Benfleet Circular via Leigh on Sea walk

Main circular walk 15.2km (9.8m) (or a bit longer if you explore Leigh on Sea)

Short walk to Leigh 8.9km (5.6m)

Main circular walk with optional circuit of Two Tree Island 18.6km (11.6m)

This Essex excursion is a companion walk to the short 5.6km (3.5m) Benfleet to Leigh on Sea amble along the Benfleet Creek shoreline which was devised to coincide with the Leigh on Sea folk festival and which usually takes place at the end of June. You can find more information about this walk here. Another related walk is SWC Walk 258; a Canvey Island circular starting and finishing at Benfleet Station.

This is a flat walk of 23.2km (14.5m) essentially following the sea –wall around the island in an environment of tidal flats, marshes and sandbanks. This day walk covers completely different territory: the higher ground north of the estuary and Canvey Island, and is a walk of contrasts. In the morning you go along narrow, grassy paths through the dense, hilly woodland of Benfleet Downs and Hadleigh Country Park. You visit the ruined Hadleigh Castle which is an excellent picnic spot and has superb views; on a clear day you can see all the way across Canvey Island to the Hoo Peninsula and the North Downs in Kent. You have lunch at Leigh on Sea; a town rapidly gentrifying with boutiques and up-market restaurants.

After lunch in Leigh on Sea you walk back to Benfleet along a wide track adjacent to Benfleet Creek with fine views of the flat open estuary waterscape and the hilly woods away to your right which you walked in the morning. You can also incorporate a circular walk of Two tree island which has fine bird-watching opportunities.

The undulating hills of Hadleigh Country Park were the venue for the mountain bike events in the 2012 London Olympics and there are a large network of bike trails of varying severity criss-crossing the area. This walk however uses “walkers only” paths and routes with just short and unavoidable stretches on bike trails.

This walk is best done from May to October. In winter, stretches of the narrow woodland paths are likely to be very muddy with some short sections quite tricky to navigate.