The River Cray: A Perambulation of Kent 8 years ago
Posted in London on Sunday 11th March 2018 at 7:03pm
As my train lumbered across the junction and into the terminus platforms at Orpington station, I pondered the journey here. I should have been here a week ago, a long-planned and much anticipated weekend trip which combined a range of events and - for me at least - culminated in a long day of walking. Then it snowed - quite a bit in fact. Perhaps the most significant period of snow for eight years - and it was hard not to reflect back on that last period: a long, dark week of slithering to the station along ice-slick pavements and worrying about how I'd escape at the weekend. This time around, the weather reports and growing panic in the media had sparked my remembered anxieties again and I'd suffered through a week of doubt and concern - by turns feeling stupidly angry and utterly and childishly selfish. When the day came, we made a supreme effort to get to London - which it seems was by then recovering from its deluge - but the mixture of rather poorer local conditions and a train operator which is always keen to find an excuse to reduce or remove services left us stranded. We returned home for an extended weekend of staying indoors and watching the locals descend into feral, panic-buying lunacy. I filled my time with persistent bickering with customer service teams in a - mostly successful - attempt to gain refunds on our lost trip. We regrouped and replanned - there was no reason we couldn't try for next week... And so I found myself once again at the edge of London - this time in the far, largely uncharted south-eastern quadrant. The city felt distant and remote - this corner of London was almost squeezed out of the boundary, a hazy margin where bus routes terminate and Oyster zones evaporate.
Outside the station, all was quiet. I had to remind myself that it was Sunday morning and also somewhat earlier than I'd normally be setting out. A cab driver quietly smoked beside his car, eyeing me expectantly as I left the station and turning away in disgust as I shouldered my bag and set off down the hill to the main road below. Despite the long genesis of this walk, my planning had been minimal - and had mostly focused on the later part of the route as the River Cray navigated broad open spaces on the edge of London. This, though, was just how I'd expected these commuter-fringes of the city to feel - sleepy, safe and strangely calming. As I turned north at a roundabout which encircled a war memorial obelisk, I began a long trudge up the broad and surprisingly substantial High Street. Most of the stores were still behind their protective shutters, but the tiny branch of Starbucks was preparing to open. I half contemplated lingering until I'd had more coffee - but I decided against it. It was a rare pleasure to have an entire day free for walking like this, and there would be time later for refreshments. So I passed by the inexplicably named 'Walnuts Shopping Centre' and progressed along the long, low stretch of mostly twentieth-century shops towards the northern edge of town. Orpington is easily imagined as a creation of the heady days of the last century - and indeed for a while in the 1960s 'Orpington Man' was the yardstick for the normal, suburban lower-middle classes who elected Liberal MP Eric Lubbock in a shock revival for the ailing party. However the town has a much longer and deeper history, first entering the record in 1038 when Eadsy, chaplain to King Cnut, gifted his estate here as a priory attached to Canterbury. Turning into a side-street which unexpectedly became a rural lane between weatherboarded cottages, I entered Priory Gardens via a side-gate. This unlikely mix of public park and formal gardens was added to the grounds of the largely still extant priory buildings by their last owners, Cecil and Lilian Hughes, before the site transferred to the ownership of Orpington Urban District Council in 1947. I took a slow circuit around the greenery, finally finding myself beside a broad and shallow pond with a stony bed visible beneath its clear waters. Here, where the clay of the Thames basin meets the wide swathe of chalk which stretches south-east to Dover, rainwater reaches the surface and the River Cray rises...
Once I'd located the source of the river I was keen to begin walking its route - however the London Borough of Bromley had other ideas. I'd noted a gang of workmen idly waiting for the clock to tick past 9am when presumably it becomes decent to raise a racket on the sabbath, but hadn't reckoned on their barriers blocking a small wooden bridge crossing the pond. I doubled back and circled the eastern bank while tame wildfowl clucked and fluttered around the edge, expecting food from any passing human. I finally regained my route at the end of the High Street where with traffic avoiding the notoriously sluggish section of the M25 scurried by on the A224. I crossed at the lights, cars screeching unwillingly to a halt at the signal, and headed north along the optimistically well-named Cray Avenue. I hadn't reckoned on much road walking today, and I wasn't sorry when at the end of a blue fence adorned with 'Jewson' signs, a gap in the hedge gave way onto a muddy path between three wooden stakes. I squelched between them, slithering along rather carefully, ready to retreat if needed until an emerging dog walker proved beyond doubt that there was a means of passing through. A muddy but reasonably firm path emerged and I plunged into the trees, emerging near a low brick wall around the head of a culvert. The Cray tumbled over a sluice and curved through the grassy strip beside the road. Faced with a choice between a more formal path and the continuation of the muddy riverside route, I took the later and splashed happily along beside the narrow but busy stream before emerging at a gate on Kent Road. Across the street the better surfaced path continued beside a low railing over the Cray, and I headed back under the trees towards the hard-to-pin-down village of St. Mary Cray. Until the coming of the railway, this village had been the heart a collection of small communities - The Crays - providing their market and mother church among other things. When it arrived, the railway crossed the valley via a nine-arched brick viaduct which swept it over the High Street of St. Mary Cray on its route out into Kent. This structure meant the station was constructed to the west of the village, to solid ground nearer to the curiously named environs of Poverest - a corrupted attempt to honour Margaret de Pouery, a landowner here in 14th century. Thus the modern village struggles to settle on a single centre. Near the viaduct a pleasant village green with a quaint wooden sign is surrounded by ancient shops largely now converted into dwellings, while the broad valley floor between the river and the A224 is filled with commercial and industrial premises including the carbon-copy units of the Nugent Retail Park. Even the vast Allied Bakeries site emitted no aromatic evidence of its craft this sleepy morning, while disgruntled punters struggled to leave the Mary Rose - a 16th century coaching inn turned motel which has frankly terrifying reviews online. The river emerged in a narrow channel beside the High Street as it passed under the high brick arches of the viaduct. A brace of guests wrestled their wheeled suitcases along the narrow walkway between the river and the rather gloomy looking extension of the hotel. Their faces betrayed a mixture of relief and disappointment. This is where London washes up against Kent - not far beyond the edge of St. Mary Cray there are open fields which stretch out to the nearby M25. Drained of life by the motorway, the commuter railway, the irresistible draw of Bluewater and the local retail sheds, this place feels dogged and depressing and quite different from the way I imagined it when scudding overhead on the rails. I decide to treat the viaduct as a point of transition and head north into what I hope will be less unnerving territory.
After passing the squat but solid church of St. Mary which was has been variously extended since the 13th century, I set off along Main Road - a long stretch of small millworkers' cottages mixed with more recent social housing, which led to a green space where the river broadened into a former millpond. The main course of the river and a sizeable part of the pond was tucked behind the back gardens of Main Road, but a bridge led over the river and ran alongside a busily burbling flood relief channel cut through the gardens on the course of a former millrace, to a tumbling sluice. The Cray disappeared under the road here, and into the former site of Nash's Paper Mill. Much of this site is now the rather anonymous Crayfields Business Park, but on a whitewashed wall a war memorial records those employees of the company who fought in the First World War, six of whom did not return. Poignantly enough, a much younger W.Nash is featured in the list. The mill survived to see a unique diary kept and published in a short history of the site, recording the efforts papermakers went to in order to ensure a supply during the bombardment of South East England in the Second World War. On the night of 2nd August 1944, the author casually records:
Papermaking under shell fire, but we kept going. Complaints about quality are receiving scant courtesy. People outside the south-east area have no conception of what we are undergoing.Extract from 'William Nash of St. Paul's Cray, Papermakers' - W.S Shears, 1950
The mill appears to have struggled on until around 1980, as Nash focused its operations on other equally venerable sites in Hertfordshire and Kent which subsequently closed too. Now the family business continues largely as a property company, the land around the river which drove the mills now their stock in trade. It was hard to conceive of vast quantities of fine paper, some destined for banknote manufacture leaving this quiet corner near the weatherboarded Bull Inn for well over two centuries.
At Pauls Cross, near The Bull I crossed Sandy Lane and began to head north and out into the countryside. The Cray ran below in inaccessible privately-owned meadows, the map showing tantalisingly broad lakes and grassy scrub which would have made for muddy but interesting walking. Instead I began a long, slow climb alongside a country lane which thundered with surprisingly fast traffic. Eventually, the narrow footpath rose away from the roadside and disappeared into a long, damp tunnel beneath the trees. The road could occasionally be glimpsed below, cars flashing by - slowing for the infrequent speed humps before accelerating crazily away again. The path was silent and empty, and I began to doubt this was a sensible way forward - a fear confirmed when I reached the Bannatyne Health Club driveway and the path disappeared entirely. Looking ahead, the road curved to pass under the A20 with little hint of a pathway reappearing. The traffic swished by my elbow, freed of speed controls and taking full advantage of this rural rat-run between the communities on the edge of London. A public footpath struck out towards Ruxley Wood, but that would take me much further east than I wanted to head. Reluctantly and rather dejectedly I retraced my steps to The Bull and crossed the river once again near the site of Nash Mill. I soon found myself back on the busy A224 at Sevenoaks Way - a broad arterial route built in the mid 1920s to bypass Orpington and the Crays. At Crittall's Corner it met the A20 at a bleak and busy roundabout. A damp underpass curled under the road, tiled with childlike images of the traffic above, emerging in the centre of the roundabout with the major road passing unnervingly close by overhead - apparently on a budget-saving flyover that wasn't built an inch higher than it needed to be. In the north-west nook of this junction, now occupied by a sizeable branch of B&Q, was the former Crittall Window factory. This southern outpost of a company more associated with Essex than Kent produced the simple but enduringly appreciated steel windows which graced many inter-war housing schemes and Art Deco masterpieces alike. The company enjoyed remarkable success in the USA too, and it felt cruelly ironic that this factory had disappeared as Coca Cola's European centre of operations arose across the street. It was here that the ill-fated Dasani mineral water was produced - essentially Sidcup tap-water treated with minerals to add 'healthy' properties. A little over a month after its February 2004 launch, the water was withdrawn when it was discovered that the mineralisation process produced harmful levels of Bromates in the otherwise completely safe-to-drink tap water.
The sprawling site which opened in 1961 was decked out in the company's distinctive red and white livery and stretched east to the Cray, preventing access to the riverbank. Instead I walked the road towards the crossroads at the heart of Foots Cray, now an outpost of Sidcup - effectively a suburb of a suburb. Named for the local Saxon landowner Godwin Fot rather than any bodily appendage, until the early years of the twentieth century roles here were reversed with Foots Cray the dominant settlement in the area and the seat of the Urban District Council. A mix of industrial decline and improved transport into London propelled the comparatively lowly Sidcup into the spotlight, taking the municipal honours formally from 1921. Despite this, Sidcup suffers a troubled time in the spotlight - the butt of jibes at suburbia and the inevitable origin of the mythical '08:40 train' which every hapless middle-class stereotype needs to catch. By 2015, the ever-dull James Corden was discussing this 'armpit of England' on his US chat show. In truth, the sliver of Sidcup through which I passed was surprising busy and interesting, and as I crossed into Rectory Lane and passed the tiny War Memorial, things became near-idyllic. The lane narrowed towards overhanging trees, only the imposing tower of a Victorian school building standing above them. Established originally by Benjamin Harenc Esq. in 1816, these remaining and much improved buildings date from 1883 with the pyramid-topped tower proclaiming in an inscription 'While ye have light believe in the light that ye may be the children of light'. Harenc was the son of a recently-arrived Huguenot who swiftly made good being appointed High Sheriff of Kent in 1777. Dwelling at nearby Foots Cray Place, a fine house built by Bouchier Cleve, the Harenc family appear to have remained connected to the area until the house was sold in 1822 by Benjamin who sought a permanent home near Sevenoaks. Sadly, he soon became unwell and died as a result of the great excitement and anxiety he experienced in personally overseeing a new endeavour linking Kent to Ireland and the USA via steamship according to his obituary in The Gentlemans' Magazine. Foots Cray Place burned down during restoration work in October 1949, but the vast grounds of the house now form part of Foots Cray Meadow, which I soon encountered via a gap in the low wooden fence and a damp, muddy path trodden into the grass which led around the back of the Church. I slithered and slipped along, wondering if this was a wise choice of route - but then, after a particular muddy trough in the path, a low bridge appeared crossing the River Cray. I was back on track at last.
It seems that on a dry, cold morning when people have been a little stir-crazy indoors because of a week of poor weather, Foots Cray Meadow is a popular excursion. Especially so it seems for dog walkers, who stalked the muddy paths in clumps with their excitable hounds capering around them. As I slithered around one group, blocking the entire serviceable width of the pathway, I noted their dogs tussling and fighting in the river as they looked on, mute and apparently disinterested. It was a bizarre scene - a total abdication of responsibility for their pets which almost felt like an organised dogfight. I trudged on beside the reedy banks of the river as it swelled into a sinuous pond dividing the huge expanse of green space, an area that was once a mix of open land and formal garden belonging to Foots Cray Place and the neighbouring estate at North Cray. At the midst of the lake, the almost too picture-perfect Five Arch Bridge arced gracefully across the water - the centrepiece of the work which Thomas Coventry commissioned from Capability Brown. The works, completed around 1780, included taming the Cray into the serpentine lake and weir seen today along with strategic planting to create attractive walks and carriage drives around the estate. While this reshaping of the meadows seems a fairly unimpressive task today, the effort and ingenuity required to undertake this in the late 18th century - and indeed purely for cosmetic rather than commercial purposes - remains somewhat remarkable. It is perhaps even more remarkable still that this spacious sweep of green space remains on the edge of Bexley within the desirable commuter nexus of the M25 and just a short walk from a railway station. The suburbs had gradually enclosed Foots Cray Meadow, but not yet encroached upon it. After passing the Five Arch Bridge with its cargo of dog-walkers and visitors the paths multiplied, and following a frustrating altercation with yet another dog and its owner, I elected to take the less-trodden and largely canine-free walk along the water's edge. The river was wider and faster here, still flowing clear over the chalk and stone bed which had first surfaced back in Orpington. Near Water Lane, my path edged along a fenced sports grounds behind the impressive Loring Hall. This fine house was originally known as Woollet Hall, and was built in 1760 to replace a Tudor house known as 'Wallets'. Woollet Hall was for over a decade home to Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh who as Foreign Secretary, masterminded the diplomatic and financial alliances which led to the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte at Waterloo. In later years, as Leader of the House of Commons his frequent need to defend the actions of Lord Liverpool's unpopular cabinet weighed heavily on him - particularly after the Peterloo Massacre and the passing of the Six Acts designed to repress future disturbances and ultimately to prevent a British revolution of the type which had occurred in France and the USA. The mood of the public was echoed, perhaps cruelly, in poetry:
I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.The Masque of Anarchy - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819
Torn between the need to remain in the Cabinet to advance his diplomatic causes and his growing distaste for parliamentary business, Castlereagh confined himself to Loring House in a state of increasing paranoia and mental disturbance. By August 1822 when visiting King George IV he was clearly disturbed and in turmoil, utterly convinced he was to be blackmailed as a homosexual. Finally, on 12th August while left alone for just a few minutes, Castlereagh cut his throat with a small knife he had concealed from concerned servants. Even in death he proved a controversial figure - with speculation by William Cobbett's Radicals that the elitist government had arranged a cover-up to ensure a grand public funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey despite Castlereagh's ignominious end at his own hand. The Radical press too, whipped up sentiment against him in scenes which would not seem out of place today, advocating attendance at his funeral to cheer and exalt his passing. The final insult was committed again in poetry which rather eerily echoes the Twitter threads of our own time:
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.Epigram - Lord Byron, 1822
It was difficult not to think of the desperate and paranoid Castlereagh as I trudged across the windswept plain which separated North Cray from Old Bexley, his home now settled as a private school for children with a learning disability after several similar uses in recent years. The riverbank was again off-limits and I was diverted across a bridge and into a forlorn spot where the tidy inter-war housing estate ran aground in a scrappy concrete hardstanding used primarily for fly-tipping. An unlikely looking footpath was signposted along the edge of a tilled field which seemed to be growing only a crop of large, fizzing electricity pylons. I trudged on, figuring that as this still formed part of the 'London LOOP' it must, surely, go somewhere... At the end of the field, a brief scramble onto a wide, grassy plateau revealed a view west across to Bexley and east to the high ground of Joyden's Wood on the other side of the Cray Valley. The sun had struggled briefly above the clouds and it was surprisingly warm despite the strong winds. I stomped onward, through the swaying yellow grass and down a somewhat slippery approach to a private road serving Bexley cricket ground. The gateposts fulminated with prohibitions and cautions, clearly barely tolerating walkers descending from the muddy path. Suddenly, and with something of a shock, civilisation surrounded me again. The footpath ran alongside the railway embankment, turned to pass under the station platforms via a narrow brick arch and arrived suddenly in the midst of Old Bexley. Announcements of trains to London echoed overhead as I tried to adjust to entering this rather self-consciously gentrified village. This corner of Bexley gained the 'Old' part of its name in the 19th century as the new town of Bexleyheath was developed to eventually somewhat overshadow this little Kentish stronghold. The draw of the latter settlement's improved town centre also rendered much of Old Bexley's High Street rather cramped, old fashioned and unwanted, but it appears that a revitalisation has occurred with the street now lined with bars, cafes and boutiques which gave it the air of a theme park or shopping village. At the junction of the roads to London and Dartford, still a busy roundabout today, fingerpost signs high on a building pointed back up the valley to 'The Crays'. I followed the road to Dartford instead, passing an impressive run of former almshouses and the old National School on route to the intriguingly named 'Black Prince' junction where the six wide lanes of the formidably improved A2 crossed my path. Named for a local legend that Edward, The Black Prince haunted the area, the name developed from the presence of a nearby hotel and inn on the route to London. This mock Tudor building, a famous music venue in the 1960s, was now a rather tired looking Holiday Inn occupying a wing of the swirling road junction which now shared its name.
The Cray passed to the east here, running through the grounds of the improbably located Hall Place, a Tudor house nestled into a nook of the poorly designed road junction which send a bridge curving over the road between two tight, complicated roundabouts. Built in 1972 when the A2 was widened, this scheme dated from a time when concerns about the surrounding of a treasured historical site would have been less than paramount. Still less important was the tiny River Shuttle, a tributary of the Cray which had tumbled merrily from the higher ground of Bexleyheath before being unceremoniously dumped into a concrete channel under the road to finally reach its confluence with the Cray nearby. A junior football tournament was just finishing and I trailed over the bridge in the company of fathers counselling their young protégés on their performance while the mud was still wet on their boots. The striking contrast of Hall Place when it came into view was spellbinding - this house, built in 1537 by Sir John Champneys, Lord Mayor of the City of London seems an almost impossible survival. Much extended in the 16th and 19th centuries, the great hall looks west across the road while the later additions stand guard over impeccable formal gardens and celebrated topiary first planted in 1953 to celebrate the Coronation. Champneys was a son of Chew Magna in Somerset who lost his sight in later life, an event reported by London's chronicler John Stow as divine retribution for building a high brick tower onto his city home in Mincing Lane - as Stow's immortal quill put it "the first that I ever heard of in any private man's house, to overlook his neighbours in this city." During the Second World War, Hall Place became 'Santa Fe', a US Signal Corps station which intercepted coded Luftwaffe morse messages for decoding by the Enigma project. Following a spell as the headquarters of Bexley's library and museums service, Hall Place is now a thriving visitor attraction complete with shop and riverside café. The gardens certainly appeared busy, but it was hard to tell if the traffic into the site was heading here or for the carvery on offer at the Miller & Carter pub next door. I snapped a photograph of the front of the Great Hall, looking out onto what must once have been a far less urban aspect, noting the place for a possible future visit. For now though, I left the Sunday crowds to their roast lunches and football tournaments and struck out along the road to Crayford. The road followed the course of the river, which ran just out of sight beyond the carparks and sports fields - but I knew I'd soon be back alongside it.
Like many suburban satellites of London, Crayford was announced by the shining roofline of a retail park. A vast Sainsbury's store - once the largest in the UK - was the anchor for a sprawling development which dwarfed the Greyhound Stadium nearby. Once the dogs would have been the biggest draw in town, but now the supermarket pulled in the punters. Similar locations remain scattered across London - the sites of former stadia now given over to retail or housing developments. At Harringay, at Brent Cross and Clapton little remains except token nods to the long history of working class entertainment: speedway and greyhounds. Hives of night-time activity now reserved for late-night shopping or quiet suburban dwelling behind drawn curtains. Crayford's story at least, has a different outcome: when the site was redeveloped in the 1980s, the track remained central to Ladbroke's plans. Now hidden behind the fading red and grey facade it shares with the neighbouring Leisure Centre and which keeps it clearly anchored in its period, it still features regular races with restaurants and hospitality suites for the spectators. Crossing the reedy course of the river in a deep culvert, I entered the supermarket café in the hope that I'd find somewhere to recharge my 'phone and to get refreshments - I realised that I'd been steadily walking for hours now with no real break, and it was time to rest. I drew a blank in the massive store and headed instead for a coffee concession inside a branch of Next on the nearby Tower Retail Park. It's clear that Crayford has lost much of its centre to these vast ranks of stores and their associated car parks. As I sipped a cup in an ear-splittingly noisy branch of Costa Coffee tucked into the corner of the store I tried to imagine this as an industrial zone - the home of Hiram Maxim's factory which produced self-loading machine guns, supported by capital from Edward Vickers. Later, a complex merger which still sets legal precedent saw Maxim's operation take ownership of Nordenfeldt at nearby Erith, before itself being bought out wholly by Vickers, creating an enterprise which thrived during the Boer War supplying armaments to the British forces. The company endured lean times during peace, but a surge of War Ministry orders in 1914 ensured the factory's survival and the building of the nearby housing estate of Barnes Cray to cater for an expanding workforce. While the factory found many peacetime uses including manufacturing bottle-making plant, accounting machines and cars, its fortunes boomed during wartime, seeing considerable expansion in both 1939 and 1950 during the Korean War. By the early 1970s, with Ministry of Defence contracts largely drying up in the squeeze on public spending, the factory entered a terminal decline. By 1985, the small remaining plant was closed though some buildings lingered until 1998 when the site was cleared to become Next, KFC and Hobbycraft in due course. Crayford struggles on without this major employer, a town without a centre.
Leaving the coffee shop I realised that London Road was the route of Watling Street , the long straight road from Dover to London, and thence to Wales. The venerable route crossed the Cray near a little green between rows of local shops, empty benches lining its winding route. At the edge of the green a drinking fountain was inscribed 'Whosoever will let him take the water of life freely' and rather poignantly its now defunct-basin had been filled with empty Coca Cola and Stella Artois cans. I set off alongside the river, glad to be close by its banks again. The footpath here was better marked, and as I ventured onto a tree-lined pathway which left the road a large iron obelisk announced the Cray Riverway which shared the route of the London LOOP once again. Under the trees I was sheltered from the surprisingly strong wind which scoured the flat marshlands stretching toward the Thames, and I had a peaceful and pleasant walk between the backs of suburban homes and the water which still ran clear despite being heavily fly-tipped. I was briefly forced to detour into the streets of Barnes Cray, filled with sleepy Sunday afternoon dinner smells, before returning to the river as it ran through the scrubby marshlands hemmed in by the nearby Stanham River which formed the border of Kent. The river was suddenly a brackish, tidal brown - flowing sluggishly in a wider channel through the flat, empty landscape. A tell-tale waft of decay indicated the presence of the West Kent Main Sewer, taking a direct route towards Longreach Sewage Works on the Thames. The air was tainted with industry, a tang of metal and saltwater on the tongue as I navigated my way across the A206 where the Cray flowed beneath a low modern bridge. The brown water almost touched the parapet as it churned under the road, and I made a slight detour north to reach the west bank of the river's estuary. I soon found myself on a narrow, dusty and litter strewn lane which ran between a desolate, recently cleared site and a huge transport yard. The lane was quiet today, but I could imagine just how tight clearances would be on weekdays when the trucks thundered towards the waste disposal site up ahead. The railway from Dartford passed over a low brick bridge where a narrow carriageway had been lowered to allow taller vehicles to pass. In the recent rain and snow this had become a dirty sump of water which an unexpected passing car splashed into, almost grounding the low underside of the vehicle as it accelerated out of the filthy soup and sped back towards Crayford. I edged under the bridge on the elevated pavements, thankful that I didn't need to wade through the muck below. On the other side of the bridge, seagulls wheeled and cried as they flocked to the rich pickings of the waste disposal site. The sweet and cloying smell of rotting waste mixed with a strange reek of burning, and I noticed a somewhat professional looking camera operator framing the clouds of birds as they dispersed and reformed on the buildings and fences of the site. He politely let me pass, perhaps used to walkers interrupting his vigil - this was after all, somewhat surprisingly, still part of the sanctioned footpath circling London. The path turned a sudden corner between high concrete fences, twisting north again and climbing. The wind hit me at the top of the rise. Unexpectedly I found the view opened before me - smudges of clouds in a grey-brown sky echoing the wind-blasted grass and mud of Crayford Creek. The river was a sickly trickle at the foot of a deep, scoured channel. In the middle-distance, the Dartford Crossing arced over the Thames, beside it the towers of Littlebrook Power Station. On the opposite bank, a teenager throttled the engine of a scrambling bike to impress his bored girlfriend who stood by, idling flicking at a 'phone screen. The noise of the engine carried across the marshes, flat and empty - and seemingly endless. I drew the zip of my coat up to my chin to beat the cold wind, and set off along the final stretches of the River Cray. A little way ahead it flowed into the Darent at Dartford Creek, the two muddy channels combining in the midst of the marshes. The path was narrow but well-walked and had been scoured dry by the salt-laden winds. I fixed my eyes on the Dartford Creek Flood Barrier, and started walking.
This lonely, windswept stretch of the Thames foreshore appeared entirely deserted now, but it had a long history of human use. The crack of gunshots marked the Dartford Clay Shooting club on the Kent bank of the creek, mocking the absence of the former Wells Fireworks factory which inhabited this spot from 1837 until driven out by cheap imported fireworks in the 1970s. The site had returned to nature, a scattering of decaying huts barely visible now indicating a works which had once created displays for Coronations, Jubilees and the Olympic Games. Beyond the factory was another absence - the site of a sprawling complex of hospitals which had been built out here, away from civilisation - and away from the opposition of local people who feared smallpox patients being treated near their homes. Land at Gore Farm in Dartford had been used for a camp for infectious patients since the 1890s, but the association with this site beside the Thames began with The Long Reach Hospital in 1901, hastily erected in temporary buildings by the Metropolitan Board of Asylums to deal with an especially virulent smallpox epidemic which was overwhelming the three hospital ships moored alongside the site, Atlas, Castalia and Endymion. A tramway was built out to the river, with patients arriving by river ambulance and being conveyed to the hospital by second-hand tramcars. Nearby, the much larger permanent Joyce Green Isolation Hospital was under construction in an effort to replace the ageing ships, but was not yet ready for use by patients. The Long Reach was soon struggling for space, and a further temporary site, The Orchard, opened in 1902. Finally in 1903, Joyce Green opened just as the epidemic of smallpox declined. The Orchard saw further use as a military hospital and convalescent home for Australian troops between 1914 and 1919 before being destroyed by incendiary bombs during the Second World War. The Long Reach meanwhile was rebuilt with more permanent facilities and maintained ready for future epidemics of smallpox, seeing a flurry of activity in the early 1930s and treating its final patients as late as 1973. Joyce Green Hospital survived much longer, admitting patients with a range of infectious diseases requiring isolation and housing over a thousand Russian refugees who arrived in 1918 having been exposed to smallpox on their journey. The hospital transferred to the London County Council before joining the newly-formed NHS as a general hospital in 1948 and remarkably remaining in use until 2000 when the newly built Darent Valley Hospital took over from a piecemeal range of facilities scattered around Dartford. Looking across the marshes towards the green smudge of Essex on the horizon it was easy to see the attraction of this wide, empty expanse of land to provide effective isolation. I thought about the staff, stationed here and subjected to daily rituals to remove and prevent infection - I tried to imagine the smell of carbolic scrubbed skin and burned uniforms. Even now as I trudged along the bank of the creek, the landscape challenged me to face its emptiness. Humanity seemed uncomfortably far away here, even to someone comfortable with solitude. The wind was loud in my ears, just the crack of gunfire and the buzz of the distant motorcycle engine joining the roar. Looking towards Kent, the reedy green land was empty now - but it had known suffering. Even the scars that the hospital wards had made on the land now fading under the reeds and scrub.
The creek curved and bucked, seeming to resist its final journey to the Thames, while the path struck directly for the tall concrete towers of the flood barrier. A warning light, erected on a spidery metal gantry explained that when it was lit the barrier was closed and there was no escape from the creek. It was hard to imagine boats navigating the deep muddy crevasse below, but Dartford Creek had once been used by Thames Lighters to access wharves in Crayford and Dartford, and there appears to be some effort afoot to restore the river to use by pleasure boats. As I headed for the barrier, the sun broke through the low clouds that had dogged my walk, and the marshes were suddenly illuminated. The distant bridge at Dartford shimmered in the spring sunlight, while the river rippled with bronze below, reflecting the yellow marsh grass. I was entirely alone now, the last dog walker miles away and the waste disposal plants which sheltered in the lee of the high bank deserted for the weekend. At the foot of the gigantic flood barrier I paused and looked back west: the broad thames turned south, Erith Reach twisting back towards Greenwich and the City. On the western bank of the Darent on the spit of land which protruded into the river the Thames Ammunition Works opened in 1879 in a seemingly ideal spot away from any great mass of population and with easy river access from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. During the Great War the site was taken into government control and briefly connected to the railway network, but by the early 1920s it was under the ownership of Messrs W.B Gilbert Ltd. On February 19th 1924, while the predominantly female workforce were disassembling shells to recover powder, a fire broke out on the site causing a number of large explosions. The remote and inaccessible site meant that help was slow to arrive, and eventually eleven women and a foreman lost their lives. The site is buried by new industry, its sad history largely unremarked now. Across the water, the mounds of detritus which had accumulated over a century at Rainham loomed large, the sun winking off passing trains speeding out to Europe as they emerged from behind the rubbish heaps. To the east, the little town of Purfleet was reassuringly familiar - the riverfront flats and hotel dwarfed by the arched hanger of the Royal Opera House Production Centre, while the low viaduct carrying the A13 strode across Wennington Marsh. I spent a while watching the scenery shift, the river changing from a deep olive to a surprising blue as the sky cleared. It was hard to imagine The Long Reach Tavern surviving near this spot - until damaged so severely in the infamous tidal surge of 1953 that it had to be demolished. In the 19th century the tavern had been infamous for cock-fighting and bare-knuckle boxing contests, and it had thrived on the presence of both the nearby hospitals and the aerodrome used by Vickers and Maxim for testing early aircraft prototypes, and later by Britain's nascent Air Force as RFC Joyce Green. There was no clear trace of the inn now, the flood defences built in response to the disaster which spelled its end having obliterated the ground on which it stood.
The temperature fell as the sun began to slide towards the western horizon, and it was time to head for civilisation again. As I turned to face west and begin my journey back to London, the sky was beginning to turn an ominous purple-grey. I joined the Thames Path and began walking towards Erith along a raised bank between the water and the ancient salt marshes. Decaying wooden structures strode out into the water - long forgotten piers and jetties which had been replaced by the modern yacht club I could see up ahead, a forest of masts clustering around the building. The path descended from the bank to skirt the yacht club, turning inland and onto the industrial roads leading towards Erith. I was tiring now, and the slog up a dusty hill while dodging puddles of suspiciously rainbow-tinted water outside waste management facilities felt like hard going. Erith was a genuinely strange place - once a resort described as a 'pretty little place' by Walter Bell in 1907, it had been relentlessly colonised by industry. The proximity to a calm stretch of river drew factories and railways towards the shore here, but they abandoned the town just as quickly as they'd arrived as industry on the river declined. At the end of Manor Road I spotted the disused parapet of a bridge which had once carried a branch of the railway to a riverside pier, now filled in and occupied by a flank of the huge Morrisons store which had, in turn, changed the face of the town's commercial zone. The centre of Erith was a down-at-heel shopping centre which used its ancient High Street as a service road. It was hard to know if the shuttered stores were closed because it was Sunday or if the centre was in more permanent decline. A few groups of young people hung around, and the last straggling shoppers shuffled home from the early Sunday closure of the supermarket. In some ways Erith's town centre felt less human and more helpless than the abandoned marshland of Crayford Ness. I pressed onward, under a slippery subway and towards the railway station. I wasn't sorry to be leaving Erith behind, though I had a nagging sense that this part of the world wouldn't let my imagination go now I'd walked the river. I'd expected little more than a decent, long walk today, but had found a surprisingly contested territory, continuously walking a knife-edge between being suburban London and semi-rural Kent. The Cray was a physical and emotional boundary, even if it didn't quite match the ceremonial boundaries, redrawn to enclose many of its once remote settlements within the growing sprawl of modern London. From the mannered and carefully primped park where it surfaced to the wild, sprawling, wind-blasted marsh where it gave up its waters to wider river, the River Cray inhabited a zone which was neither city nor country, neither town nor village. Watermills may have been replaced by retail parks and waste plants, but the river still seemed to drive a quiet and relentless industry. As I boarded a train back to the Sunday silence of a near-abandoned Cannon Street, I surprised myself by looking forward to being out here on the edge of Kent again.
You can find a gallery of pictures from the walk here.
London's Other Orbitals: Walking the A503 9 years ago
Posted in London on Saturday 11th March 2017 at 10:03pm
I've written before about my early interest in roads - one that has never really gone away, and has often reawakened at times I've felt challenged or frustrated. That I now have a willing partner in crime who is happy to take sometimes quite lengthy excursions has meant that I've finally had the experience of driving on some of the roads I've mythologised over the decades. However, some roads are meant to be walked - roads which have existed in some form for hundreds if not thousands of years, which despite the layers of surface dressing, hide the oldest of byways beneath. Occasionally my explorations coincide with these roads and I find myself needing to walk out the obsession all over again. Today was a bonus - we were in London on route elsewhere, and I had an entirely free day in hand. While I'd immensely enjoyed the guided walk I'd taken last weekend, I wanted freedom to cover ground at my own pace. I was also disinclined to head back into the wilds for this - an excursion without mud felt like a good idea. I wanted feet tired from walking, not aching from slurping through the liquid surface of the Essex edgelands for a change. This all coalesced via a chance reading about the A503. I'd crossed Forest Road near Waterworks Corner back in February and had been mildly curious about its route. While useful and strategically important, this east-west cross route in the north of London is fairly insignificant in the scheme of things. In the west Seven Sisters Road is a product of the eighteenth century expansion of London and a former turnpike. To the east, Ferry Lane and Forest Road describe the route of the more ancient Clay Lane from Walthamstow to Epping Forest. Along this route, the humble A503 crosses the routes of many of my previous walks - the Regents Canal, Green Lanes, the festival of gentrification at Woodberry Down near the New River, the Lea Valley. It ends just shy of the North Circular - the ever present connection that writhes through this terrain. In short, the A503 was the perfect long slog for an unexpected walk - a chance to make new connections and revisit old ones.
The bus deposited me on Camden High Street, a little north of Mornington Crescent. This isn't my favourite part of the world for a host of reasons, but mostly because in its slightly battered drag of chain outlets and copycat markets, Camden feels like what happens after gentrification. When I was a youngster, Camden was aspirational. The stars of British indie-pop propped up its bars, the record stores and vintage clothing outlets were legendary, the market was a wonder of new and old things which seemed exotic and impossible to us. It had developed this reputation slowly and surely through the 1970s, as the railway retreated and left large areas of land and old buildings free for exploitation. The real estate felt shaky and ill-kept, but that didn't matter to a post-squatter generation who liked their urban landscape to be edging into decrepitude. By the late 1990s, Camden was a different place. The huge footfall around the market and the High Street made the area attractive for the larger chains - and even though some of them were careful to invest their usually identikit outlets with a little uncharacteristic local personality, they were pricing out the smaller traders. Aside from the official market, every bit of clear land was taken up with semi-permanent stalls selling mobile phone cases, Bob Marley decorated stash tins, the usual stuff which could be found on the fringes of any shopping area. Each Saturday saw an influx of tourists eager to walk the High Street in order to pick up some of the perceived kudos of being seen around here, and the streets were full of expectant young faces from the provinces who - despite being in Camden - wanted the reassuring taste of McDonalds or KFC. First of all my route took a wide loop around this zone to find what might be the beginning of the A503 - heading counterintuitively west along Delancey Street and turning east again when I reached the bridge over the lines leading out of Euston Station. I'd strayed along this way in search of the bridge over a deleted arm of the canal, and knew the area a little. At Britannia Junction, the complex meeting of ways at the heart of Camden, I paused for coffee. I'd started earlier than usual today and needed the sustenance if I was going to make the distance. Looking out on what may or may not already be the road I was going to walk, I noted a gradual change. As the locals had headed for work or dissipated back into their homes, the steady stream of passers by appeared to gradually be shifting towards tourism. It was time to leave Camden.
I was briefly disorientated on crossing the street - Britannia Junction was a complex and many-armed beast. But the route I was taking almost immediately passed a familiar location - the same Sainsbury's I'd ended up detouring to find on my canal walk. I'd taken such a long circuit to get there last time that I'd lost the sense of just how close to the Canal I was for much of my Camden tribulations. This time I passed by, beginning to fit the area into shape in my mind - at least I'd have an escape route should I find myself here in future. As I slowly slipped out of the gravity of Camden the route began to change. Passing under the railway bridge at Camden Road station, beside its rusting and disused twin, I found myself climbing steadily on a broad suburban route. The stores thinned out into local hardware shops, convenience stores and petrol stations. The morning had started out grey but was clearing, and I was suddenly aware that the novelty of wearing a coat - something I've always studiously avoided until this winter when I finally found a comfortable and sensible garment for walking - was wearing off. I was far too warm. Getting an earlier than usual start on the walk and knowing I had accommodation in London overnight meant I could take a slightly slower pace than usual. No bad thing - this was quite a long route on pavement, with none of the diversion into the wilds I'd encountered recently on these walks. Despite having the time to divert and investigate things off route, I decided that wherever possible I'd stay true to the mission and indeed I largely stuck to the route I'd hastily planned. Above me the road was clearly marked: A503 Holloway, striking out north and east. Looking south when gaps in the row of tidy houses and small businesses permitted there were glimpses of the distant city as the road rose gently. Crossing the railway from St. Pancras on its broad westward curve towards Kentish Town, I sensed the change. I'd left the orbit of Camden, broken free and entered the uncertain northern hinterland which I'd spent so much time exploring in recent months. This part of North London doesn't quite cohere for me - districts blur and shift, and aside from the definite points marked by road junctions, the estate agents are drawing the maps here. The road stretched long and straight, reaching a peak from where I could see ahead to a fork. Where the road divided around a former garage with a gloriously modernist swooping roof, I took the left-hand path heading along Seven Sisters Road. Here, the A503 is a long one-way system enveloping Holloway completely in its two arms. Blank red-brick walls defined the perimeter of the former Holloway Prison. Empty and slowly returning to nature, the entrance was beginning to show signs of decay. It's just a matter of time before the sizeable site is snapped up and renamed to disguise its heritage. The area has a pedigree for residential land-grabs too - beyond the prison was a pleasant run of public housing owned by the City of London Corporation, one of the ten estates situated outside the square mile which it runs. Clean and tidy, the homes appear apparently well cared for and popular. I was prepared to find this part of the walk dull and mildly threatening but nothing could have been further from the truth. It is fair to say that Holloway is somewhere in the middle of a gentrification journey. Significant parts of the fringes of the area seem to be doing well, housing locals and providing decent services, while others seem to be undergoing that last, sorry stage of deliberate decay while their owners wait on the market and the right kind of investment into the area. At Nag's Head - where Seven Sisters Road meets Holloway Road - the scene is more disputed. As I lingered waiting for the confusing temporary lights on the crossing of the A1, I surveyed the area - it could be the centre of any London suburb, maybe even any small town perhaps. But among the well-known names and high street staples were a good number of tiny, local traders soldiering on behind long outmoded shopfronts. Beyond the stores to the north of the street was the muscular back elevation of the Beaux Arts Building on Manor Gardens. The front is a swirl of detail in brick, a grand Edwardian entrance to newly refurbished apartments - but the rear is stark, white and impressive. A single red brick chimney rises among the wings, which from above describe a trident pointing directly at the heart of London.
At Finsbury Park Station, the two arms of the road swing back together where the dome of the North London Central Mosque gleams over the three bridges carrying the railway north from Kings Cross. This mosque is something of a symbol of the triumph of peaceful Islam over extremism, with the Muslim Council of Great Britain seizing and reopening the site after a raid in 2003 which finally ousted the remains of the regime of Abu Hamza al-Masri. This splinter sect had been operating a programme of radicalisation from the building, some straggling tentacles of which reach forward into present-day terrorist activity. Emerging from the bridges, the transport interchange is a confusion of activity, with buses lurching around the tight curves outside the station. An unbroken stream of people are leaving the station with some Arsenal shirts already in evidence in advance of their FA Cup tie later in the afternoon. The sun had climbed above the buildings and I was starting to feel much too hot, but the road was curiously mesmerising - taking an almost straight course from district to district, through changing scenes which are both unfamiliar but entirely expected in their nature. North London is slowly starting to fit together in my mind, and the passing junctions connect me back to earlier excursons: the end of Stroud Green Road links me back to walking the Northern Heights. Everything finds its place here. Soon after passing the station the road quietened, and for a while it was just me and a constant stream of buses edging along the green fringe of the park. I'd walked this stretch before - between the treelined slopes and the long range of stucco-fronted hotels and large Victorian villas. It was pleasant to be out of the urban area for a while and to reorient myself by way of local landmarks: the towers of the Castle Climbing Centre and the forest of cranes at Woodberry Down. At Manor Park, I crossed Green Lanes and entered Hackney, completing my navigation of all arms of this important crossroads where the ancient road to the north crossed the relatively new turnpike. The organic cafe on the corner was busy - a signifier of how this area is changing, and indeed how quickly. The buses which have been shadowing me peel away north towards Wood Green and my route, now a broad dual-carriageway arterial, slips between the tall municipal blocks of Woodberry Down. On my left, some of the original blocks remain with their curved red-brick balconies - but as residents leave for the last time their doors and windows are securely plated over, the buildings slowly giving way to their regeneration. There's no rush to move them out - all the activity is to the south where the range of residential towers extends further eastward along the banks of the New River and the pair of broad, glassy reservoirs every time I visit. The desirable waterfront properties are for sale, not for rent, and definitely outprice the locals who are being slowly decanted from the ageing low-rise brick blocks. I popped into the local store and improvised lunch on the banks of the reservoir watching young couples leading curious children along the river path while ducks and gulls pecked around for crumbs. It was good to sit and cool off near the water and interesting to see how this area had changed since my earlier visits. The older population who had pottered the previous sandy incarnation of this pathway wasn't in evidence at all now, and there was a surprisingly homogenous feel. While the new buildings are undeniably a better environment in many ways, they don't appear to be fostering the sense of community which originally drove the aspirations of this early attempt at changing conditions for working people on a massive scale. Aware I still had some way to go, I set off to regain my route as it began a turn to the north at a crossing of the broad loop of the New River. Looking back along the inviting but still rather muddy river path, I had a view across the serrated rooftops of the somewhat directly named Harringey Warehouse District which sits at a distinctly lower elevation than the bank carrying the waterway. The A503 provides a boundary to Stamford Hill here, climbing respectably away from the factories and warehouses to the east with pleasant avenues leading away into Hackney. The walking was pleasant - perhaps a little cooler here, thankfully - and I relaxed into the rhythm of the traffic which was less intense along this stretch. The calm ended abruptly at the junction with St. Ann's Road which sat directly under the Gospel Oak to Barking railway line, the overbridge hemming the traffic into a complex junction and bottlenecking pedestrians into crossings which took an age to activate. Under the bridge it feels gloomy, damp and a little unsettling - perhaps reflecting the next part of the route? Looking ahead the road stretched onward between dilapidated and tired low rise housing and ranks of surprisingly attractive but mainly abandoned brick warehouses. Seven Sisters Road ghosts the missing edge of an incomplete diamond of railways here, the broad green areas of wasteland at its centre tantalisingly crossed by unofficial paths - but they're for a day when the ground is drier perhaps. A further railway bridge completes the diamond, and I'm in Tottenham - the change is imperceptible at first, but as I approach the A10 at Seven Sisters, the switch is suddenly closed. The tide of people waiting to cross the High Road couldn't be more multiculturally representative if an over-eager HR Officer had lined it up for a photograph. The junction throbs with life, a fog of traffic fumes undercut by the smell of barbecued meat and strong aftershave. Cars stopped at the light shudder with low-end from their speakers. Once, a ring of seven elm trees graced Pages Green - the original Seven Sisters - now a small linear park leads away east between the superstore and the terraced streets. The High Road is a stream of buses stretching north towards White Hart Lane and the tower blocks of Edmonton Green in the middle distance. For a little stretch I need to walk this route which absorbs the A503 briefly, marking a boundary between its distinct sections: the venerable turnpike and the ancient road across the Lea Valley.
Tottenham High Cross is an ancient marker on the route of Roman Ermine Street, often confused for an Eleanor Cross but somewhat plainer despite some added ornamentation in the early 19th century. Here I turn aside and head down into the valley, taking the appropriately named Monument Way. After a brief detour into a retail park at Tottenham Hale which feels oddly makeshift and provisional, I cross the vertical obstacles which separate North and East London - the Eastern Counties Railway, Pymmes Brook, Lea Navigation and the River Lea pass under the road in rapid succession. The valley bottoms out into a broad plain which has been flooded to form the chain of vast reservoirs which shadow the river here. After the Ferry Boat Inn, marooned on a spit of land between the Lea and the Coppermill Stream, the road joins a narrow causeway between these manmade lakes, with the railway curving in alongside. The gates of High Maynard Reservoir are locked to all except licensed fishermen - a regiment of heavy padlocks securing the gates, while wading birds strut the banks like guardsmen. Along the causeway unfinished electrification gantries from the recent railway works become a row of ominous monuments. In the distance I can see the land rising away from the valley floor, and I realise just how far I've got to go to reach my self-imposed destination. I'm distracted by designs etched into the pavement showing the transition: from industry and water to entertainment and nightlife. The progress from borough to borough is marked carefully - Waltham Forest wants us to forget the lines of pylons marching behind us and the broad swathe of churning green water. Ahead is art, culture, food and wellbeing. This once downtrodden borough is getting a very public makeover, its various urban centres being remodelled to promote promenading and restrict the motor car. Walthamstow is changing. I've seen the 'Awesomestow' banners - that clumsy appropriation fails on so many disturbing levels. I've also seen the row of achingly retro stores on the corner of Blackhorse Lane - the 'home of people who make and create' and I've seen the rebranding attempts as I've skirted the district, but today I'll be facing it squarely as I make a transit across Waltham Forest towards the east. I don't object to this area - in fact I rather like it - but I don't need to have this unsubtle exercise explained to me. Let us all discover - or rediscover - the borough. Don't force it, Walthamstow.
This is now Forest Road, and as it makes eastern progress away from the Lea Valley the stores return to type: small newsagents sponsored by Lebara and occasional hair salons. The pedestrian schemes are still incomplete out here, and the traffic remains dominant. Long ranks of tidy suburban avenues lead north and south and the road is fairly unremarkable aside from a fine modern Fire Station building. Rather suddenly, the carriageway kinks to the south to skirt the grounds of Lloyd Park House - now the William Morris Gallery. This sizeable but modest building sits at the corner of a broad green space beyond a walled garden, which is apparently well-used on decent afternoons like this. Formerly Water House this was the Morris family home from 1848 to 1856, while the adjoining Lloyd Park includes a moat which long predates the Georgian building. The space in front of the gallery offers a moment to rest and reconsider the walk - not least how I'll escape from the end of the road when I reach Waterworks Corner. I hadn't really planned for this - the road had seemed impossibly long, and the chance to walk without worrying too much about time had lulled me into not considering how I'd mark the completion of the walk. There was a way to go yet though, and as the road climbed towards The Bell and a house-sized mural of Morris glared across at me, I had a view of the distant green horizon where I was heading. My route skirted north of the central area of Walthamstow which clusters around busy Hoe Street, and remained resolutely suburban until I crested the rise and looked down on the pale verdigris of the clock tower topping Walthamstow Town Hall. As I approached, the full extent of this impressive civic complex unveiled itself: first a broad, low magistrates court building now closed and sold to the Borough Council as part of the Ministry of Justice estates rationalisation. This patently 1970s creation of the GLC Special Works Department can't truly be considered a brutalist structure, as it relies on Portland Stone to offer its simple but muscular face to the world. Beside it sits the more classical but no less imposing Town Hall by Philip Dalton Hepworth - a broad, mausoleum-like sweep of stone completed against all the odds in 1941. Its geometry aligned with a central fountain and a processional route to the doors, and I found myself precariously perched between the gates while trying to snap a picture. A citizenship ceremony was being completed as I approached, with impeccably dressed celebrants leaving the campus to the disgust of a couple of locals who leaned on railings, spitting and moaning about them "not being really British". As they'd inadvertently roped me into their conversation I pointed out that that was now exactly what they were. More spitting, more moaning about this 'fuckin' lefty'. Finally, the broad colonnade of the Assembly Hall completed the site and Forest Road began to climb again, passing the extensive Waltham Forest College buildings. This area is rigorously zoned, these public buildings dominating the east-west road as it cuts across the ridge between the Lea and the Roding. Nearby, a grandmother passed me, stooping to encourage a young girl and reassuring her in a surprisingly breaking voice that they'll do something "when mummy gets out". Initially I'm confused by the significance - but I soon spot Thorpe Coombe Hospital, a Georgian house turned into a Health Trust building with a residential psychiatric unit on site. I find myself sharing the young girl's pain and confusion, the sense of separation and the power of places to divide and distance. I'm surprised how this part of Walthamstow has passed me by before - the odd gravity of this administrative complex which powers the district like a civic engine room, dealing with its difficulties and tidying away the awkward and ill-fitting. I felt strangely ill at ease as the road turned uphill again, the horizon lost behind the ridge and the rising streets of Walthamstow behind me, if I'd dared to look back.
As I climbed, somewhat unexpectedly the deck of a footbridge appeared above the road - and as I slogged further up the rising path, the steep grassy banks supporting it emerged and I realised with some surprise that I was almost at my goal. The flat grassy deck above the sunken reservoirs opened out, and I could see the spot where I scrambled thankfully down from the forest path on my last walk here. Ahead of me the A503 ended at an unusual urban cattle grid near a junction with Woodford New Road, just shy of Waterworks Corner roundabout. I had mixed feelings as I approached the end of my walk - firstly, that I should perhaps press on further east, following the North Circular? The transition I'd made from the fading glamour of distant Camden to the leafy suburban spaces of Woodford felt jarringly odd and unresolved. As I circuited the roundabout to find a path across to the northern side of the shuddering and screaming A406, I noted the forest paths were still awash with thick mud and deep ruts. The subways under the roundabout were little more than continuations of the forest trail with strict instructions for horseriders to dismount. Beneath me, huge eastern European juggernauts paused in the lay-bys, the soles of their drivers' feet propped at the windows as they sleep until they're permitted to drive on. The traffic noise reverberated through the tunnels as I negotiated a route out onto Grove Road which edged along the deep concrete gouge which channels the road. The sun was beating down now, and there was a remarkably long view into the eastern distance. As the land fell away into the Roding Valley I had a clear vista of rooftops and distant woodland, and rather shockingly protruding from within the woods I saw the tower of Claybury Hospital winking into the spring sunshine. For a while I sat in the strange little makeshift seating area on the edge of Woodford where the North Circular cannons underneath the urban centre. A steady procession of happy young faces trotted into town, buses shuttled back and forth. It felt strangely peaceful - like the road echoing below my seat wasn't really there. I shuffled creakily into South Woodford to find a bus stop, conisdering that it could be any town centre in the home counties. Over my shoulder the tower signalled from my previous walks, shimmering over the ranks of heavily mortgaged Essex real estate. I was back in comfortable territory on the edge of things, but not everyone here was comfortable or secure. I thought of the girl and her grandma shuffling west from the civic centre of Walthamstow and of the sorrowful history of Claybury and its sister asylums, and I felt very grateful I was heading back to my own tiny family.
A gallery of pictures from the walk can be found here.
An earlier than planned start, since I was up and had Open tickets for the first two legs of my journey. Washed, dressed and packed in record time and headed out to Warrington Central. Soon onboard the Transpennine Express service to Leeds, and passing the huge disused goods shed which still bears the names of the Great Northern, Great Central and Cheshire Lines railway companies. My first stretch of new track took me into Manchester Piccadilly once again. Its been a worryingly almost weekly visit this year, as I've explored the chords and branches emanating from the city. From Manchester, out via Stalybridge and under the Pennines at Standedge - still a favourite journey for me. None of the promised snow making a showing as we emerged on the east side at Huddersfield.
Not long at Leeds - but enough time to get breakfast, and to cross the station to platform 1 where the York-bound unit was waiting. Noted it was advertised to Poppleton only, presumably to discourage people from doing what I was trying to, and travelling the long way round via Harrogate. Boarded anyway, and when confronted by the guard made some mumbled excuse for not going 'the quick way' via the mainline. This was my second stretch of new track, and it was not disappointing. The winding line passing over impressive viaducts and through attractive little stations. Surprisingly busy too, which was pleasing to see. Harrogate appeared to be a prosperous and bustling place with architecture of impressive proportion for such a small town. All very much as it had been described to me, and I would love to visit again with some time to wander. Even more impressed by the picturesque and rather splendid Knaresborough - somewhere I realise I'd written off just on the basis of the name sounding truculent and Yorkshire-like!
Arrived at York in time for a flurry of railway related activity. Firstly noted the Network Rail liveried class 86s stabled in platform 1. Got a picture, to replace the fuzzy and distant one I took a year or so ago in Rugby.
On the way back, noted a terminating service from Tonbridge on the board. Assumed it had to be a charter, and headed over the platform 19. Whilst I awaited the charter, the HST New Measurement Train arrived too, followed by Past Times' York Flyer behind 67017 Arrow.
Set out for a wander by the usual landmarks - a quick look in at the Model Railway, then over the road and under the wall to The Maltings. Time for a pint of Black Sheep before heading back to the station to buy lunch and await the 12:25 to Bristol. An easy and relaxing journey back, making excellent time and managing a change onto my first weekend rail service into Highbridge in a month. Not quite the trip I'd planned for this weekend, but a pleasant combination of new track, old favourites and a chance to wander around York station.
To Swindon for a Software Update Seminar from Capita, our supplier. First contact as a member of our working group, so naturally there was some confusion as to how a lowly Admissions guy would have any knowledge of XML schema! The presentation was mixed - I was very relieved to see that the Admissions stuff seemed to be ready for Co-ordination in 2005. Likewise, I was much encouraged by the move to XML data transfer between schools and us - with more sensible rules for dealing with addresses and other information which differs between the two records.
Other parts of the presentation were lacklustre, over-detailed or just plain unnecessary. Since we are paying, wondered if this was good value, but then decided it was by virtue of the fact I'm reassured about the Admissions software!
Both my taxi drivers from the station to the far-flung hotel where the seminars were held wanted to tell me about Swindon. That was actually kind of fun - the first one was particularly well informed and gave a good historical account of the social effect of the railway arriving here. Our route seemed to consist of endless, very similar looking roundabouts, so I applaud the drivers skill in knowing which traffic island he had circumnavigated at any particular juncture!
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
