From here we descend gradually to the Thames-side lowlands. Making for Chadwell, and turning to the right on passing the church, a glance backwards will reveal Horndon at its best: the tree-surrounded old church, with the bright vermilion pantiles of the older houses, and the whirling sails of flanking windmills giving a singularly foreign and Dutch-like effect. Take the next turning to the left, and in half a mile to the left again, having previously withstood the specious invitation of a left-hand turn through a gate which only leads to a farm-track. Another mile, and you come to a right and left highway, opposite the “Cock Inn.” Neither of these leads to Chadwell, but there is a lane leading straight ahead, beside the inn; a very retiring lane, and quite difficult to see, if not previously warned of its existence. This leads, for a level two miles, to Chadwell Church. Turn to the right here, along the road to Grays. The other road, straight on, drops sharply to the marshes and to Tilbury Docks, and the surrounding industrial settlements. Tilbury Docks are very impressive, but when cycling you can obtain all the impressions of them that you have any use for from this Grays road, two miles away.
All the way from here to Rainham—some nine miles—is a splendid object-lesson in Thames-side shipping and industries. It is not sufficient to know the Thames only in its fashionable and holiday aspects. To know it as a whole you must also have made some sort of acquaintance with what sailor-men call “London River”—that is to say, the Thames below bridge, where all the business is done. This is not, of course, to say that these succeeding nine miles are ideal from the cyclist’s point of view. The busy and growing town of Grays with the Thurrocks on either side, scarcely to be distinguished from it by the stranger, is only picturesque to those who can find a romance in the riverside work; but the road surface is not so bad. Notice on the right, immediately after leaving Grays, the sham castellated building in a park now in course of being destroyed by the chalk quarries. This is called Belmont Castle. The chalk-pits here, and along the road to Purfleet, are nothing less than stupendous. Railways run between them and the river, where the chalk is shipped, or manufactured as cement on the spot. Purfleet, to which we now come, is a somewhat pleasing old-world riverside place, with a pretty, tree-shaded road running beside the river, where it is pleasant to halt and watch the world’s commerce float by; the passenger steamers, the “ocean tramps,” the fruiters, the wool-ships, the unmistakable oil-tank steamers, and all the very varied traffic coming from or going to distant parts.
Across the river is Erith, and immediately opposite are the hospital ships, off Crayford Ness. One of these—the Castalia—was originally a twin-ship built for the Channel traffic, with the idea of abolishing seasickness. Nearer at hand is the old wooden man-o’-war Cornwall, now a training ship, and beside the road, just here, is a disused hillside chalk quarry turned into a botanic garden.
Purfleet has a picturesqueness all its own, not utterly destroyed by the gunpowder magazines nor by the huge tanks—like gasometers—where oil is stored. So long as the busy perspective of the waterside remains, with the “toil, glitter, grime, and wealth” of the tide, the place cannot fail of interest.
Beyond, through Wennington and Rainham, the marshes spread out on the left, kept from being drowned out by the Thames by the aid of those earthen river walls said to have been originally made by the Romans. Passing through the uninteresting town of Rainham we turn off to the right at Rippleside for the old-world village of Dagenham, set upon a hilly site overlooking the miry flats. Down there, on the inland side, lies Parslowes, the old seat of the Fanshawes, islanded in midst of ploughed fields; riverward trail the smoke-wreaths against the burnished sunset, and as we blunder along the winding lanes for Dagenham Station we meet the agricultural labourer, clumsy and stupefied with long hours of physical toil, slouching off to his evening fuddle at the “Blue Pig.”