares: Project Resurrected

Back in August 2022, I embarked on a project to walk in or through all the (accessible) OS grid squares in Thurrock (and blogged about it here). However, by January 2023 a combination of rising workload and poor weather saw it quietly stop. It wasn't a conscious decision to abandon it, and I've thought about the project many times since then, and now I'm going back to it. I've recently retired, I want to stay active and I'm bored of walking routes from home.

Last time I blogged, my map of Thurrock looked like this, with each box being a 1km OS grid square:

The dark green squares were ones that I had walked in since August 2022, while the light green squares were ones that I had walked in prior to that date. When I started, I wasn't sure whether the light green ones would count, but now I have decided that they don't and that I will revisit them. The land border with London/Essex runs through the grey squares and the river border with the Thames runs through the blue squares (and some of the green/visited squares). I am aiming to visit all these border squares, though there are a few where the Thurrock part is tiny and might be inaccessible.

Moving forward to 2026, I've visited a good many more squares even while I wasn't actively exploring. I joined a running club in October 2024 and they are based in the black-outlined square below so I've now run all around there. Furthermore, last summer some members organised 'away nights' in different areas which filled in a few more squares. I've coloured all the running squares bright blue below (as that's our running club colour). I've also visited the orange squares - the one on its own contains our nearest library, and the three at the bottom were covered by us walking from Tilbury Cruise Terminal to Tilbury Town railway station after a cruise in December 2023. Finally, I've blanked out the light green squares following my decision to re-visit them. 

I've been out twice in the last couple of weeks to collect a few new squares so I'll blog them soon.

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.

All the Grid Squares: Grays Riverside

I'm going to change my approach to the posts I write for my project of walking every grid square of Thurrock. I've found describing the walk in detail with appropriate photographs to be too time-consuming so I'm going to write shorter accounts with 'highlight' photos in future. My blog has always been primarily for myself and I don't need the level of detail that I've been recording here. If you have any questions about anything I share then please ask them in the comments and I will answer.

I returned to the River Thames for this walk, following the waterfront in Grays which runs through four grid squares.

There's a footpath all along here but it's ultimately a dead end. I was aiming to walk off the end of that footpath if possible and get as close to Tilbury Docks as I could. I'm certain that there is an inaccessible grid square (TQ6275) in the docks, but I'll do my best to approach it from all sides before I finally declare it to be so.

I walked from home to a point a little downstream from my previous walk. This area used to be all industrial (much as we have seen further upstream) but the old wharves and jetties have mostly been swept away to be replaced by housing.

Overview of the Route

There's a reminder of that history with a small park and sculpture of Britannia at Heritage Wharf.

The only building of any age is the 18th century, grade II listed pub, previously known as The Sailors Return.

The path still weaves round the remnants of old docks,

including Grays Town Wharf, which dates back to medieval times.

I passed Thurrock Yacht Club, which holds the mast and lantern from The Gull, a lightship which saw service from 1860 to 1941 before being laid up. She was bought by the club in 1947 and used as the clubhouse until 1971, before falling into disrepair and ultimately being destroyed by arsonists in 2002.

I walked along the foreshore as far as possible, rather than on the path which was tucked against the perimeter wall of the docks, before retreating back to the path when the ground underfoot felt less safe. 

There was no obvious point where the public footpath was supposed to end, and I was able to walk right up to the docks' outer fence. Mission accomplished. 

I walked back to the Yacht Club and then left the river to tick off a couple of footpaths on the way home.

And finally, a look at how this walk fits in to my grid, being the four squares highlighted in yellow. I've also added a red outline to the Tilbury Docks square that I'm sure I'm not going to be able to visit.