Today I found myself beside the Thames at Erith, just on the border of London and Kent. It’s hard to believe that this is the same river that flows through Oxford, Chiswick, Putney, Westminster and Greenwich, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture. To my left, just out of shot, ‘affordable housing’ overlooks this flat grey expanse of cold water to a deserted bare green low hill on the other bank, with an empty iron barge moored in front of it. It’s Essex over there, but not the Essex that Constable painted.
Over my shoulder is the QEII bridge, already backing up with Friday afternoon M25 traffic queueing at the toll booths. Below my feet, dark green reeds are growing in tufts out of the silt. Dotted around the place are factory workings and metal sheds of various shapes and sizes, some working, some I think are defunct. And here and there timbers , like the ones in the picture, poke up through the water, the remains of old moorings and jetties.
At the Erith riverside the air has a faint tang of salt. Its affinity here is with the North Sea (though there’s still some way to go to get there), not the picturesque wooded uplands of the Chilterns where it smells of grass and trees and stone and cucumber sandwiches. The whale that was stranded at Battersea last year would have passed this way as it swam oblivious down the watery funnel to its sad and tragic end.
It’s bleak and windswept place, remote even with the housing estate on the bank; part city, part moor, and all the more impressive for that. And there’s no pretention or affectation. Bare and exposed, this is the hard end of the river.
Soulcomposting 