To a bird looking for a resting place, or a source of food, even the 20th-century marshes would have looked much like any other wildlife-friendly river estuary. The end of military use gave the RSPB a great opportunity to acquire the eastern part of the marshes in 2000 and to set about restoring habitats such as pools and reedbeds. The bold new visitor centre opened in 2006.
Follow this until it comes to a gap in the fencing on your left, cross the road here, and continue ahead on a fenced path over the eastern tip of the landfill site. This is due for completion in the mid-2020s, after which it too will be actively managed for biodiversity. The path climbs a little to give good views over the marshes, down the Thames estuary, and across Kent, the North Downs in view, and Essex.
Cross the road again and turn right on the riverside path. At Coldharbour Point, where there is a navigation light, the river swings from west to north, bringing Shooter’s Hill and the Canary Wharf financial district into view. In about 1km you reach the cement barges – around a dozen of them, remnants of a fleet of 500 used in the D-Day landings; they too are a favourite place for birds to rest. The large building in front of you is the Tilda Rice factory.
The stretch from the cement barges to Purfleet station forms the last 3 miles of the London Loop. This 150-mile long-distance path, essentially the walker’s M25, starts just over the river at Erith Pier, barely a mile across the Thames – but 10 rewarding days or so for the keen walker.
Retrace your steps back past Coldharbour Point and keep on by the river until just before a gate to a small car park. Here turn right on a gravel path to access the sea wall, and stay on it for the views, perhaps venturing over towards the Thames-side saltmarshes. Once back at the RSPB centre, you can either go in, perhaps returning to one or two of the hides, or continue over the bridge over the Mardyke back to the station at Purfleet.
The RSPB visitor centre
WATER PIPIT, Anthus spinoletta
Photo: Russ Sherriff
On a typical winter’s day, there might be 200 water pipits across England, and there’s a good chance that a score of them will be dotted about Rainham Marshes.
Unlike rock and meadow pipits, the water pipit is only ever a winter visitor to these shores, arriving from the mountains of central and southern Europe in the late autumn and staying to the spring. Rainham is one of its few overwintering sites in England with the remainder being elsewhere in the south and east. It favours marshy sites but can also be found on flooded fields and places such as sewage works.
The water pipit returns to mainland Europe to breed but it might be possible to see it in breeding plumage just before it does so; it then has a pinkish breast and grey head. Normally it is greyish-brown above and pale below with a pale stripe over its eye.
It is difficult to distinguish a water pipit from a rock pipit, and indeed the two were once thought to be the same species: look for the white outer tail feathers when in flight, which the rock pipit does not have. Rock pipits can be found at Rainham, but they prefer the rougher coasts of western and northern Britain.
WALK 2
Dagenham’s open spaces
| Start | Dagenham Civic Centre (TQ 495 868) |
| Finish | Dagenham East tube (TQ 502 850) |
| Distance | 6 miles (9km) |
| Time | 3hrs |
| Maps | OS Explorer 162/174, Landranger 177 |
| Refreshments | Cross Keys pub near the finish, cafés at Dagenham East |
| Public transport | For the Civic Centre, take bus 5, 103, 175 or 499 from Romford station or bus 103 from Dagenham East tube |
| Parking | Central Park Pavilion, Rainham Road North, RM10 7EJ (TQ 499 865) |
| Local group | Friends of Beam Parklands www.beamparklands.co.uk |
If this seems an unlikely title for a walk, look again. You will journey past an Olympic wood, through two country parks, a nature reserve and flood meadows, and enjoy some of the rarest trees in Britain. There’s even a pretty little churchyard near the finish.
River Rom
With the grand main entrance to the Civic Centre beside you on your left, walk forwards to reach and enter the Peace & Memorial Garden, and turn right on leaving. Go round the back of the fire station and keep the temporary fencing around Ambassadors Wood to your left.
Ambassadors Wood has some mature trees but many more saplings – principally of oak, hornbeam, silver birch and field maple – planted in 2013 by some of the ‘London Ambassadors’ who helped visitors to the 2012 Olympic Games.
Beyond the second section of wood, go ahead to Central Park Pavilion, walk through its car park, where car drivers will start the walk, and continue on a surfaced track to a signboard at the entrance to Eastbrookend Country Park.
Take the path ahead, later going over a crossing path, to come out to Dagenham Road (1), which you cross at a pelican crossing and immediately re-enter the park. Turn left to the wooden Millennium Visitor Centre, and from its wind turbine take the gravel track which curves to the left past a wooden post ‘N’. The visitor centre hosts a display about local wildlife. Through a squeeze gate, turn right on to footpath 19, which becomes a minor road at stables. About 100 metres from the stables, enter The Chase Local Nature Reserve at a gap in the fence on the right.
Go left by the next fence as it gets close to the River Rom, no more than a stream. Over to your right, beyond the fence, is Black Poplar Wood, its six female black poplars – the natural glory of Dagenham – on proud display. Continue near the river (at a confluence, renamed the Beam) until you see a footbridge to your left (2), then turn right, go through a fence at a metal gate, and head towards a chimney. You soon pick up a sketchy gravel path heading a little left which leads, past a pond, to a narrow path by the railway and a footbridge. Go over the footbridge to the other side of the tracks, where you enter the Beam Valley Country Park. Turn left for 60 metres, then right on to a surfaced path and stay on this, the willow-fringed river always over to your left, all the way to Rainham Road South, crossed at a pelican crossing.
Here (3) are the Beam Parklands, both a park and a flood relief system. In periods of flood, much of it is deliberately inundated and cannot be crossed – your only alternative then is to walk the mile to Dagenham East tube along the road, or catch bus 103. However, this is rare, and you can enter the Parklands just to your left. The path goes between the river and stretches of the derelict Romford Canal.
The Romford Canal was first mooted in 1809 but building only began in 1875, when many canals had long fallen victim to railways. It was never completed or opened.
Some 500 metres from the road turn right over the canal and