A long, wet hike back to childhood

It was that time of year again, time to be a pilgrim and go off to Tilbury, beside the Thames, to remember the great migration by my brave parents. And not just parents, but a grandmother, an uncle, three infants and a baby.

It must have taken extraordinary courage to take a whole family off to the other side of the world, just after the war when for the first time for an age people could forget the terrors just passed and – as much as extreme rationing allowed – enjoy themselves.

For six years, bombs had been raining indiscriminately down, and booby-traps awaited the unwary.

Salute the brave migrators

Every other day was packed with news of friends and relations mutilated if not murdered outright by the great nations at war.

The least I can do to salute the brave migrators and their courage is to go to Tilbury each year where on this night sixty-eight years ago, the ss Orontes set off for the southern hemisphere.

Late April often brings uncertain weather and today certainly reflected it. The pilgrim paid for his visit to the Tilbury docks. A pleasant morning in London became a wet afternoon near the Thames estuary. I was soon soaked.

The annual visits are almost always frustrated by more than just the weather. The docks offers no welcome to well-meaning pilgrims. First there's quite a stretch from the nearest station along a road carrying endless huge, very noisy lorries.

The building where I presume little me would have been carried through to that huge ship is no longer available for non-passengers.

If you’re on foot, the only way onto the docks is via an old bridge which allows cars through but bans pedestrians. The choice is to risk wading through the tidal mud, or ignoring the signs.

A real-life drama

Usually the docks are just that – huge pieces of timber alongside the deeper waters of the Thames, silent, barren reminders of the days when travel meant crossing oceans. Nowadays, it’s rare to even see a ship nearby.

Today was rather different. A real-life drama was on show.
Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com