hiking thames marshes, or why you shouldn’t pop blackberries in your mouth without looking first

Aw man, isn’t this the cutest little snail you ever saw?

Stuart’s finished hiking the Capital Ring around London, so he took me along on the first leg of the London LOOP (which stands for London Outer Orbital Path). Walking through Crayford Marshes, we hit every kind of weather you can imagine, short of hurricanes. The cloud display was impressive, it was a proper English-style bank holiday kind of outing.

A lot of the landscape was fairly industrial, but I’m rather partial to dockland rubble. Here a tractor and a Hillman Imp pose dramatically in front of the Dartford Crossing (a huge bridge over the Thames, east of central London).

I never really get away from children’s books. Here’s an odd sign I saw in a particularly scrappy bit of the docklands.

The Narnia sign sat just over these hoardings:

I love the textures you get on old containers when they get a bit weather-beaten.

Here’s the sky over the River Darent, just before the heavens opened.

Thank goodness for ponchos.