Gravesend 18th Feb 2010

Another trip way out east!  Not my normal haunt I must admit but I had a morning to myself and now that the train service is fast I can be in Gravesend station at 7:48am which gave me 3 hours to relax by the Thames.

Things didn't go quite to plan though, stepped out onto the rivers edge and couldn't see Tilbury!  Could have disappeared for all I could tell, the fog was so thick.  Ships contacting VTS were reporting visibility of less than a cable.  First along was the Dagmar Theresa outbound for Amsterdam.  I was only 200 yards away but the best picture I could get was far from perfect.

The tide was out and just turning so all was quiet for an hour or so. Time to sample the local Asda again for breakfast. There is a burger van called the luchbox in the car park at the same retail park
View Larger Map but I fancied my breakfast sat in the warm rather than sat on a curb.  And to be fair, at £4 for 3 sausages, 3 slices of bacon, tomatoes, scrambled egg, 3 hash browns and a coffee its not bad!

Back to my perch on the shore, just off Clifton Marine Parade and it was busy, busy for the next two hours.  The replica paddle steamer Elizabethian was headed up river and struggling against the tide looking rather out of place with the modern ships laid up in Tilbury dock.

Time for something a little different.  I'd noticed a lengthy oil slick drifting down river all morning and it seemed to be coming from the barge Nortech 3 moored alongside just west of Gravesend pier.  Evidently I wasn't the only one as the oil spill cleanup vessel Recover followed the slick slowly, pausing to check out all of the vessels along the slicks path until it found the Nortech 3.  There then followed an exchange between the Recover and the crew on the Nortech.  'Nothing to do with me Gov' seemed to be the response, although the source of the oil soon disappeared.

Plenty more was going on as 3 unmarked boats, 2 Ribs and a small cat then came up river at an extremely fast pace.  I seem to remember that they were police boats from a TV series a while ago but can anyone confirm that? 

I was trying to make the 11:13 back to St Pancras but had to stay as the Norking was on its way through Tilbury lock with the Aasvik and Eglantine slowing down to let her out first as the three made their way down river.

So what started as a disappointing day actually ended up being an interesting morning.  Ok, it was raining/snowing, I almost slid into the river on the sheets of ice on the dock and I got eyeballs like saucers staring into the fog but it was well worth the trip.

I forgot to mention that I was entertained most of the morning by a few clowns who sounded like they were loading stone onto a barge somewhere on the river and chatting on the radio.  Most of the stuff I overheard contained a least one of the following words....w****r, c**t, mug, f**ker etc.  Wonder what the other vessels who were listening in to that were thinking!