If you live in north-east London, you’d think it would be a doddle finding a decent enough beach for a day trip. Let me tell you: it isn’t.
Why? Because the Essex coast – the closest to this part of the capital – is characterised by loads of muddy estuaries that, aside from being death traps, make getting from one place to another really tricky.
Good luck getting from Ostend (no, not that one) to Paglesham Churchend – a distance that, as the crow flies, is about three miles, but which is more like 25 miles as the human drives.
Surely, though, there must be at least a pebble beach somewhere within an hour’s drive of Leytonstone?
Well, Essex can actually do better than that. But to find one of its few sandy(ish) beaches, you have to hover over 350 miles of coast on Google Maps. And on one particular lockdown evening, that’s exactly what I did.
Eventually, I landed on the far north-eastern tip of the Dengie National Nature Reserve, specifically on what looked suspiciously like a yellow strip of sand. Around the corner, there appeared to be another one.
Credit: Google Maps
“Darling!” I screamed to my wife, who was falling asleep to the 563rd episode of Shagged Married Annoyed, “Pack your bags – we’re going to Bradwell-on-Sea. Tomorrow!”
Now, save from a few cultists and retired nuclear scientists, no one has ever heard of Bradwell on Sea – a village of approximately 850 people that isn’t actually by the sea. Honestly, it’s one for the Trade Descriptions Act.
As you drive in, you essentially bypass the village and end up half a mile up the road at Bradwell Waterside, which I think is technically a different place but is at least beside some water (the River Blackwater estuary, so not quite the sea). We parked at The Green Man Inn for an early lunch, had a little look around the marina, then hopped back into the car for the five-minute drive east to where that beach beside the sea was supposed to be.
That little strip of sand is actually the northern tip of Bradwell Shell Bank, lapped by the glorious waters of the North Sea, and to get there you need to follow the signs to St Peter’s Chapel. Before long the road runs out and turns into a small car park, which is now my favourite car park in the world thanks to its multiple ‘Beware of the adders’ signs and sea views. It’s terrifying and charming in equal measure.
Credit: Google Maps
We did, it should be said, take a mini detour en route to St Peter’s Chapel. Between it and Bradwell Waterside is the site of RAF Bradwell Bay, whose concrete runway is still there (as are some of the hangars, which local farmers today use for storage). These guys explored the airbase’s remnants a couple of years ago, and there’s a surprising amount to see.
During the Second World War, 121 personnel took off from here (some provided support during the D-Day invasions; others took out V-1 flying bombs), never to return. A memorial to them now exists in the form of a crashed de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito. My one-year-old son shouted “Airplane!” at it at least 20 times, so on that basis it was absolutely worth visiting.
Credit: Imperial War Museums
We were going to loop around the airfield before re-joining the road to the chapel, but we’d have had to drive past the decommissioned Bradwell Nuclear Power Station (scheduled for demolition in 2083) – and, quite frankly, it has some eerie Chernobyl vibes, not that anything that bad ever happened here. Sure, one of the reactors failed in 2000. And yeah, one of the guys working there stole 20 uranium fuel rods once. That’s about it, I think – though Bradwell’s residents do claim to glow in the dark…
Anyway, back to World’s Greatest Car Park™, which also contains – yes, there really was more – an interactive sign with an audio guide. Honestly, it was like we had arrived in 2050. Standing in front of it were two slack-jawed ramblers, who literally couldn’t believe what they were seeing and hearing.
After passing through World’s Greatest Car Park™’s kissing gate, you walk for a few minutes between a wheat field and a wildflower meadow (watch out for the pillbox among the thistles and poppies, presumably built to defend the airfield in the event of an invasion) until you arrive at the absolutely spectacular St Peter’s Chapel – or, to give it its proper name, The Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall.
The first thing that hits you is just how remote this Grade I listed building feels. There’s no road or rail access, and the nearest proper town – Southminster – is around nine miles away. So why is there a chapel here, right on the edge of the Dengie Peninsula?
Well, because this is where Bishop Cedd landed en route from Lindisfarne in 653. Seeing as he was on a mission to spread Christianity, he decided to get to work and build a small wooden church on top of the old Roman fort that lay here.
It must have seemed a great idea at the time, but when Cedd stood back to admire his creation, he slowly buried his head into his hands and muttered an Anglo-Saxon obscenity. The old fort was made of stone – a far superior building material – so in 654 he rebuilt the chapel that still stands today, presumably after having a massive bonfire.
Despite St Peter’s remoteness, there were a fair few people here. Way more than I expected, in fact. They were all dressed similarly, and they all seemed to know each other. Just as I began wondering who they were – there wasn’t a coach in World’s Greatest Car Park™ – I noticed a sign to the Othona Community (named after the old Roman fort), which hosts daily morning and evening services at the chapel.
Now, I don’t know much about the Othona Community. I started reading this 2017 thesis by Andrea-Renée Misler, but I got a bit scared by the words “cult”, “oddballs” and “nudist camp”. To be fair, Misler also points out that the community (founded by Church of England priest Norman Motley in 1946) is to its followers “a world of compassion”. Those we saw certainly seemed pleasant enough. And, thank goodness, they had their garb on.
A few metres beyond St Peter’s Chapel is a broad saltmarsh (this is, in fact, part of the Saltmarsh Coast), which is largely fenced off owing to its status as an important bird habitat. Buggy friendly is it not, but once you’re safely across you find yourself on the beach.
We arrived at high tide, with the waves gently lapping over the sand and the millions of cockle shells. A seal caught sight of us and bobbed up to say hello. My two children were spellbound. If it hadn’t started raining at that exact moment, it would have been perfect.
I’m pretty sure that it’s safe to swim here. There is a lot of mud to contend with on the shoreline, which you really notice when the tide starts receding, but the water doesn’t get too deep too quickly, and it was – at least when we were there – remarkably calm. There might be a few sunken Thames barges to watch out for, though.
If you want more sand – for there is more sand to be had – resist the urge to walk south along the beach. This is a protected nature reserve, and you’ll be very quickly taught a lesson by some dive-bombing oystercatchers. Instead, re-join the coast path and walk north to the point at which the River Blackwater meets the North Sea. Hello, sandbank, it’s nice to meet you.
If you fancy it, you can carry on walking all the way back to Bradwell Waterside via the nuclear power station. When you’ve done that, you can say you’ve done Bradwell-on-Sea (and if you wanted proof, you’ll glow in the dark, just a little bit, every time you switch the lights off for the next month).