From Shoeburyness To Chalkwell

Click here to book your ticket for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF WHITECHAPEL this Sunday 23rd August Tour includes tea and apple strudel at the Whitechapel Gallery. At Westcliff At the end of August, I always feel the need to leave the city and go to the sea, taking advantage of the last days of sunshine before the season changes. Admitting that I have spent too much of these last months at my desk in neglect of summer, I found myself on the train out of Fenchurch St Station with the East End receding like a dream. At Shoeburyness, the ocean lay before me gleaming like a tin roof beneath a flawless azure sky. Surely no-one fails to be surprised by the sea, always more expansive than the image you carry in your mind. I sat upon the warm buttery-yellow sand of East Beach to assimilate this vast landscape before me, humbled by the open space after too long in narrow streets. Military fences obstructed my intention of walking east across open land towards the River Roach, so instead I…