22 JUNE 1951, Page 14

Crossing the Ferry

Unless I am in a hurry, which I always seek not to be, there is nothing I enjoy more than crossing the Gravesend-Tilbury Ferry. This experience gives all the pleasures of going abroad, without the sea-sickness. Gravesend, with its narrow, steep high-street hung with signs tile Chinatown, is a marked contrast to the squalid Tilbury, which appears to consist largely of late-Victorian slums dumped on the marsh. The Thames, of course, as the wofld's highway, is always full of interest, and the ten minutes spent in crossing it offer a feast for the eye and the imagination.