The soggy splendour of Rainham Marshes

Spent a great afternoon on Rainham Marshes with my wife and younger daughter. In the shadow of the A13, the C2C railway line and pylons, we completed a two-mile circular walk around the duckboard paths. It's hard to believe this area is so close to London and we saw huge marsh frogs, dragonflies, kestrels, coots and an egret all amid lots of streams and giant bullrushes.

The marshes were only preserved because the land was once used an army firing range and it's fascinating to see the old shooting butts and targets still there. The Marshes have a number of very plush wooden hides and also a giant manmade anthill that humans can crawl through — some of the real anthills on the Marshes are a century old.

The main building is very distinctive and has huge glass windows offering a marshy panorama with coffee and cakes. The walk from Purfleet station is good too, offering fine views of the Thames and an old magazine (not published by IPC) that once housed enough gunpowder to blow up a sizeable chinch of Essex. Well worth a visit.

Life on Marsh

Good to hear that Rainham Marshes helped inspire Craig Bennett, the new CEO of Friends of the Earth. A recent Guardian interview reveals: "His first job was to protect his own patch, Rainham Marshes. In those days even his family thought it a dump. But last month he went back and saw a completely different landscape. 'If we can turn places like Rainham Marshes from being seen as a dump into somewhere where there are water voles, and which tens of thousands of people visit every year, we can do anything.'"

Talking of Rainham, it also gets an honorary mention in Bill Bailey's great Billy Bragg spoof Unisex Chipshop where Bill sings: "In my dreams I would see her / Running naked through the woods round Rainham/ If I had some tigers I'd train them/ To protect her / from the sexual fascism that was lurkin' / round the gherkins." Not a lot of people know that.

Rainham stops play

Having read The Joy of Essex, my pal Jacqui suggests a chapter on Rainham for any follow-up. "Despite Rainham village being tiny it had 10 pubs / social clubs and yet we still craved the bright lights and sophistication of Romford – and it’s amazing how many times I see Rainham cropping up, despite it being such a tiny place and absolutely NOTHING happening there. One of the greatest British bands ever the Small Faces was formed after Steve Marriott met Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones in the Albion pub, Kenneth Williams was apparently a frequent visitor (!!) and Ross Kemp grew up there – I’ve lost count of the number of references I’ve seen in books and articles over the years. (& to think I couldn’t wait to leave!)" All this, and it gets a namecheck in Bill Bailey's Billy Bragg parody Unisex Chipshop, with a line about "running naked round the woods in Rainham".