PAGLESHAM CREEK

So earlier this week I took the boys for a nice walk along Paglesham Creek, just a few miles from where I live. I don’t walk here that often as parking isn’t the easiest but on tuesday I managed to park up fine. Once parked you have to skirt around some fields for half mile or so before you actually get to the creek itself and then you can walk the sea defence all the way to its junction with the River Roach, roughly 4 miles, and then half mile along to Paglesham boat yard, and if you decide to carry on for another 8 miles or so you’ll actually get to Rochford.

You can either walk along the bottom of the sea defence, along a farm track, where you can look across the fields that spread inland as far as you can see. Or you can walk along the top of the sea defence, as like to do, and you can look out across the creek and marshland on one side and the farmland on the other, best of both worlds I say. The walk takes in some beautiful scenery, with winter being my favourite time to visit, and there is lots of wildlife to keep you occupied. I always walk here with dogs so only get quick glimpses of various wildfowl, birds, hairs and even the odd deer in the distance. I keep telling myself that I should spend the morning there with just my camera, no dogs, and hopefully I should be able to get some good pictures of what lives in there, but never seem to get round to doing it.

A couple of miles along the banks is a small area of marshland and situated at the bottom of the sea defence is a small WW2 pillbox. This is one of only a couple that I have found that hasn’t been used as a dumping ground and filled with all manner of rubbish and crap. I actually went inside this one last year and filmed a small piece for my Youtube channel, I,ll post a link below.

I usually just trek to the pillbox as its a nice couple of miles walk but if you continue further along the creek you’ll come to a large S bend with a larger area of marshland and this is a great spot to sit and watch the wildfowl flight up and down the waterway as they move with the tide. I,ll walk there next time and take some pictures for you.

The pillbox was as far as we walked this time, and I had a nice rest whilst watching the boys rage around the marshes and have a nice swim in the creek. I used to spend my time just walking to my destination and then straight back again, but over the past couple of years I,ve enjoyed just sitting down and taking in the scenery more and more on my trips. You get to see much more when you park your arse, relax and observe whats going on around you.