The World's Longest Pier - A Day Trip From London to Westcliff-on-Sea, Southend, Essex

Southend Pier. Photo courtesy of Romazur in Wikipedia.

Problem
Where do you take the seniors for a fun day out? What do they enjoy?

Answer
Yesterday an animated white-haired lady, let's call her Maggie, told me how much she enjoyed a day out at Westcliff. Actually, I overheard her telling her cousin, "It's got the most wonderful pier!" So I joined in and asked where it was. Westcliff is a suburb of Southend. It's on the Thames estuary.

She told me:

Westcliff, has a wonderful pier - it's the world's longest pier! It was a long walk to the end, and then back. But we stopped to see the lifeboat museum.

"You can take a train along the pier. The lifeboat crew can take the train. When it's not running, they have a vehicle so they can get to the end fast. Some of them sleep at the end of the pier overnight, when they're on call.

"It's the most convenient seaside from London because you don't have to cross London to get to it."

The cliff has a funicular and a lift, but she is dismissive of it.

"It's not a proper cliff by the sea, like Bournemouth."

Westcliff has a large Jewish population and is nicknamed Jerusalem on sea. The pier in 1.2 miles, 2 kilometers. The train takes just under an hour. The road is the M25 which circles London and then the A13. (How do you remember the number? Think of what the bingo callers would say. Number 13,  unlucky for some.) The roads in the UK and A roads, or big important roads, faster and wider than the B roads which are like B movies, sneered at by drivers who want to go fast and direct. Then the A road were overtaken in status by motorways.


Train tickets are cheaper if you buy a discount card of which there are more than a dozen, for example young people old people, two together, groups, family, armed forces. With senior rail ticket, for one journey, the cost of the ticket amounted to the saving on the first journey. If you were only taking one journey, was it worth the time and effort? We decided it was, because then you already had it if you ever wanted to take another journey.
Useful Websites
www.visitbritain.com
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Westcliff-on-Sea

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.