I am not sure where the River Thames finishes and the North Sea really starts, but I think it may actually be slightly beyond Southend. The map on the world famous pleasure pier even shows the water as being the River Thames so I guess that 'on-Sea' is a little bit of poetic licence and from a marketing point of view it sounds much better than Southend-on-Thames Estuary.

Southend is about an hour's train journey from central London and you have a couple of options to reach this part of Essex. We travelled from Fenchurch Street station which is the terminus station in the city. It was originally built in 1841 for the London and Blackwall Railway and became the terminus for the London Tilbury and Southend Railway in 1858. Services today from Fenchurch Street are operated by c2c, owned by National Express, and this was our first ever trip on this route. The alternative route to Southend is via London Liverpool Street, again taking about an hour, and we used this route on our return to the capital.

The day was not really the best weather wise but arriving at Southend Central railway station with a target in mind, we set off to walk over a mile out to sea (or Thames Estuary) on the Southend-on-Sea Pleasure Pier that sits at the south end of the High Street. The pier is the longest pleasure pier in the world measuring 1.34 miles (or 2.16 km) in length. The current iron pier opened in 1887 and it would have been a shame not to walk to the very end, despite the windy and damp conditions. A train is also available for those that do not want to walk but being unemployed the £1.00 'Winter Walkers' entrance fee was all we paid.

Close to the end of the pier is the green and yellow café used by Jamie Oliver with his mate Jimmy Doherty in their Friday Night Feast series that is shown on Channel 4. The café however now seems to be operating as an ice cream shop (albeit closed on a cold, damp and windy February day for no readily apparent reason) and presumably, as all of the filming seems to be done in the height of summer, they put all the furniture and fixings back for the show. It seems a shame that it is not used all year round as there is only one other small café on the pier which, given the number of visitors, seems quite poor.

The end of the pier sees a modern building housing art exhibitions (the one that was showing was rather strange) and a small café as well as the RNLI lifeboat station and gift shop. Overall however the pier seems to be lacking a certain amount of pleasure activities when compared to those at the likes of Blackpool or other seaside resorts - although maybe the walk to the end of the pier and back is pleasure enough on a good day?

Before leaving Southend there was time for food in one of the small cafés located opposite the pier and we chose Rebecca's Café which was pleasant enough and very traditionally British even if the owners were not. The small portion of fish, chips and mushy peas was more than adequate for lunch and this was followed by a walk along the High Street to Southend Victoria railway station. Services from here terminate at London Liverpool Street and have the added bonus of First Class, something that c2c do not have on their trains.

Having seen the Essex coast on a Saturday we will next see the sea (and that will really be the sea) in North Yorkshire with a visit to Whitby on Monday. So it will be fish and chips again!