First stop is Leigh on Sea, which hosts the closest fishing activity to London and is the capital of the estuary's cockle-harvesting business. Up until the 1980s cockles were raked from the sands by hand but today vacuum dredgers suck up them in huge quantities.  There are only 14 licences to fish for cockles allocated for the whole of the Thames Estuary and eight of them are held in Leigh. While the boats supply the traditional and tourist markets in the area, most of the catch is exported to Europe.
Leigh's economy grew on the raking of cockles because of the miles of sand revealed by the receding tides, which is also why Southend has the longest pier in the world - it needed to be that long so that boats could use it and people could get a glimpse of the sea at low tide.  I was too early to be able to get onto the pier and was sorry to have missed White Arkitektur's Cultural Centre and Cafe which was erected in 2012. The structure was prefabricated at Tilbury Docks, shipped along the Thames and craned into position - a much more appropriate addition than the detritus I had found at Hastings.

I cycled through Jaywick Sands before hitting the seafront at Clacton. I had first heard about Jaywick when it was featured in an issue of Archigram many years ago. As I recall the magazine celebrated the informal architecture of the place and the interventions made to the bungalows and shacks by their occupants. The nearest thing in England to favelas and barriadas. The Archigram Group had probably been pointed in the direction of Jaywick by the Bartlett history Professor and writer Reyner Banham who lectured on the Essex settlement to his architecture students. More recently the poorly-serviced plotland development that once provided a place of escape for east Londoners has been named the most deprived town in the UK and in 2015 was featured in the Channel 5 programme 'Benefits by the Sea.' Today, there seems to be little evidence of the delights of customisation.    
In comparison to Southend's 2kms long pier, Clacton-on-Sea's is a minnow at 360m. In her excellent book, Excellent Essex, Gillian Darley describes the role of entrepreneurial engineer Peter Bruff in the founding of the town. The pier opened in 1873 and visitors would arrive by sea. In the 1860s Bruff had developed Walton-on-the-Naze as a seaside resort and built a railway line connecting it to Ipswich.
Before I got to Clacton I had stopped briefly in Rayleigh to take a phone call; as I moved off I dropped a small bag with my video memory cards, AirPod and GoPro chargers inside. I was ten miles down the road to Colchester before I realised what had happened and hotfooted it back to the spot where I stopped, but no bag to be seen! I set off again and was another ten miles down the road when I received a phone call. "I'm Holly Street, my father has found a bag with your name in it." I didn't have time to make another trip into Rayleigh so I arranged for the bag to be sent to my home. Thanks, Holly! and Holly's dad.

From Clacton to Frinton-on-Sea was a lovely ride along their nice wide promenade with a following wind. I had to make a slight detour for the no cycling request as the route narrowed as it came to a row of beach huts perched out over the sea.

Overlooking the sea at Frinton is the Frinton Park Estate  which was planned in the 1930s to include 1,100 houses, a town hall, college, churches, a shopping complex, and  hotel. Oliver Hill was the principal architect and selected a stellar group of young, progressive architects, including Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry, Tecton, FRS Yorke and Frederick Gibberd to design sections of the estate. But the project foundered. The modernist, experimental design and such as concrete construction proved difficult to sell. Only about 35  houses  were built; Oliver Hill had designed 12 of them , of which ten survive. The style is more popular now and a number of the houses have been restored.

It wasn't such a great ride today though the Thames Estuary - or what I used to call the Thames Gateway. The low lying land means you're not that close to the water and the drivers in Kent and Essex are a hell of a lot more aggressive than those on the south coast. The Strava route took me on a mix of busy roads and quieter lanes. The landscape in these parts is generally  gritty and flat; big logistics sheds, power lines and industrial structures  dominate the low horizon.  

I cycled across the Isle of Sheppey to Sheerness with its busy port handling motor cars and fruit and veg. It's on the edge of England, and it feels it. Although it is a busy seaside resort I could find few redeeming features except for a delightful piece of miniature pavement art tucked away on the most deserted section of the promenade showing a mouse and its shopping list. Then on to Gillingham, Chatham - where the dockyard was sadly closed dues to COVID19 - Rochester and Gravesend. There I took the small ferry across the River Thames to Tilbury.

On the north bank of the Thames sits Tilbury Fort which has protected London’s seaward approach from the 16th century through to the Second World War. Henry VIII built the first fort here, and Queen Elizabeth I famously rallied her army nearby to face the threat of the Armada. The present structure  is much the best example of a star layout  in England, with its circuit of moats and bastioned outworks.
From there I took a detour through the Thameside Nature Park with its gravel paths until I emerged onto the dual carriageway that leads down to DP World London Gateway Port deep sea container terminal; huge lorries stacked with containers roared up and down. Strava sent me down a road that was fenced off at its end so I retraced my steps and was forced to navigate one of the most complex series of roundabouts I have ever come across chased by the aforesaid lorries and Essex boy racers.
I was relieved to get to Canvey Island and pleased to be there in time to check out The Labworth Cafe which was Ove Arup's first building constructed 1932-33 which he designed to resemble the bridge of the Queen Mary. Although it looked a bit bleak with its shingle protection shutters on the front windows, you could see what Ove was getting at.

Then on through Broadstairs to Margate on a really lovely ride, much of it along sea defences with cliffs to the left of me and lapping waves to the right. The entrance to Margate itself is disappointing - as you turn the corner into The Parade you are greeted by the backside of Chipperfield’s Turner Gallery, not one of my favourite buildings even from the front, it’s not a great welcome to the town. I do wonder just how much culture can really impact on local economies like Margate’s. I came across a rather good blog by Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities who questions whether the brand recognition created by cultural projects brings with it an equivalent economic impact. The £68 million reportedly generated by the Turner Gallery would only equate to a maximum 0.5% of the total money created in the Thanet economy over that time, “a positive, but small number.”
What such interventions do, says Swinney, is to make such towns attractive places to live and with high-speed connections London they open up the possibility of Margate acting as a suburb of the capital. “The data offers some evidence of this happening – around 8,500 more people moved to Thanet (the local authority that Margate sits in) than moved to London between 2009 and 2017. This clearly is not a solution for a more isolated place like Scarborough or Grimsby.”
I carried on along to Reculver and the striking towers of the ruined medieval church which dominate views of Herne Bay and act as a navigation marker for ships - as they had for me for the last ten miles or so. Then to Whitstable, the poster child of regenerated seaside communities. Today it is celebrated for its oysters but the industry had practically died out in the 1950s. Today good train links to London make it a draw for day-trippers, ostreaphiles and foodies generally.
Then on to Faversham for the night.
Folkestone to Faversham 118km 832m
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There were still quite strong headwinds as I left Eastbourne, passing  a couple of designer beach huts commissioned by Eastbourne Borough Council as part of a programme to boost visitor numbers. The designs were nice enough but nobody seemed to be maintaining them, which rather spoilt the intended effect.

In recent years De Haan has been closely involved in bringing the arts and culture to the town, supporting the Creative Folkestone charity which, among other things, manages the Folkestone Triennal. Another plus for the town is the high-speed rail service which means it is possible to get to London St Pancras in a little over 50 minutes. Since it opened in 2009, this has helped to stimulate the local economy and generate new employment opportunities.
Despite all this, some parts Folkestone experience record levels of deprivation; the proportion of households earning less than £20,000 per annum is near twice the national average and the rate of unemployment and permanently sick and disabled is above the county average. These problems were brought home to me as I got closer to the harbour to find groups of street drinkers gathered at the base of the iconic Grand Burstin Hotel involved in a rather disagreeable punch up.
As I wandered around the Old Town I came across a bar housed in a fine classic building, formerly a Congregational chapel, called The Samuel Peto. This was a bit of a surprise as I had already arranged to follow the Samuel Peto Trail when I got to Lowestoft. Where was the connection? A quick Google sorted me out. Sir Samuel Morton Peto MP was one of the great Victorian railway builders. In 1843 he bought Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk and carried out a number of developments in  nearby Lowestoft. In the 1860s he got involved with the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR). A keen Baptist, he contributed to the area by funding the construction of the Folkestone chapel. Unfortunately for Peto the LCDR failed and his reputation was destroyed in the ensuring financial scandal and he was forced to retire from public life. (One can still see the crest of the LCDR on the unused columns which sit in the River Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and Blackfriars Station.)
Eastbourne to Folkestone 106.65km. Elevation 643m

Medellin is a fascinating city. It sits in a valley with a river running, north south, down the middle. Large areas of the surrounding mountains are covered with precarious slum housing similar to the favelas of Brazil or barriadas of Peru. The traffic is terrible and there are plans to restrict cars by permitting access to odd number plates one day and even the next. It has an excellent metro system that largely runs parallel to the river and stations are linked to the four lines of spectacular Metrocable cars that span the city.  The cable cars allow a transport system to be threaded into the dense slum areas with minimal disruption and efficiently traverse the steep inclines. Bus stops and cycle share are located at metro stations, providing a satisfyingly integrated system. E​​very Sunday and public holidays there is a cyclovia around Avenida Poblado between 7am and 1pm. I was told there are some 100km of cycleways in the city (a link to them can be found here) and so I decided to investigate.
I started at the Botanical Gardens and followed a route going south. Crossings are linked to pedestrian movement rather than vehicular and marked in red - so you cross when the peds do.

 The cycleway turned onto a wide street with a well marked route next to a tree-lined pavement. But then came a bit of a surprise and cyclists turning right were directed onto a lightly segregated cycleway which ran down the middle of the road which did little to prevent encroachment by vehicles or was great for peds.

Then, as so often happens, it ran out of steam and cyclists were forced onto a rather narrow and at times crowded pavement. But then as quickly as it had disappeared, it started again as a shared foot/bike path:

Further on I was impressed by the new connection into the University, which was very busy and included a bikeshare station.

The route then went into the middle of the road again. The raised section between four lanes of traffic is safe enough for cyclists, but again, poses problems for peds. It's also pretty polluted.
​Then came a more successful bit of light segregation followed by a nice, wide street where cyclists are segregated from traffic by trees and from peds by bollards and planting.

I then got to a Metro station where Bikeshare links up to the rest of the public transport network. The cycle route continued on through a lovely park, following the route of the Metro.

I finish with a shot of a junction protected by rather interesting bollards. I presume the holes are in there to take a chain or a rope; they provide a high degree of protection to cyclists, are easy for peds and look OK to boot.

I was only in Medellin for three days and am in no way an expert, but I was very impressed by the ambition of the city to face up to some pretty amazing challenges, not least repairing the city after decades of drug trade induced violence. The charismatic Mayor of Medellin in the early noughties, who then became Governor of Antioquia state is Sergio Fajardo, a mathematician rather than a politican whose father was an architect. He saw the benefits of providing the poor with a strong social infrastructure and built an amazing array social and sports centres, libraries and hospitals in the most needy areas. There is even a spanish disctionary definition of 'fajardismo'. 

One cannot leave the home of Quintana, Chaves and Uran without commenting on more adventurous cycling. In spite of the competitive reputation of Colombian cyclists I saw none of the aggressive cycling one sees so often in London - although where there were no cycleways, riders were fearless as they mixed it with the busy traffic. Most impressive were the massive climbs in the surrounding mountains - on every car journey out of the centre one encounters dozens of cyclists, amateur and professional, training in the thin air.

 On Saturday 24 April 1993 at 9.17am, the City of London Police received a coded warning from the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. Just over an hour later a bomb in a tipper truck parked in Bishopsgate and loaded with almost a ton of fertiliser was detonated, destroying adjacent buildings and severely damaging many others within a 500m radius. The cost of building repairs was estimated at £1billion.
The IRA bombing campaign set in train a series of events that led to an equally dramatic but more benign change in the architecture of the Square Mile - the rise of the Eastern Cluster. The close-kissing towers, still growing on the City skyline - once dominated by Wren’s 51 church spires - have multiplied ever since Foster and Partners received planning permission for 30 St Mary Axe in 2000 on a site made vacant by the 1992 Baltic Exchange bomb. 
One of the victims of the IRA was the Leatherseller’s Livery Company Hall in St Helen’s Place, set behind a neoclassical facade built in the early 1900s. As the ancient Company, which dates back to 1444, contemplated restoration, it became clear that surrounding sites of which it held the freehold were ripe for development. The Square Mile was booming and the City Corporation was keen to densify office space. As then Planning Chief Peter Rees said, “if we can’t build out we must build up.” 
The outcome was that the Leathersellers did a very advantageous deal with Brookfield Properties whereby the developer would build the 40 storey 100 Bishopsgate Tower next to the site of the old hall and the proceeds would fund a new one - no expense spared.
Instead of building up, Eric Parry designed a building that goes down. Behind the refurbished facades of Helen’s Place, the above-ground floors have been allocated to income-generating office space while a grand ground floor reception space, with views out to the medieval walls of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, leads to a sweeping, processional stair down to the Company’s dining hall. The curved walls are lined with shrunken bull shoulder with a two-tone effect developed by leather designer Bill Amberg, to match the vitreous enamel on the building’s exterior. Elsewhere, Amberg has responded to Parry’s obsession with craft to fill the Hall with a range of leather pieces including a corridor lined with pale green and maroon, gold-foiled, leather-clad panels and an inglenook in the ground floor lobby area entirely stitched by hand using historic saddlery techniques.
​Craft, not just in leather, is a key focus of Parry’s interior: the Court Room has double height panels of American walnut with a central court table of European walnut; the reception room sports a central blue-and-white glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly suspended above a circular bronze table, while the carpet was designed by Parry to complement the Chihuly above. At the top of the main staircase is a stained-glass window by Leonard Walker showing Henry VI, the monarch who conferred the first Charter on the Company made in 1937 for a previous hall.
Scagliola pilasters, transferred from the old Hall, have been scattered randomly across the walls and ceilings - perhaps as a reminder of the destruction of previous halls by the Great Fire, the Blitz and the IRA bombings. The walls of the Dining Hall are again covered in American walnut panels which sit below a forty metre long tapestry with images and allusions relating to the Leathersellers’ Company and its history. 
The Hall was opened in 2017 by the Earl of Wessex and is a worthy new member of the cluster of City Livery halls that is such an important and little-known component of London’s heritage. 
The importance of this collection of architectural gems can be discovered in a remarkable new book by Dr Anya Lucas and Henry Russell with photos by Andreas von Einsiedel. I use the word remarkable advisedly. Astonishingly, this is the first time in their long history that the 40 historic buildings have been properly photographed and compared. Thanks to the initiative of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects it is now possible to properly appreciate the legacies of the ancient City trades like the Mercers, the Grocers, the Goldsmiths and the Skinners. It is to be hoped that the publication will prompt the generally secretive Companies to make their homes more accessible to the wider public and in that way to highlight the rich culture of the Square Mile.

The Livery Halls of the City of London Anya Lucas and Henry Russell Photography by Andreas von Einsiedel is published by Merrell on behalf of the Worshipful Company of  Chartered Architects. 280 pp and 450 illustrations.

https://bit.ly/2P0Me2k​    Price £45