42km The River Ingrebourne
Dagnam, the deer, and the diver
Ride overview:
This ride embraces the shortest winter days. If you can, choose a still, and frosty morning in deep winter when the world is decorated in misty whiteness and the light from the cold sun is never stronger than candlelight. On such a day, the path through woods and marshes of wild east London will be yours and yours alone.
Ride reviewed and re-ridden; November 22
Ride practicalities
The ride of course, can be ridden at any time of year, however the paths through the country parks can be busy with families on summer weekends.
START/FINISH: Brentwood/Purfleet train stations DISTANCE: 42km. TOTAL ASCENT: 300m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Mainly traffic-free cycle paths through country parks with good surfaces throughout. There are a three short road sections, at Brentwood, Uxbridge and Rainham. FOOD: Essex Wildlife Trust cafe and shops in Hornchurch Country Park and the RSPB cafe and shop at Rainham Marshes. Rainham Hall (NT) has a cafe too.
MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Brentwood is served by the Elizabeth Line and C2C trains connect Purfleet with Fenchurch Street.
LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: The Rivers of the East, Hyde Park to Purfleet, NCN 136, The Tower to Southend.
Ride notes
Leaving Brentwood station in the semi-light of a winter’s morning you ride the first two kilometres through the backroads of the town before arriving at the South Weald Country Park. Using the bridleways which can be a little muddy in the depths of winter, you ride in dreamy early mist through silent woods, meadows, and open grassland. The path undulates sometimes quite fiercely and you might ponder as you pant, that the park was proposed for the 2012 Olympic Games Mountain Bike competition, but deemed to be not tough enough. The park, designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown looks natural enough, but of course is true ‘artificial countryside’, but none the poorer for that.
After the park, there’s a couple road kilometres to cover before arriving in Dagnam Park. Expect more beautiful traffic-free riding through a classic English landscape with woodlands, ponds, and clumps of specimen trees, as well as acres of grassland. There are the remains of a medieval moat and a car park where once there was a mansion (the house was hit by a rocket in WWII and demolished in 1950).
Weald country park on a winter’s dawn
From the park the ride continues into Harold Hill. This not-so-new town was conceived by the London County Council after WWII in order to alleviate the chronic housing shortage. Seven-thousand six hundred homes were built to house 25,000 people. At first sight, it looks to be another huge and drab post-war estate, until you see a herd of deer wandering around the large swathes of grasslands and woods which characterise this town. No one quite knows how the deer came to make their home on a huge council estate, but most likely they are the descendants of the old Dagnam Hall deer park.
There are good cycling paths through the town and its here that you join the nascent river Ingrebourne which you now follow to the Thames. You’ll notice on the route map after Harold Hill, that the ride deviates onto a couple of woodland circuits - the first in Harold Court Woods and the second soon after in Pages Wood. If these extra loops on superb gravel paths with their short but testing ups and downs and fast long curves does not appeal, continue straight along the main path, following the signs for NCN136. However if you have the strength, these are one of the many reasons why coming all this way across London is so worth it.
After the fun, there’s three unavoidable kilometres of Hall Lane to ride on a shared pathway (other than the last 500m which is on the road), before arriving in Upminster. You’ll understand, having ridden uphill for a while, why Upminster is so called - the name means ‘church on a hill.’ 400m off the route on the A124 is one of England’s best preserved windmills.
Pill box RAF Hornchurch
After Upminster, the riding is a delight as the path follows the downhill course of the river through the Hornchurch Country Park. The path is tarmac’d, but if you still need to release some energy, ride on the grass. The Ingrebourne Valley nature reserve is classic London countryside and showcases what London looked like for about 8,000 years until the building of the city - freshwater marshlands filled with willows, shrubs and rough grasslands. In spring you may see ospreys, barn owls or hobbies flying over the marshes. But since the late 19th century this was an industrial wasteland of gravel and sand pits, landfills and industries. Here too was an airfield. Pillboxes and crumbling sections of tarmac hint at the vital role of RAF Hornchurch played in the defence of London in both World Wars. After the excellent Essex Wildlife cafe and shop, there is a mountain bike course around Ingrebourne Hill, which is a lot of fun with its banked turns and bergs.
After 23km of country parks, there is a short road section into Rainham where you’ll ride past not only the striking church of St. Margaret’s but also Rainham Hall (NT) which has been described as the ‘most beautiful house beside the Thames’.
The final few kilometres are spent riding across Rainham marshes. Reeds whisper in the wind, orange willow stems touch the sheltering sky and the wide river Thames silently pulls itself out towards the sea. Every time I bring people here, they exclaim in disbelief that such a wild and open place can still exist inside the boundary of one of the world’s great cities.
Mulberry Barges, Rainham Marshes
On arriving at the Thames, you’ll pass a collection of concrete barges which are said to have been used as part of the D-Day landings. Quite how they ended up here is open to much conjecture, including the idea that they never actually made it across the Channel. Nearby is John Kaufmann’s ‘Diver’. Kaufmann was a self-taught sculptor and this piece, which is partially covered at every tide, is a homage to his grandfather who was a diver in the London docks, as well as to the other divers who work in difficult and dangerous conditions.
The cycle path towards to Purfleet skirts around the base of a huge mound. It resembles some very ancient hill from where sacrifices were made to appease the gods. In fact, it is London’s largest landfill site and contains over 150 years worth of city rubbish. Today, it is being sculpted into a new country park. The fields around its base, are often flooded in winter, and are grazed by semi-wild horses. The skies are often patrolled by falcons and other rare birds, including the Dartford Warbler. The marshes are internationally recognised as a major wintering ground for tens of thousands of migrating birds. There are usually lines of ‘twitchers’ along the sea wall peering through their binoculars.
After passing the RSPB cafe at the end of the marshes, you pass old gunpowder stores before arriving at the Royal Hotel. At the turn of the 20th century, boats brought Londoners to Purfleet for a ‘sea-side’ day out. Dracula too was charmed by the place, as Bram Stoker wrote that ‘he moved to Carfax House at Purfleet on a bye road to London’. The house is thought to have been where St. Stephens is today. The Thames from the Purfleet esplanade continues to be enchanting - a languorous and silent river as mutable as the sky. It’s a fine place to rest awhile after a glorious ride along London’s eastern boundary.
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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