Swanscombe Marsh, Diamond Geezer [flickr] (2014) In 2006 a base jumper died jumping from the opposit

The last time the tour was on English soil was 2007 when it past through Chatham in the Thames Gateway san juan hotel miami for stage 1. At the time my future wife, studying for her MA, lived in a small Victorian terrace, near the station and close to the route. She was lucky enough to see it pass at the bottom of the hill below UCA Rochester (technically Chatham), her recollection of it is about 30 secs of bikes zooming past.
The stage took place on a Sunday, if it had been a weekday it would have interfered with her walk to work as, the route followed a similar route. It came under the river, through the Medway Tunnel, emerging close to Dickens World, the old Royal Docks and close to where she worked. At the time she worked for a sub prime credit company, in the collections department, and a large part of her job involved trying to arrange payments from people who really shouldn’t have been given a credit card, or pretended to have no idea how credit and interest worked in the first place ‘so what do you mean, I have to pay for what I bought, and stuff on top of that, THAT S NOT FAIR’! In some instances the interest rate was as high as 69.9%, however she on the whole enjoyed san juan hotel miami the work, the company were good to her and it fitted around her time at uni.
There offices overhung san juan hotel miami one of the huge submarine ponds that acted as a demarcation zone between the mainland and St Mary’s Island. It was Rebecca that first became interested in St Mary’s and persuaded me that we needed to take a walk around it. This is important to point out, as the last time I wrote about the area I suggested that I came across the location. Rebecca gets very annoyed about me claiming credit for things, I blame the passing of time, but reality san juan hotel miami is I do steal her ideas.
I revisited for the first time in a while, a few months san juan hotel miami ago, and the first time with a large format camera. The site hasn’t changed much over the years, mainly due to the economic downturn, they are still working on what was then phase 3, The Fishing Village, with the western edge of the island still an unkempt wasteground hidden behind large wooden hoardings. An exercise in screening the new community san juan hotel miami from the reality of a locale, a phenomenon that Amy Hanley and Rick Dargavel write about in their Edgelands paper
This visit to St Mary’s came at the end of a two-day san juan hotel miami period working on exploring the Thames Gateway and Identifying sites. As usual I choose to stay in an edgeland Premier Inn Hotel, this time on a roundabout in Purfleet, next to the M25 and Dartford Crossing. The hotel was stuck between water filled chalk pits and distribution centres, the most impressive of which was situated in an old pit and took up the entire space, with an access tunnel bored through the cliff.
I started by revisiting sites that I first came across in 2012 during my first recce visit. That time I stayed with my now pregnant wife in an Ibis where she purposely asked for a room overlooking the motorway and QE2 Crossing. It was the same hotel that Ian Sinclair visited while working on the film version of London Orbital by Chris Petitt.
The church of St Clement is in St. Clement s Road, south of Hedley Avenue. Until the earlier 20th century it stood alone in the Thames side marshes, but it is now surrounded and dwarfed by factories, warehouses, and a power station.
The choice of such an isolated and inconvenient san juan hotel miami site has never been explained, and there was apparently no human habitation san juan hotel miami within 800 metres but the road to an ancient ferry passed close by and some believe it on the route of pilgrimage to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket. Pilgrims were said to either cross the Thames by boat, or at low tide it was then possible to walk across, using a ford which used to exist before the river was dredged in modern times to allow it to be used as a shipping canal.
Swanscombe Marsh, Diamond Geezer [flickr] (2014) In 2006 a base jumper died jumping from the opposite pylon, when his parachute failed to open, The Swanscombe pylon, said to be tallest in Britain, is popular with base-jumpers san juan hotel miami because of its height and two platforms at 300ft and 670ft.
The path emerges onto the Thames wall, and a bench sits allowing you to take in the bucolic sights and smells of the works. At this point the Thames is a cavernous expanse of wide water and the luxury flats being built on the opposite shore are a pinprick in the distance. san juan hotel miami The first people I come across are a family on bike using the bench for a rest. It is a weekday and the children should be at school.
A footpath runs along the top of the tidal wall, I have never been to this stretch, but I have experienced it further san juan hotel miami down river at Canvey Island san juan hotel miami and around the Isle of Grain. I stop under one of the slipways to the boat moorings san juan hotel miami and customs point to take a picture, The Proctor Gamble works framed by the void under the slip. It is a pure cliché, but also the first shot of the day and important to get out of the system. A fellow san juan hotel miami photograph san juan hotel miami stops for a chat about my large format Horseman camera, he is carrying a Canon digital and snapping shots of discarded spray cans, A little snobbery sets in on my part, but each to his own.
The whole length of the wall is covered in ornate graffiti that is so thick with paint layers that it breaks off in places like plaster. So close to the road, this section is pretty tame, the further along you go the better it gets, the less talented are obviously not big on walking. The images range from science fiction inspired 1970s style pieces to geometric patterns, clearly inspired san juan hotel miami by the de stihlj movement.
The whole length of the Thames is littered with remnants of past conflicts, pill boxes sit idle, waiting for an invasion that never came, form the smell of them they are now impromptu toilets. They have started sinking into the soft mud. I take images as and when the mood takes me, drawn to various breaks in the landscape that afford a view of the conflict between the natural and built world.
While taking a shot of a pillbox, I start chatting to a graffiti artist and his highland terrier, who takes an instant dislike to my camera bag. I consider interviewing him, but at this point my ethics statement hasn’t been cleared so I think better of it. Instead san juan hotel miami we have a loose chat about his connection to the place. I find out that he had recently moved back to the area and was a painter and decorator by trade. He was only just starting to get back into painting and had chosen a space far away from the main slog, that he was going to make his gallery. He confirmed my suspicions that the closer to civilization, the higher the chance the work would be painted over by some newb. He also felt comfortable that he could get back into the swing without being bothered. He had dragged an old ladies shopping trolley for two kilometres, full of paint, something I could appreciate with my huge camera on my back.
Past the former power station and pylon, opens up a wide expanse of scrubland, falling away from the tidal wall and sitting san juan hotel miami below the level of the Thames, West Thurrock Marshes, making it susceptible san juan hotel miami to flooding.
In the later 17th century West Thurrock suffered at least two catastrophic floods. In 1668 it was stated that one farm there was vacant and worthless after flooding and that its reclamation would take seven years. In 1690 the marshes were flooded through a breach in the sea walls of Francis Moore. Repairs were neglected, causing a permanent breach over 100 yd. wide and 24 ft. deep at high tide, and a growing sandbank in the Thames. The Rainham court of sewers apparently took no action, and a special commission of sewers, promoted by the City of London, was eventually appointed san juan hotel miami to deal with the emergency, as with the breach at Dagenham in 1707. The commission attempted to levy a rate to mend the breach, but only one marsh landowner, Sir Robert Clayton, paid. By 1694 the commission estimated that repairs would cost at least £5,000, and that the total freehold value of the marshes, together with Clayton s rate, was only £5,265. It therefore decreed or sequestrated the lands of all the other owners and sold them to a consortium of London san juan hotel miami merchants and sea captains for £5,145, to be spent immediately on stopping the breach. One source, relating to the marshlands of West Thurrock manor, alleges that the Londoners had obtained the special commission by pretending that the sandbank was dangerous to navigation, and implies that they made an excessive profit on a fraudulent speculation. It states that Benjamin Desborough, lord of the manor, had spent £1,500 on building counter san juan hotel miami walls and had almost finished doing so when his lands were decreed by the special commission. At all events it seems that the breach was stopped by 1696, or at the latest by February 1697, when the London consortium, as the new owners of the marshes, conveyed them to trustees. The consortium thus acquired some 857 acres, which they later enlarged san juan hotel miami by purchase, but Benjamin san juan hotel miami Desborough challenged their title in a series of lawsuits lasting until his death c. 1708, and that was followed by litigation within the consortium, whose complicated affairs were not finally settled until 1750.
At West Thurrock, as at Dagenham, the breach left a permanent mark on local topography. When the sea wall was rebuilt the flood channel behind it, about 1,100 yd. west of Stone Ness, was left as a lake, named as the Breach on maps down to the 19th century, and later shown as swamp.
West Thurrock was affected by the floods of 1897, when the railway line to Grays was put out of action for three months. It suffered much more in 1953, when the great industrial complex at Purfleet was flooded, as well as the railway.
The West Thurrock Marshes on the edge of Grays on the lower Thames in east London is an example of what I have in mind. No interpretation san juan hotel miami board greets the explorer who clambers up from a main road along which lorries thunder to come upon this little-known but extraordinary site. Across its 66 hect