I like an unlikely day out and South Woodham Ferrers definitely fits the bill. The town's in estuarine Essex (not quite as far out as more visitworthy Burnham-on-Crouch). It's hemmed in on three sides by tidal water (or if you time it wrong thick mud). It has just one tourist attraction (which doesn't admit childless adults). It's linked to London by train (but you have to change onto a branch line at Wickford). It was barely a village until fifty years ago (so has architecture you may loathe). It's also approximately circular so my visit involved walking around it twice, once within the town and once around the edge. Join me for a trip around a round town, and then around it again.
The history bit: For many centuries there was just a Woodham Ferrers, unsurprisingly a short distance to the north. In 1889 the village earned a station where the Maldon and Southminster lines diverged, and over the years that became the site of a separate settlement, initially of lowly plotland developments. In the 1970s Essex county council swept in and compulsorily purchased 1½ square miles to create a New Riverside Country Town. Don't think Basildon, think twisty cul-de-sacs of barnlike houses with triangular roofs and barely a block of flats in sight. The town now has a population of 16,000, a goodly proportion of London commuters and a sense of being reclusively adrift beside the river.
Around town
A ten minute walk takes you from the station to the town centre, an entirely artificial construct designed to look like its street plan is much older. Within this triangle of land are the police station, fire station, library and church, plus a small warren of shopping streets and a lot of places you can drop into for a drink and a sit down. Many buildings have a rooftop flourish in a faux agricultural style, while a peculiar spire like an upturned ice cream cornet has been bolted onto the post office. At the heart of things is a false marketplace called Queen Elizabeth II Square (because she opened it in 1981 - the life of a monarch isn't all privilege), focused round a bandstand that doesn't get used much any more except by teenagers hanging about.
For entertainment there's a barnlike pub called The Town Crier and a seemingly unnecessary hotel where you can see bands like Scooby and Wully Bully on a Saturday night. There used to be a small cinema called The Flix, which I squeezed into 25 years ago to watch Titanic on the not-so-big screen, but that's long since been replaced by retirement flats. A large proportion of the town centre is owned by Asda, not just their big supermarket but their separate clothes shop, their opticians and a lot of the other central units, courtesy of a bold deal with the council in the early days. They can't be too pleased that Sainsburys were later granted permission for a huge superstore on the ring road, the town's first significant 21st century expansion and likely not the last.
The surrounding neighbourhoods spin off a series of feeder roads. Here the houses attempt to be diverse, cottagey and uncoupled, with smart rustic irregularity the order of the day. Pick carefully and you can still get a two-bed for £200,000, although something more family-sized and Essexy may not come cheap. It's probably wise to own a car because otherwise you may become over-reliant on hourly buses to Chelmsford and Basildon. What's more if you buy your home in the southwest quarter of town it may well come with one of the geekiest addresses in the country... because all the streets here have Tolkienesque names.
Imagine the planning meeting where they decided to call the spine road Gandalf's Ride and then set about picking characters for the cul-de-sacs leading off it. Imagine now living in Elronds Rest, submitting your tax bill from Great Smials or having to give your address as Gimli Watch. I have enormous respect for the house at the top of Hobbiton Hill whose owners have gone the whole hog and called it Bag End. I was far less impressed by the missing apostrophe in the nameplate at Two Gandalfs Ride, because as every wizard knows there's only one Gandalf to ride them all.
Around the town
For a complete contrast I then walked around the edge of South Woodham Ferrers, most of which is along high creekside banks. The circular route provided by the Essex & South Suffolk Community Rail Partnership is somehow six miles long, and I'd recommend stout footwear because even after a dry month it was squelchy in places. I'd also recommend going anti-clockwise and missing out the northern bit, but we'll get to that. A map on the platform should make it clear which way to head (along the north side of the railway and through the underpass), but when the first fingerpost says "To the Coast" it's stretching the truth somewhat, the open sea remains invisible throughout. Nevertheless prepare to have all your cobwebs blown away.
The small stream threading through Woodham Fen is about to broaden into full-on tidal creek as you follow it south. It gets more interesting after the sewage works and noticeably deeper too. That white house on the first bend by the sailing club is one of the two old farmhouses who sold their fields to create the town. By now grassland has morphed into saltmarsh and that's pretty much all we'll be seeing as Fenn Creek flows out into the River Crouch. The lowly clubhouse at South Woodham Ferrers Yacht Club can't hold a candle to the Royal Corinthian downstream in Burnham (one teensy balcony versus four stacked terraces) but it does its job. On the far side of the river is the quayside at Hullbridge, its pub tempting but alas also inaccessible now the ferry's extinct.
The racket you can likely hear inland comes from Marsh Farm, an animal adventure park for families with younger kids which offers piglets, alpacas, rideable tractors and Rossi's ice cream. But we're striding on along the earth embankment into the estuarine wilds and this is much more like it. The path zigzags above the reeds, the Crouch either glitters or turns to mud and that medieval saltpan to your left is likely full of seabirds. Pick your season right and these skies are an ornithologist's dream, so you may even see more people with huge lenses than local residents out walking their dogs. Look too for distant masts, reflective pools, turbid channels, wide open skies and the occasional bench where you can rest and absorb. If you're flagging you can head inland quicker and cut off the tip of the headland but I walked the whole bloody lot and it was glorious.
After what feels like forever, but skips by, the bankside walk reaches the top of Clements Green Creek. Here several townhouses creep back into view but ignore those for now and walk the last elevated stretch into Saltcoats Park. This is where I recommend you abandon the circuit and divert into the town centre, perhaps after a spin round the lagoons. Should you continue you merely get to experience some light industrial estates and the arterial road, plus perhaps a look up 'Radar Hill' to the north of the town. Here Marconi did some of their pioneering dishwork, this being some of the highest land near Chelmsford, until BaE finally sold off the site in 2016. South Woodham Ferrers isn't exactly full of surprises but it has enough to go round, and that estuarine loop is chef's kiss.
