Dengie Peninsula Circular

SOUTH EAST

WALK

Dengie Peninsula Circular

Sunday 22 April 2018

I have to admit that this was one of those walks that I knew absolutely nothing about beforehand other than the date. I had never heard of the “Dengie Peninsula”, did not know where it was and was relying on Google Maps to get us there and even Google struggled!

Susan and I met up with our friends from the Team South East walking group at Bradwell Marina a few kilometres from Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex.

The weather was unusually warm for April with the temperature predicted to reach 24 degrees Celsius and we started off from the car park in t-shirts and sunglasses having applied some sun-cream – it’s April!!

Within a few minutes, we were taking a diagonal path across a field when I spotted the first ‘point of interest’. A nuclear power station.

Bradwell nuclear power station to be precise. Now partially decommissioned but it was one of the three sites chosen for a new Chinese reactor from 2021 onward.

We left the field and stepped on to a tarmac road and within minutes had reached the next ‘point of interest’. A memorial to the 121 allied airmen who had left RAF Bradwell Bay and did not return. The memorial is had to miss because it features a large model of an aircraft.

From the memorial, I could see a large number of buildings but I could not see the runway or tower but from an OS map and Google satellite images the runway is very clear and clear and had we headed north the road would have crossed it. The control tower is now a private house.

RAF Bradwell Bay is apparently the only RAF Fighter Station to have had and used the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) system which was essentially the burning of fuel in rows alongside the runway to help disperse the fog immediately above the runway.

The route took us briefly through Bradwell on Sea and Hockley before continuing South East to Glebe Farm and Sandbeach before meeting the St Peter’s Way path, a 41-mile long distance path from Chipping Ongar to St Peter’s Flat.

We then arrived at the next ‘point of interest’ – the Sea Wall or Levee, although I suspect they are only called a ‘Levee’ when they are on a river so ‘Sea Wall’ it is then.

Either way, this was an interesting feature that we eventually follow all the way back to the marina and every now and then we were to find WWII Pillboxes embedded in the Sea Wall sometimes running through from one side to the other.

From the seawall, we could also see the next ‘point of interest’ – a line of

concrete barges sunk offshore protect the salt-marsh and seawall from erosion.

We continued along the seawall until we reached the end of the St Peter’s Way which the Chapel of St Peter on the Wall or St Peter’s Chapel.

The chapel is one of the oldest largely intact Christian churches in England dates from approximately 660 AD. Sometime after the 16th century, the chapel fell in to disuse and was eventually used as a barn, the large barn door clearly visible in the photo above but in 1920 it was restored and reconsecrated as a chapel.

Right next to the chapel are the remains of the Othona, A Roman Saxon Shore fort which was subsequently reused as an Anglo-Saxon monastery and partly destroyed by the sea and right next to the remains there is a modern-day Christian community called ‘Othona’ or ‘Othona Community’.

We continued along the sea wall and passed Sales Point where we could see another line of concrete barges. These were much closer and some people were even venturing out on to the mud flat to climb aboard!

From Sales Point, we started to head west back toward the nuclear power station and eventually the marina where we had started but there was one more unexpected ‘point of interest’ still to come.

Moored just outside of the marina was the MV Ross Revenge. This ship was built in 1960 and served as a trawler during the Cod Wars before being purchased by Radio Caroline and outfitted as a radio ship. Her final her final pirate radio broadcast was at the end of November 1990.

The MV Ross Revenge, however, was not the infamous ship that counted Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker, Dave Lee Travis and Tommy Vance as crew members. In fact ‘Radio Caroline’ was a name used to broadcast from international waters using five different ships between 1964 to 1990 with MV Mi Amigo and MV Caroline be the originals. The MV Mi Amigo started to sink while Stevie Gordon and Tom Anderson were broadcasting and had to abandon ship whilst on-air in 1980.

The MV Ross Revenge was the replacement ship and continued until 1990. In 2017 it was granted a community radio licence to broadcast to Suffolk and Essex.

As for ‘Radio Caroline’ you can now stream their content via the internet by visiting http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk.

All in all, this was a fascinating walk and we were glad we went, not just because of the opportunity to catch up with friends, or that the weather was so good we got a little sunburnt, but because we found so much of interest in an area that, until the walk, we knew nothing about.

David Welch – View Profile

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