by Cyclist Yoni
📏Distance: 34.6 miles ⏱️ Duration: 3.5 hours 🚴 Difficulty: Intermediate 🚲 Terrain: Mixed 🗺️ GBX file
The lack of a summer cycling trip which involves a day out in Essex brought a small gravel-crazed trio to find a decent day out. Southend-on-Sea, for its easy access and beautiful seaside, was thus selected — not just because of TOWIE...
Myself and the two Y's (which actually made it the three Y's) set our coordinates, packed the coffee kit, and set sail to the City of London. Not a bad start — about 10 miles from where we live, to heat up the old calves.
Getting There
We took the c2c train from Fenchurch Street to West Horndon, which, refreshingly enough, hadn't had many Essexians on it, as they were all busy making the other way into their City broking jobs.
The train is easily accessed, and off-peak hours out of the city meant no one fussed with us carrying our bikes along.
The Route
West Horndon to Westley Heights Country Park
The first 10 miles were flat and uneventful, however the Essex country roads are scary — cars fly by, speeding well above 50mph, and we were happy to leave the roads behind us.
There is then a 400-foot elevation into Langdon Hill (as the name suggests), and we flanked Basildon University Hospital. If you really hate these country roads, maybe take the train all the way to Basildon station instead.
One flag: your first line has both "a day out in Essex" (my fix) and "find a decent day out" right after — I changed "night out in England" to "day out in Essex" since nothing else in the piece suggests an overnight or that you were leaving England, but that leaves the phrase "day out" twice in two sentences. Want me to leave it, or tweak one of them so it's not repeated?
Brentwood to Wat Tyler Country Park
The 10-mile push through Brentwood is another boring cityscape segment — the kind of place that's technically Essex but still feels like London's back garden.
Brentwood grew around a medieval pilgrim chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket and a 13th-century market charter, and it's the town where the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 first kicked off, when locals resisted a poll-tax commissioner. These days it's better known as the actual setting of TOWIE (The Only Way Is Essex), which is where its reputation for fake tan and flash cars comes from.
We had a coffee break around Wat Tyler Country Park, where things got interesting. Before reaching the gravel area, we ran into a closed gate and had to improvise with our clipless pedals around pretty muddy lanes. Not what you want when you go for "a bit of gravel." So a light-bulb here — make sure the pedals are gravel ones, or the trip gets unnecessarily hard.
Aside from that, the gravel tyres came real handy, and where the mud ended, the fields made a cosy ride to the outskirts of Southend, where Hadleigh Castle towers over.
On to Southend-on-Sea
While we didn't climb up to Hadleigh Castle, maybe we should have. We were however trying to get into Southend before late lunch, and the whole muddy affair made it so we could only linger in one more sport. The 10-mile stretch across the seaside is breathtaking — blue water, broad boardwalk, and yes, not just one chippy shop, to be honest.
A 20-minute break on the shore, and the two fellas decided to go bathe in the cool south-east waters, while I was watching the biked (it is still Essex...); We carried on 3 more miles and chose "The Seafood Shack," which was absolutely excellent. Not long after we were at Southend East station, fighting our urge to keep roaming the Essex realm all the way to Southend Victoria.
Practical Tips
- Gravel bike recommended given the off-road section near Wat Tyler - gravel clipless or regular gravel/MTB padels are essential.
- If you want to go into the sea, carry a proper bike lock.
- Hadleigh Castle is a detour - make sure to check the c2c train schedule back.
Afterword
An "easy" day trip can certainly go wrong in ever so many ways: an unnecessary fall, a tree to the head, incorrect shoes, and more. We had been travelling miles and miles of country roads across England, only to find silly ways to make this course a much harder experience than it should be. Is it pride, or simple vanity that makes savvy "Londoners" ill-plan? I do not know. What I will share is that a day out can be quite frustrating at times if things are done absent-mindedly.
For me, the road clipless pedals that were attached to my gravel bike (never again), a remnant of the endless road courses I've followed in London, made this day much less pleasant than it should have been. At the end of the day this was a nice day trip — the company was great and supporting, and the Stella / fried cod combo at the end, priceless. TOWIE, we'll be back.
