Barnes Cray to Gravesend

19 December 2025

After a brief Scottish interlude, a return to the South East, crossing the boundary from London into Kent. You can read more about the origins of this project and follow my progress on the map here.

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It is satisfying to get on the train and then a bus, and return to the spot where a previous walk ended. Never mind that it is a roundabout next to a main road, strewn with rubbish. It is a place to walk through once more and then never again (although I’ve been searching for some local volunteering opportunities and see that there is a group that meets regularly to do conservation work along the banks of the River Cray, so perhaps I’ll be back).

My parents have joined me, keen to see some of the river and coastline areas of Kent that they haven’t been to before, and mindful of me walking alone along some less populated trails. I appreciate the care, and yet almost always feel safe when I am travelling or walking. Maybe this is naive, and at odds with the reality of my surroundings. But I prefer to look at the world through trusting eyes, whenever and wherever I can.

It is a clear, bright day shortly before Christmas, and we have the path to ourselves as we head into the Crayford Marshes, past industrial estates thronged by gulls and the odd sight of a boat which glides slowly through the reeds, the water it sits in invisible from where we stand. Our route takes us along an elevated and grassed-over walkway, which winds its way along the River Darent and back to the Thames. A buzzing sound overhead causes us to look up, and we realise it is a drone plane, swooping and soaring in tight spirals and loops, rushing up to the sky and then almost vertically down to earth. Its controller is hard to spot, until far across the fields we see a little group who must be responsible for this joyride.

Things that move

Looking at the route in advance, I had noticed that there were some shooting ranges out in this area. So the sudden crack of gunshots is not as alarming as it might have been. It is still unnerving though, and gives the feeling of being under pursuit, while we are still in range of the Dartford Clay Shooting Club and the Lumley Ranges. Otherwise, it is good to be back alongside the river, making steady progress towards the Dartford Crossing.

It’s a familiar landmark. Before the Bluewater Shopping Centre opened in 1999, built on disused quarry land not far south of the Thames, our closest mall was the Lakeside Centre, up in Essex. Getting there involved driving across the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, which had been opened in 1991 to ease pressure on the underwater tunnel which lies beneath. It is the only fixed road crossing east of London’s bridges and tunnels, and so it takes a heavy daily beating from trucks and cars.

Today though, I am struck by its elegance, rather than its utility. It is in our view for at least an hour before we reach it, and each twist and turn of the river affords a slightly different angle. Researching it later, I discover that it is a cable-stayed bridge, meaning that the deck is supported by cables hung from its towers (less common now than the suspension bridge model, in which cables hang from other cables). This is a fact I wouldn’t have been able to tell you before starting this project, and I am struck by the sense that I am going back to school somehow, only this time designing my own curriculum, driven entirely by curiosity.

Bridge over the River Thames

There aren’t many rest points along this stretch of the path, but we find a solitary picnic bench with a view looking back at the bridge, where we pause for a sandwich lunch. Then it is on towards Greenhithe, where we are pleasantly surprised by the neat housing estates and clapboard apartment buildings next to the riverside. As we head out of town and into the Swanscombe Marshes I have a feeling that we have crossed the border out of London, although when looking later at the map I realise we have been in Kent since about five minutes into our walk. Boundary lines are so often arbitrary; something I am very familiar with after a previous period of my career spent working on migration policy.

Back in the marshes, the winter sun is already starting to curve downwards, even though it is still early in the afternoon. It is a day when you are viscerally aware of the tilt of the earth, and indeed, we are just a few days from the midwinter equinox, when the darkness in the northern hemisphere is at its strongest. It makes me grateful for the signs of life and power. The deep blue of the sky, the crackle in the air from the electricity pylons we walk underneath, and the light that catches the reeds and cane grass next to the path.

Light and power

My own misreading of the map and the diminishing light mean that we have to forgo an additional loop that would take us to the Broadness lighthouse. I make a point of looking for lighthouses wherever I go, and although this one is only a simple tower with a beacon light, I’m still disappointed to have missed it. Perhaps I’ll be able to spot it from the other side of the river, once I start the section on the north bank of the Thames.

The remainder of the walk into Gravesend cannot be described as beautiful. The trail takes us inland for a time, through the industrial outskirts of Ebbsfleet and Northfleet. The air is pungent, and my mother turns to me with the pronouncement, “It stinks!”. My dad, walking up from behind, mishears her. “A sphinx?”. “No, it stinks!”.

This confusion turns out to be prophetic. As we make our way through the Northfleet industrial estate, full of tarmac plants and scrap heaps, we come across an old office building, covered in scaffolding. It looks derelict, but there are a few people in hi-vis jackets and hard hats coming in and out, so it must be in use. And out in front, inexplicably, a concrete model of a sphinx. It is so out of place, and the connection to our earlier conversation so uncanny, that it feels like minor magic at work.

A few meters away, there is an equally anachronistic sight. An Art Deco statue of Britannia atop a plinth, which on closer inspection turns out to be a memorial to the employees of Bevans - a cement works plant - who died in the First World War. It feels like it should be somewhere else, not hidden away in an industrial area where there are few passersby. And yet, this fact means that we stop and really look at it. For all the statues in obvious places that will never impinge on my consciousness, this one I will remember.

Visions of the past

We finish the day in Gravesend, glad to rest weary feet and sore backs as the train whips us back to where we started from. Reversing our route, but not our progress along the trail.

Back to the future

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