diamond geezer

 Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Let's return to London's newest official walkway, the Green Link Walk, which was launched on 1st March. If you need a map try here, if you need an app try here, if you want 45 pages of walking instructions try here, and if you're reading this several months in the future try here.

Section three is essentially a nice walk from the Angel Islington to the Thames ending on the far side of the Millennium Bridge. For central London it's an impressively quiet route, carefully constructed to follow backwaters rather than busy roads. But once again the Green Link Walk is very much not green, indeed there are several places where it deliberately skirts small green spaces rather than deviating through and I will flag these🚩 as we pass by. This is partly because big parks are non-existent hereabouts, but mainly because the route's designers were charged with the requirement that the GLW should be accessible to users of wheelchairs, mobility buggies and pushchairs. Best not moan, and remember you can always step off the designated route whenever you fancy.

WALK LONDON
Green Link Walk
[section 3]
Angel to Blackfriars (2½ miles)




If walking this from scratch you start outside Angel tube but I'm starting where section 2 ended up, pretty much above the mouth of the Islington canal tunnel. Here's the first signage failure of the walk, the only sign on the post pointing back towards Hackney and not onwards to the City. Here too is the first inexplicable shunning of a greenspace, namely Duncan Terrace Gardens🚩, a linear park following the footprint of the New River. Strict GLW-adherents get to follow the pavement south rather than nipping beyond the railings for two glorious minutes of snowdrops, hyacinths, camellias, bee hotels and full-on squirrel action. I'm baffled because it appears to be level access throughout so maybe it was just more difficult to sign or maybe it's because it's 'only' open from 8am til dusk and some jobsworth's attempting to be inclusive. Whatever.



The A1 is swiftly crossed, then Owens Field🚩 is the second small greenspace to be briefly avoided. "Continue walking on the tarmac path" say the Go Jauntly instructions, lest you be inordinately tempted by some grass and a rockable metal sculpture. But Chadwell Street is a better indicator of what's up ahead, i.e. classic Georgian terraces with period lamps and traffic calming, indeed you'll likely have to dodge several bikes because the Cycleway project adopted this backway first. It gets even lovelier as you enter Myddelton Square, a large residential square centred around St Mark's where the obvious green route would be through the churchyard gardens🚩 but no, the GLW skirts outside instead. With written instructions highlighting drop kerbs and traffic islands I'm starting to sense that the directions have been optimised for those on wheels, which is admirable but the majority are consequently missing out.
Underfoot, unmentioned, are a varied selection of circular manhole cover designs, so do look down.



Lloyd Baker Street has some fabulously unusual Georgian mansions, and also private communal gardens you won't be getting into. If you're never explored round here before you're likely to be thinking "oh I'm glad I came" and "oh do I have to turn left now?", but yes you do because eventually we have to end up at St Paul's. Go Jauntly's instructions do have an occasional tendency to head off-kilter specifically to see something. but in this case it's a 1930s mansion block currently covered in scaffolding which you could have seen close-up simply by going straight on. They also suggest you might want to "have a whirl" round Wilmington Square, which I would have given a flag except it only has one entrance/exit so could never have been part of the official route. It is lovely though.
Very nearby, unmentioned, is New River Head if you fancy a brief burst of municipal water supply heritage.



Here's where we cross Roseberry Avenue and then don't quite explore Exmouth Market, only look down it. You might be thinking the GLW signage points that way but no, it's merely been overzealously used to direct you across a zebra crossing which, given the lack of traffic, probably isn't going to be necessary. I thought the next part might be our first 'green' section but alas no, it only crosses the neck of Spa Fields🚩, a paved strip divided from the lawns and playground by yet more railings. As the largest greenspace on section 3 it's a shame the route can't take full advantage, indeed it could have done by exiting Wilmington Square via a different street, but only at the expense of safe crossings and wheelchair-friendly alleyways and they of course take precedence.
Nearby, unmentioned, are the London Metropolitan Archives which usually have a excellent exhibition on.



Clerkenwell Close is a historic throwback, a quiet narrow curl passing between former Victorian workshops. Having been advised that "Traces of the cloisters of the Nunnery from 1140 can be seen on the wall" I spent a fair while looking, but because they never specified which wall I never found them. GLW3 then makes its most egregious green omission, skipping St James's churchyard🚩 in favour of more pavement. This may be because two of the exits have steps and another's too narrow for a chair, making a through-route tricky, but if these don't worry you far better to head inside because you'll end up at Clerkenwell Green anyway. Again I can imagine many Londoners have never been here before and will be impressed, indeed we are ticking off some sequential goodies here.
I haven't been mentioning it but yes, this section is pretty well signed in a multiplicity of ways.



Here's a thing to make this hour-long walk last a bit longer, the Museum of the Order of St John. A small outpost exists beside their ancient church where you simply wander off the street into two rooms (and perhaps enjoy the tranquil garden beyond). But the main attraction is further down, Wednesdays to Saturdays only, its entrance underneath the former gatehouse to Clerkenwell Priory. Beyond the obligatory giftshop is a small museum in two parts, one devoted to the medieval religious military order, the other to the good works of the St John Ambulance brigade. It's all quite modern, occasionally audiovisual and very nicely presented, not to mention free. Don't feel you have to be following the Green Link Walk to come here - it's not that far from Farringdon station - but it does make an appropriate diverting break.
To delve deeper into St John's Gate and its historic secrets you'll need to book a tour.



St John's Lane leads to St John Street and thence, excellently, passes through Smithfield market. At the weekend that's the colourful quiet space with four photogenic phone boxes under colourful arched ironwork, whereas on a weekday morning I dodged forklifts, watched men in white coats load Angus steaks into a van and inhaled the pungent tang of meat. Beyond this point the signage gets a bit more temporary, mainly flappy plastic rectangles, perhaps because we're in the City of London now and permanent permission hasn't yet gone through. Prepare to follow Little Britain, the actual street, and to pass along one edge of St Bart's Hospital. The final greenspace the walk deliberately avoids is Postman's Park🚩, the one with the amazing tiled memorial to heroism, but that's because the exit at the other end has steps so officially the route couldn't get out. You can.
Nearby, unmentioned, are the amazing St Bart's Church (free) and the small St Bart's Museum (reopens 2025).



We're now careering towards St Paul's Cathedral and, uniquely on this walk, actually going inside the gardens to enjoy some green. The instructions do point out you don't have to, you could go round the edge, but when I saw a marker pointing through the gate I almost cheered. You can probably guess where we're going next, which is over the incredibly wide pedestrian crossing and then down Peter's Hill towards the Thames. I'm not sure what international tourists will make of GLW roundels stuck to the paving but they might inspire Londoners to Google and discover the full walk. These stickers are to nudge walkers across the Millennium Bridge with its world-beating panorama, this being the optimum crossing point for a strategic walk linking north and south London. Section 3 has to end on the south bank to create a link to the Thames Path, but rather than follow that it'd probably be better to mill off towards Tate Modern or any nearby tourist attraction, you're utterly spoilt for choice.



I've grumbled a lot but this is a great backstreets walk, even if describing it as Green is almost against Trades Descriptions. It's also overly risk-averse, as if devised by the Tufty Club, so live a little and deviate off route if you want and if you can. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when the Inner London Ramblers finally publish their written guidance it'll be a bit more practical and a little more inspired.

 Monday, March 18, 2024

Eight years ago the Metropolitan line extension to Watford Junction was cancelled when the incoming Mayor chose to ditch the outgoing Mayor's underfunded project. The people of London barely noticed - they had no desperate need to go to west Watford and the money saved went on projects closer to home. But in southwest Hertfordshire a long-held dream was extinguished, indeed as a former resident I'd been harbouring it for over 40 years. So every now and again I like to go back and see how the disused railway that should have become a tube line has become an even more disused railway than it was before. Sometimes I even get to stand on the old rails and sigh at what might have been. [12 photos]

Croxley
Still operational. Still trains to the West End every quarter of an hour or so. Still evocatively Metro-land and about to celebrate its centenary next year. No change here. But at the far end of Watford Road...

Croxley Green (disused)
...this one's almost gone. Officially the station closed in 2003 but the last train was in 1996, after which BR provided just one daily taxi, so the place has had decades to decay. A brief embankment exists between the canal and the Two Bridges roundabout, just long enough to park a train, and always too far from the heart of Croxley to be genuinely useful. Ten years ago a faded Network SouthEast sign still stood guard beside the entrance, but that and the timetable board alongside are long gone so you'd never guess what was behind the locked gate and up the crumbling steps unless you were in the know. Except, intriguingly, the gate isn't just unlocked it's disappeared and the fence has toppled too, as if nobody gives a damn whether anyone gains access any more.



I last stepped through in 2014 when the gate was pushable and the staircase slippery with fallen leaves. There wasn't much to see up top back then, just some rails, some wonky lampposts painted Network SouthEast red, a lot of trees and a few concrete supports that used to hold the platform up. It was, I confess, quite a thrill to get back in. But I had company back then, plus I remembered how steep the staircase was, plus I noted that the handrail had since toppled to an alarming angle so on this occasion I gave it a miss. That said, if you've ever wanted to explore the disused Croxley Green station it's now easy to gain access, perhaps the easiest it's been this century, and absolutely no signs say you shouldn't.

Cassiobridge (unbuilt)
Croxley Green station was never going to be part of the extension, a fresh viaduct would have crossed the valley from the existing Met line and joined the disused railway just beyond the box girder bridge. This brief link was both what made the extension possible and what ultimately scuppered it, being where most of the cost was. But although bugger all railway engineering ever took place, local property developers continued to build around the site of the proposed new station - Cassiobridge - including one jarring landmark tower that's now visible from far too far away. Cancellations, it turn out, have consequences.



I dodged the mass of blocky brick flats that would have overlooked the London-bound platform and stuck to the alleyway on the northern side where ticket barriers and lifts were never built. This is one of the best places to look through a fence and see the original railway up close, or was in 2016 after TfL cleared the undergrowth from the line. Even by 2018 it was still easy to distinguish the disused rails and passing neighbourhood cats through the undergrowth, but thickety trees soon started growing again and are now comfortably above head height. If nothing else local residents won't ever have to worry about the sound of trains keeping them awake at night, but as nature reclaims this green corridor I suspect the foxes will manage that instead.

Watford West (disused)
By the time the railway meets Tolpits Lane it's in a deepish cutting, and dead easy to look down on because health and safety wasn't so hot in the 1980s. Again trees are growing again all along the line, although they've a long way to go before they're as high as they were ten years ago when they rose above the bridge. Looking west the brand new flats (on the site of an industrial laundry) hit ten storeys, whereas looking east the 1990s flats (on the site of Scammell's truck works) are much lower because density priorities have changed.



The most interesting sight down below is the old station platform, singular, still with its five red lampposts and the remains of the support that once held a mirror. In this case access from the road is impossible, the arched metal gate being firmly padlocked and ivy increasingly encroaching on the steps. Annoyingly it was open the last time I came in 2022 but a group of local teenagers were holding court on the platform so my sole chance to get down there was anti-socially thwarted. TfL had no plans for a station here so the platform might have survived construction, although it's telling that engineers did no enabling works whatsoever on Boris's watch, merely a lot of heavy strimming.

Watford Vicarage Road (unbuilt)
Instead the extension's other new station would have been a cut-price halt on Vicarage Road tucked into the corner of Harwoods Recreation Ground. Views over the old railway are trickier here because the bridge is narrow with no pavement on one side, and controlled by traffic lights so the risk of being run over is ever present. I managed to visit just before a major football match, Watford's stadium being just a quarter of a mile up the road, so was briefly swept up in a flow of bescarfed dads, yellow-hatted pensioners and beery souls converging on the turnstiles. I did however head up there later, if only to see the unconvincing Graham Taylor statue and the new streetname celebrating one of the former chairman's greatest albums, and definitely not for a grinning selfie or a greasy burger.



Watford Stadium (disused)
This matchday halt opened in 1982 to coincide with Watford's footballing glory years and an uptick in spectators. It didn't last - the station or the glory - and the platform has again been left to rot along with its decaying lampposts. Ten years ago it was possible to get access via an embankment at the end of Stripling Way, but that no longer exists having been carved away to make way for the end of a new block of flats. On my last visits I've been unable to pass under the old bridge due to construction works so this time I was amazed to be able to step through into what was once a lowly industrial estate and is now Watford council's prestige Riverwell development. It's so derivative it looks almost exactly like an artists' impression.



Riverwell is a 70 acre site bordering the river Colne, although not too closely because there are rules about flooding these days. It's due to have a hotel, new school, retirement village and even a grid of terraced streets, but as yet it's mostly apartment blocks, building sites, commercial units and a vibrant yellow multi-storey car park. Again it was planned and green-lit when the Metropolitan line was on the cards, but today is just far enough away from things that the car is inevitably king. An eye-shaped island between the river and the railway has been transformed into undulating parkland for recreation and is not yet well used. But follow the muddy path in the corner almost to the Colne's edge and it turns out someone's dislodged the security fence so it's simplicity itself to pass through and climb up onto... gosh...



These are the original tracks of the disused railway, here crossing a low bridge just before joining up with the former Rickmansworth branch line. If I lived round here I can see why I'd skip the communal grass and playground and maybe bring a chair or barbecue up here to enjoy somewhere more authentic. Also... oooh... the tracks continue in both directions if you fancy a surreptitious safari, in one case swiftly reaching a disused signal I remember finding here in 2013 except now it's fallen over. Alternatively head west where to follow the embankment around the border of the site you'll need to duck under young trees bursting up between the tracks. This is quite impressive urbex adventuring for anyone who likes to slip off grid, in this case into a decaying world whose supposed reprieve never came.



In another world you could have ridden up from Baker Street on the tube, stepped out into this watery environment and thought it a pleasant place to live, and I suspect it's only those of us who saw the blighted former version who'd think otherwise. As things stand the divide between development and decay is narrower than you'd expect, as well as unexpectedly accessible, and this is why I like to revisit this failed railway line at irregular intervals. When politicians pull the plug, the ripples often go unseen.

Previous blogposts: 2011 2013 2014 2016 2017 2018 2022
Previous photos: 2011/2013 2014 2016 2018 2022 2024

 Sunday, March 17, 2024

Today I'm bringing you five St Patrick's Day quizzes.
There'll be one every two hours (or sooner if you complete them quicker).

Just one guess in each quiz please.
(but that's five guesses over the course of the day)


5) St Patrick quiz
Here are clues to 18 words that can be made from the letters of ST PATRICK.
All the words are six letters long.
How many can you unpick?

  1) bigot
  2) channel
  3) characteristics
  4) coupés
  5) deceives
  6) designer
    7) flatbreads
  8) immobile
  9) lofts
10) lorries
11) mammals
12) pierces
  13) railway
14) regions
15) rigorous
16) screenplay
17) snakes
18) violator

4) Irish music quiz
Here are alternative names for 20 Irish bands or artists.
How many original names can you list?

  1) The Wows
  2) Rigid Digits
  3) Treatment?
  4) Tribal Leaders
  5) Cockney Curry
  6) Tropical Blooms
  7) Sharp Red Fruit
  8) Young Male Area
  9) Avalanche Rescue
10) The Queen Dieted
  11) From The Capital
12) A Gasoline Feeling
13) Lockheed Spyplane
14) Dante's Masterwork
15) Cigarette Remnants
16) Directional Existence
17) Red Card in February
18) Growth Zone Rodents
19) Supermarket Delivery Vehicle
20) Attended Medical Appointments

..and a bonus clue: 21) where you'll find 'tong' in the dictionary
3) Irish word search
This word search contains at least 35 Irish-related words.
How many can you find? Look horizontally, vertically and diagonally.

   B K C O R M A H S E C A
   R L J E S T O U T E I S
   I I A T Y E N A E H A H
   G X O R A N G E W S R J
   I A A Y N E A G H N C O
   D E E L E E E S T A E Y
   A S F L F R Y K O B E C
   I P Y R I G N R O K H E
   L O T L E C U E S J G B
   F A M I N E L I A M U O
   C E I L I D H R E V O R
   B E D L I W R E T S L U


2) Irish counties quiz
Here are cryptic clues to the names of the 32 Irish Counties.
That's 6 from Northern Ireland and 26 from the Republic.
How many can you name?

  1) yob H
  2) like liver?
  3) garland cut
  4) insect edge
  5) sounds twice
  6) flesh hospital
  7) she's finished
  8) citrus Richard
  9) Rendell sleuth
10) 60s TV doctor
11) half a martyr 1
12) not a short car
13) floating stopper
14) shortened sauce
15) afterword edited
16) hang frame badly
  17) back in feral cat
18) not a high vehicle
19) truck on a railway
20) candle's nearly out
21) sparkling wine north
22) you see a lot of Ros
23) waste them recycled
24) hillock, or depression?
25) Rochdale MP loses heart
26) weekday muddles Ghana
27) made from red nylon rod
28) found in muesli (gourmet)
29) misbehave smothered in lube
30) limb with silver and hydrogen
31) SE Asian country includes one
32) happened in every South Park episode

1) Famous Patricks quiz
Here are clues to the names of 20 famous Patricks.
How many surnames do you know?

  1) Prisoner 6
  2) 50s singer
  3) dirty dancer
  4) Derby winner
  5) Arsenal goalie
  6) second doctor
  7) TV astronomer
  8) Woolpack softy
  9) avenging steed
10) shower dreamer
  11) Lincoln sheriff
12) E20 Trinidadian
13) starship captain
14) American psycho
15) Grey's Anatomist
16) French midfielder
17) lockdown adviser
18) Wimbledon winner
19) Greendale mailman
20) broadcasting comedian

(remember, just one guess per quiz)

 Saturday, March 16, 2024

Last Saturday one bus route on the edge of east London disappeared and another quadrupled in length. I didn't fancy spending my birthday in Upminster so left it a few days before taking a ride on the end result.

The 346 used to be one of London's shortest bus routes, a brief curl around the estates east of Upminster linking Cranham to the tube. It's grown.
The 347 is London's least frequent bus route, operating just four times a day and never on a Sunday. It continues.
The 497 was London's most unnecessary bus, introduced in January 2020 to connect not many people to Crossrail at Harold Wood. It's vanished.

I wrote a detailed analysis of the changes a couple of months so you should read that if you're interested. But in short, what happened last Saturday is that the 346 extended north from Upminster station along the remote rural route of the 347, then swallowed the 497 whole. New 346 = Old 346 + 347 + 497



Route 346: Upminster Park Estate to Harold Hill
Location: London east, outer
Length of bus journey: 10 miles, 50 minutes


346: The 346 starts where it always did, beside a large patch of grass in the middle of the Upminster Hall estate. TfL thought they'd have to add a toilet here to make the new route work but have made do without, to residents' relief if not drivers'. Buses used to depart every 15 minutes but under the new arrangements it's every 20 so local residents alas now have a worse service.



It's an odd start, first heading round a four minute loop back to almost where we started. A 248 is looping just in front of us, hoovering up most of the passengers, but we do attract a couple. One's an elderly man who addresses the driver with a smiley hello and a look that says "you're the first person I've spoken to today, I wish you had more to say". Queens Gardens is seriously potholed and leads to some private woodland on the very edge of east London. If you live out here, near the Cranham Brickfields, you're either very grateful for the 346 bus or more likely your front garden is full of cars. Switchbacking past the bungalows we reach the centre of Cranham by the tube depot, pausing briefly outside the Pie and Mash Cafe with its obligatory England flags. From here we're a faster route to Upminster than the 248 so by the time we reach St Mary's Lane there are ten passengers on board.

Hello TfL: The bus stops along this section of the route still have tiles which say '346 Monday-Saturday' whereas the service is now daily (hurrah), so they should have the plain 346 tiles the new bit of the route has.

346/347: From here we shadow the route of the two-hourly 347, the local irrelevance that occasionally links to Ockendon. We're approaching the centre of Upminster from the east, past the British Legion and eventually Waitrose where some of our passengers scarper. If I were to try to summarise the contrasting demographics hereabouts in just two cafe names, they would be Upminster Tandoori and Essex Grill. At the crossroads we turn right and hit the high street, where retro Upminster still boasts a department store and a Wimpy. Outside the latter is where driver changeover normally takes place, but only in the opposite direction so thankfully we speed through. By the time we reach the station, where the 346 formerly terminated, there's instead been a complete changeover of passengers (myself excluded).



347: Beyond the station the houses get bigger, grander and villa-ier. They're adding 35 more where the pitch and putt course used to be, whereas the proper golf course where the serious adults play has avoided being five-bedroomed. Upminster Tithe Barn Museum is alas closed until next year due to roof repairs but still has a bus stop named after it. So contortedly-spiralling is our route that if you'd missed the 346 at its departure point you could easily have walked to the River Drive bus stop and caught it here - I managed it in 12 minutes whereas the bus has taken 20. Just one more stop remains before we hit the edge of town, named after a veterinary centre founded in 1908, and then the Green Belt hits with a vengeance.

Hello TfL: What follows is one of the longest gaps between bus stops in Greater London, a full 1.4 miles, as we skip over a major junction on the Southend Arterial and skirt fresh woods. It perhaps made sense not to stop here when there were only four buses a day but now there are 66 and everyone who lives inbetween is missing out. And people do live here - there's Martin's Cottage and Summerhill Terrace for a start, then everyone up Cornlands Close and the incredibly worthy cause of the Meadowbanks Care Home. London Loop section 22 passes through too, plus there's the car park for Pages Wood, but buses simply speed by missing all this out. It shouldn't be difficult to add a bus stop here, even if it was just a flag on a pole and not an all-perfect drop-kerb accessible node, and it'd barely slow the service down. Having gone to all the effort of vastly improving the local bus service, not stopping for a mile and a half is a serious wrong that needs seriously righting.

When we do finally pause, at Pages Lane, we've zipped across the divide between Upminster and Harold Wood in three minutes flat. Alight here for Tylers Common and the start of a row of cottages, or at the next stop for the Towie-esque Array Brasserie and Grill. Residents on Shepherds Hill are the biggest winners of the 346's upgrade, now with 15 times as many buses per day and a Sunday service to boot, should they ever choose to use it. We cross the river Ingrebourne at Cockabourne Bridge, a smirkable name hilariously immortalised on a bus stop. By the time we reach the church, the clinic and Harold Wood's Neighbourhood Centre, but not yet the shops, two other bus routes have filtered in to help us out. At the station we unexpectedly swing round and pull up on the opposite side of the road before continuing, all the better to serve Crossrail, which is where our four miles of 347-shadowing comes to an end.

Hello TfL: Which begs the question, why haven't you scrapped the 347 yet? It's never performed a useful function between Romford and Harold Wood, no longer performs a useful function between Harold Wood and Cranham and still isn't necessary between North and South Ockendon. Its sole unique bit is now an underpopulated two miles between Cranham and North Ockendon, and OK these people pay London taxes but it's hard to argue they deserve this 12 mile long route. In January it was announced that route 347 remains 'under review', but short of turning it into a brief runty shuttle or pulling a magic rabbit from a hat and extending it somewhere unexpected it probably needs to die. Politically speaking, maybe that's best done after the Mayoral election.



ex-497: From Harold Wood station onwards the 346 follows what used to be route 497 into the remains of a hospital. Its former site is now 800 houses served on a hail and ride basis, with buses the only vehicles allowed to drive straight through. This is the busiest I've ever seen this service, picking up seven passengers on the way through and then dropping off a couple of pensioners from Upminster at the back of the big Tesco. There are still ten of us aboard as we head for the A12 and cross it, numbers I'd never previously have believed, but maybe that's what a more frequent service delivers. Everything round here screams cars cars cars - driving them, selling them, servicing them - so it's good to see so many people not using them.

Only one resident alights on Chatteris Avenue, the tiny gap in the network the 497 was introduced for, because most are waiting for the big shops on Hilldene Avenue. It no longer merits a pub but it does have a poundshop called Bargain Town and a takeaway called Fish'n'chicken. Just one person wants to ride the last stretch up Dagnam Park Drive, another blinks hard and checks the timetable to try to work out what this new bus might be. By the time we've climbed out of the valley and turned right at the trig point I'm the only passenger left, eventually turfed off by the Turdis at Stratton Road Woodland. The edge of Greater London is less than a mile away, as it has been for most of the ride.



The 497 was a total failure of a bus route - introduced without good reason, extended in desperation, persistently underused and scrapped within four years. But given that over 30 passengers in total joined me aboard the extended 346 perhaps a proper solution has finally been found to the problem of how best to serve outer Havering. Quadrupling the length of what used to be the 8th shortest bus route in London has created something people actually want to ride.

London's shortest bus routes (since 09/03/24)
  1) 389 Western Way → Barnet 1.63 miles*
  2) 327 Waltham Cross → Elsinge Estate 1.87 miles*
  3) 209 Mortlake → Castelnau 1.91 miles
  4) 379 Chingford → Yardley Lane 2.26 miles*
  5) W7 Finsbury Park → Muswell Hill 2.47 miles
  6) 378 Putney Bridge → Mortlake 2.60 miles
  7) R9 Orpington → Tintagel Road 2.63 miles*
  8) 399 Hadley Wood → Barnet 3.03 miles*
  9) E1 Greenford → Ealing Broadway 3.13 miles
10) 323 Mile End → Canning Town 3.41 miles

* Circular route (the given mileage is halfway round)
Route affected by the closure of Hammersmith Bridge

 Friday, March 15, 2024

Twenty years ago, on my first Random Borough trip, my jamjar took me to Merton and I only gave it a one-day write-up. Two decades later I'm doing Merton justice by giving it three days, of which this is the last, so buckle down to learn about fertiliser, philanthropy and phone masts.

Before I start with 'somewhere famous', yes I know that Merton's most well-known thing is undoubtedly the Wimbledon tennis tournament but I chose that last time. I also picked the other frontrunner, Wimbledon Common, and wider recognition tails off somewhat after those. So I've decided to focus instead on a famous resident, or at least a resident with a famous name who never saw the product everyone knows him for.


Somewhere famous: John Innes Park
John Innes, the name on many a bag of compost, was born nowhere near here in 1829. He started out as a wine merchant in the City of London but made his money by starting an office property company with his brother, and that's when his eyes turned to Merton. He bought up Manor Farm, installed himself as Lord of the Manor and set about developing an extensive garden suburb on the site. Merton Park's still a really nice garden suburb, but we'll get to that. John died in 1904 after three decades of local do-gooding and, in a will changed a week before his passing, bequeathed significant funds to found either an art museum or a horticultural institute. His trustees picked the latter, as you might have guessed, and that set in train the events by which he's now known.



John's buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin at the heart of the estate, which unusually for a mid-suburban church is very early medieval and retains 12th century crossbeams in the roof of the nave. I hoped to get inside to see Edward Burne-Jones' stained glass and Lord Nelson's bench (he was a regular worshipper here towards the end of his life) but it was only possible to get as far as the porch. Not to worry, that was far enough to be able to pick up a Churchyard Trail leaflet, and even without that it's immediately obvious looking down the churchyard that only one memorial has anywhere near the required dimensions to be John Innes' final resting place. Nice cherubs. Also the grass near the tomb was flourishing with spring flowers, including primroses and my very first bluebell of the year, which I thought was very appropriate for someone everyone thinks of as a famous horticulturalist.



The streets hereabouts are lovely, a few predating suburban development but mostly broad avenues lined by large desirable properties in Queen Anne and Domestic Revival styles. A particular feature of the estate is the use of holly hedges to act as garden boundaries. These days the area forms a substantial conservation area, one of many on this side of Merton, each readily identified by a special form of light blue street sign. Various pinned-up notices seem to suggest that the estate has a significant problem with dogs being rowdy and digging things up, especially behind the church hall, but this may just be a reflection of the residents association being run by sticklers and perfectionists.



The finest public facility hereabouts is undoubtedly John Innes Park, several manicured acres of recreational resource. The name's not just bolted on, these were originally the grounds of John's house transformed into a proper park and opened five years after his death. Its twisting paths link rockeries, lawns and well-tended flower beds, which even now include a riot of carefully-planted pansies and some almost past-it camellias, all interspersed by up to fifteen different types of holly. The park's designer supplemented the planting with a bijou bandstand, an ornamental arch and, in what's now a bit of a novelty, an Arts and Crafts toilet block. As an indication of status there's also a croquet lawn, and as confirmation that we're near Wimbledon the tennis courts are surfaced in purple and green. You'd be blessed to have this on your doorstep.



You can see John Innes's revamped manor house in this photo, just behind the pergola just to the right of the pond. It's now part of Rutlish School, a boys' secondary whose most famous past pupil is Sir John Major, and whose campus also incorporates buildings from the original John Innes Horticultural Institution. It was here in the 1930s that scientists developed the iconic soil-based John Innes composts, releasing their formulae into the public domain in 1938 and never profiteering from their manufacture. In 1950 the Institution upped sticks and moved to Bayfordbury near Hertford, and in 1967 moved again to more modern premises in Colney on the edge of Norwich. They continue to do great work but it's one product invented in Merton that brought them widespread fame, named after a man who could never have guessed he'd be remembered for a product sprinkled across gardens nationwide.
by tram: Merton Park; by bus: K5

Somewhere random: Cranmer Green
I wanted this to be properly random so I handed over my decision to the local free paper. I picked up a copy of the South London Press from a hopper outside Wimbledon Park station and decided to visit the location of a Merton-related news story inside. It's 48 pages long and full of news, I reasoned, so there are bound to be several. Not so. The paper's circulation area in fact covers nine boroughs, but out of the 40+ news stories poor Merton was the subject of only two. One was a parliamentary candidate moaning about GP waiting times, no location specified, so I was forced instead to visit the site of a recent protest documented on what appeared to be the NIMBY page.



It's a familiar tale - phone company proposes building a mast to improve connectivity, local residents object. In this case the phone company was EE and the locality was Cranmer Green, a triangular offshoot of Mitcham Common between the railway line and the cricket ground. We can't have a 20m pole and six cabinets on our village green, protestors claimed, there are vulnerable pensioners in those flats and this is their nearest green space. "It's 100ft from the church where people get married," one said. "It will be an eyesore. It will have a negative impact on the community.” Residents even went to the effort of organising a coffee morning to encourage objections, not to mention printing special t-shirts, and as the local paper reports they actually won.

Cranmer Green turns out to be rather pleasant, a nature reserve underlain by sands and gravels and an unfenced respite from the busy roads around the edge. Much of it is meadow, part of it is woodland and there's also a small pond which was probably dug in the 18th century to provide water for livestock. Oddly the green has a dead end road up the middle complete with period lampposts - this is a conservation area after all - which it seems is solely used for parking. It's also all terribly squidgy at the moment, with large parts of the grass resembling small pools and footpaths you'd need wellies for, but the southern stripe with the daffodils was thankfully more solid. I can see why the council refused permission, I thought, because adding a pole and boxes here would be an aberration.



Except the mast was actually scheduled to be added to an entirely separate patch of grass across the road - more shared municipal lawn than village green. When residents claimed it would 'cast a shadow' over protected land that is literally all it would do, and as for that claim it'd be '100ft from the church' I measured it and it's actually over 800. Always take the mathematical accuracy of a crusading campaigner with a pinch of salt. That said I probably wouldn't want a big mast beside my house either, especially in a freshly fenced compound, but the winners here are really the residents of Cranmer Farm Close and not the chiffchaffs, moorhens and butterflies on Cranmer Green proper. There are many more important news stories across Merton, but they're not in the local paper.
by train: Mitcham Junction; by bus: 127, S1

I'm not going to continue the random sequence by revisiting Islington in three months time - one fully upgraded borough was enough - but that's how jamjar-inspired reportage has evolved twenty years later.

 Thursday, March 14, 2024

Twenty years ago today I brought you my very first Random Borough report from the London borough of Merton. But it was fairly brief - most of my posts were back then - so two decades on I'm having another go to do Merton justice. Yesterday somewhere sporty and somewhere pretty, tomorrow somewhere famous and somewhere random, and today somewhere retail and somewhere historic.

Somewhere retail: Colliers Wood
I can't do Merton Abbey Mills again because that was 2004's choice. I was going to do Wimbledon's main shopping mall, Centre Court, but I see they've changed the name to Wimbledon Quarter and that's lost all the magic. So instead I went to the ultimate Wandleside shopping cluster.

The Colliers Wood retail hub is massive, sells everything the big chains offer and comes in three separate chunks. You could easily walk between the car parks but I suspect most people drive.



Biggest of all is the Sainsbury's/M&S megastore, which was a SavaCentre when it opened in 1989 and the largest hypermarket in the UK. It sits beside the Wandle on the site of the William Morris Printworks where carpets, tapestries, wallpaper and stained glass were manufactured to the highest Arts and Crafts standards. Think on that as you cross the footbridge over the river preparing to buy absolutely nothing so erudite. The two conjoined stores are built on stilts, partly to prevent flooding but mainly to be able to fit the car park underneath, so there's an escalator to ride on the way in and a proper travelator on the way out. The upper balcony round the atrium is mostly pointless since the Fresh Kitchen cafe closed in 2022 so the security guard at me looked suspiciously as I walked a full circuit.

Not many shopping centres include a medieval chapter house, but if you head out the back to the subway under the flyover you'll find one lurking there. It's all that's left of Merton Abbey (1114-1538), despoiled first by Henry VIII, then by a railway station and most recently by the A24. Judging by how close a pylon stands to the site, it seems destructive infrastructure has really got it in for the poor old Chapter House. Normally you can visit every Sunday from April to September, and one day you should, but be aware the season's starting late this year while they get the drains fixed and fit brighter lighting. [report from 2015]

The Priory Retail Park lies just across the Pickle Brook, a minor braid of the Wandle, on the site of former watercress beds. I did find an information board on the walk over which I hoped would tell me more, but sadly the panel had almost entirely eroded, the legs had toppled and the whole thing was retreating into a bush. The big shed here is bookended by a Currys and a Dunelm, but the big draw for Sainsbury refuseniks is the Aldi in the middle. Fine dining is not supported but if you want something with onion rings there's a Hungry Horse called Kiss me Hardy (named after former local resident Admiral Nelson). Best not linger here.



Beyond the crossroads is the third part of the retail triptych, the Tandem Centre. Think of it as a U-shaped warehouse with a vast car park in the middle and a ring of bollards around the edge to prevent anyone driving through the glass frontage. Pedestrians are afforded a single narrow path across the middle. The units include Next, New Look and Nando's, plus a Lidl for even greater supermarket choice, indeed enough big chains for uninspired families to enjoy a proper till-feeding afternoon out. I realise I'm only writing about this in a surprised way because I live in inner London and we don't drive to sheds, everywhere else does, but Colliers Wood is out on a limb even for the suburbs.
by tube: Colliers Wood; by bus: 57, 131, 152, 200, 219, 470

Somewhere historic: Surrey Iron Railway
One thing about Merton is that it has properly dense industrial heritage. The Wandle Valley was a crucible of early manufacturing thanks to watermill power, with calico works, tanneries, gunpowder factories and paper mills amongst the early arrivals. The Wandle Industrial Museum (open on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons) keeps these stories alive. Many such businesses were linked by the Surrey Iron Railway - arguably Britain's first significant railtrack, although more accurately a horse-drawn "plateway" used to transport minerals, building materials and farm produce.

The Surrey Iron Railway ran for nine miles between Wandsworth and Croydon and was commercially successful for all of seven years before the Croydon Canal opened in 1809 and swiped its business. Here's a map of the route, here's a detailed old school website and here's an 18 page historical treatise from 1995. 200 years on pretty much nothing of the SIR remains bar its alignment, so I thought I'd try walking that south from Colliers Wood to the edge of the borough. The first mile was quite dull, running invisibly parallel to Church Road, so I won't bore you with that. Instead let's pick up the trail at Mitcham Parish Church, a fine building from a similar era (although best not linger on the fact they knocked down a 13th century church to build it).



To follow the railway take Church Path south past two attractive old terraces, one from 1865 and the other from 1904. But that's it for 'pretty' on this walk because the two long paths that lie ahead are far from attractive. The first is Baron's Walk, and as you survey the fingerpost at the first fork yes I'm sorry, that is the miserable-looking alleyway to the right. It bends unloved around the outside of a waste processing centre, with hundreds of skips and bales visible on the far side of a line of spiked railings... and smellable too thanks to the unmistakable sub-citrus whiff of decay. To the left a crumbly green fence shields the recreation ground you probably should have walked through instead, and eventually a much older brick wall hems you in too. The path doesn't precisely track the original alignment of the railway, merely very near enough, but we're coming up on a modern means of transport that follows it precisely.



Yes it's the Croydon trams, which from 'just after Belgrave Walk' to 'just before Waddon Marsh' replace the actual railway which replaced the SIR. You can't walk along the tram tracks, obviously, but you can follow a parallel footway called Tramway Path for most of what follows. Above Mitcham tram stop it has proper semi-detached houses and parking, then swings across and traces the northern side of the tracks instead. I arrived at school-chucking-out time so had to fight against a flow of fussing mums, independent ten year-olds and scooter riders emerging from the back of Cranmer Primary. The path then narrows somewhat past the backs of several gardens before reaching a narrow bridge across the tracks. The tram in my photo has just departed Mitcham Junction, whereas Tramway Path now veers off to the right (past that lone lamppost) following the SIR's branch line to Hackbridge.



This isn't much more pleasant, to be honest, again between the backs of houses and something semi-industrial but at least with a stripe of woody undergrowth to act as a distraction. Also the smell wafting over the fence is now briefly baked goods, not rotting refuse, so that's a plus. Folk who live on Carshalton Road can't park out front because that's Mitcham Common so instead they have garages back here, a long chain of them in not always the best condition. The depot hidden behind the barbed wire on the right is briefly revealed as a construction company's Consolidation Centre, i.e. where they store their materials, and quite frankly it's a relief when this back alley eventually curves out onto the common beside a Chinese fusion restaurant. I was saved from following the final mile because the borough boundary intruded and I'm not allowed to write about Sutton, and what I think I've learnt is don't try to walk the Surrey Iron Railway, just ride the tram.
by tram: Mitcham

 Wednesday, March 13, 2024



It's exactly 20 years today since I dropped the names of 33 boroughs into an empty honey jar, picked one at random and kicked off my Random Borough project. It took eight years to complete.
I've decided to pick one of these 33 boroughs completely at random and then go there for the day. Could be near, could be far, could be urban, could be suburban, could be north, south, east or west, will be random. Then I'm going to visit some of that borough's most interesting places, assuming it has any. I'm going to try to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. And then I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it.
That first Saturday I ended up in the London borough of Merton, nipped round six rapidly-researched locations and headed home to write them up.
Somewhere famous: Wimbledon Common
Somewhere historic: Morden Hall Park
Somewhere pretty: Wimbledon Park
Somewhere sporty: All England Lawn Tennis Club
Somewhere retail: Merton Abbey Mills
Somewhere random: Abbey Parade
I was thwarted somewhat that evening by a last-minute invite to go ten pin bowling (I came last) so ended up writing less than I might. I've always thought Merton got short shrift compared to the other 32, so two decades later I'm putting that right by revisiting the borough and writing completely new vignettes in the original categories. I've made it much harder for myself by not going back to the places I went before, nor anywhere previously blogged, so it's very much a second division tour with hopefully a Premier League write-up.



Random borough: Merton

Somewhere sporty: AFC Wimbledon
I can't do the tennis again so I'm doing the football, which turns out to be the tale of two teams and two housing estates. There is only one winner.

In the beginning there was only Wimbledon Football Club, who in 1912 started playing on a patch of marshland at the corner of Plough Lane and Haydons Road. After a lengthy non-league career they were promoted to the Fourth Division in 1977 and began an unprecedented race to the summit. Within ten seasons they'd topped the First Division and won the FA Cup, but this success proved Plough Lane's downfall when the Taylor Report proposed that top class teams needed all-seater stadiums. In 1991 the Dons fled the borough to groundshare at Crystal Palace, and the quest for a new ground eventually saw them (scandalously) up sticks to Milton Keynes. Here's where they used to play.



Unsurprisingly it's now a lot of flats. When the land was sold it was due to become a Safeway supermarket, but they failed to get planning permission so after demolition it was sold on to a property developer and became Reynolds Gate. Each of the six blocks is named after a former player (Cork, Lawrie, Stannard), manager (Bassett, Batsford) or chairman (Reed), interspersed with private green wedges unsuitable for a kickabout. Arguably the occupants of Stannard House have the best view across the Wandle, but given the looming presence of Wimbledon substation and its emergent pylon maybe not. Residents have a Nisa corner shop for their groceries and a Mertonesque waterwheel to assemble beside in case of fire. The chief nod to the past is a funereal monolith facing the main street corner, which it turns out has a textured backside supposedly representing the key events of the 1988 Cup Final. I couldn't work out which spiky quadrant was supposed to represent Princess Diana meeting the team.

Wimbledon FC's true fans faced up to the Milton Keynes departure by starting up a new team, AFC Wimbledon. They too started at the bottom of the heap and slowly climbed, and are currently in League Two four places below their Buckinghamshire nemesis. What's more they too play on Plough Lane, on a site two footballpitchesworth away from the old ground which narrowly squeezes inside the Merton borough boundary. For sponsorship reasons it's called the Cherry Red Records Stadium, which at least is a worthy cause rather than a bunch of gamblers, but it'll win absolutely no prizes for architecture.



The ground is built across the footprint of another sporting stalwart, Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, which hosted dog racing, speedway and car boot sales between 1928 and 2017. You can still see the faded remains of a painted advert promising 'Greyhound Racing every THU [unreadable] SAT' on a wall leading to the away end. AFC Wimbledon pounced on the site in conjunction with Galliard Homes, recognising that 600 flats were the best option for a 21st century groundshare. Most of these line a bleak boulevard called Greyhound Parade, facing a high blue barrier that denies those on lower floors the opportunity of watching a game. You can also see bugger all by attempting to walk around the perimeter, only signs by the grey gates confirming that you can bring pocket cameras and crutches into the ground, but not a large flag or a musical instrument unless you email the club in advance.



As a child of the 70s my favourite spot was the Womble Bench where Orinoco stands at one end with his tidy bag, and a pile of cups, cans and cartons rests on the fake litter bin at the other. The other team used to have a Womble mascot called Wandle, but author Elisabeth Beresford revoked permission after they turned traitor and allowed AFC Wimbledon to have a Womble mascot called Haydon instead. I had no luck getting inside the club shop because it was closed, so also missed out on the museum exhibit "The Greatest Story" which is otherwise free to view. Apparently the infamous Womble Til I Die gates from the former stadium are in storage and due to be put on permanent display soon. It all feels more of a fortress than a cosy club to be honest, but hurrah that the battle of the Wimbledons eventually led to a home win.
by train: Haydons Road; by bus: 493

Somewhere pretty: Cannizaro Park
Many of London's best parks are a former posh bloke's back garden and so it is with Cannizaro Park. The posh bloke in question is Henry Dundas, William Pitt's Secretary of State for War, who lived here for twenty years and originally oversaw the landscaping. His house is now a hotel facing the southeast corner of Wimbledon Common, but the rear is in public hands so slip along the path up the side and you'll find a fascinating place to explore. For the smaller, more formal gardens turn left across the lawn past the stares of gourmet diners grazing in the conservatory. For a more varied perimeter safari turn right at the aviary (which before the pandemic contained proper birds but currently contains... oh, two Girl Guide dummies as part of a rolling programme of community art). It gets better beyond that.



Woodland paths and avenues thread past tumbling artificial streams. A simple fountain gushes in the lower pond, watched over by a cormorant. If you know your trees you'll spot several rare ones in a state of glowing maturity. The Valley Path is a) lined by spring bulbs b) closed for resurfacing. The Italian Garden steps down between the original kitchen garden walls, though is mostly empty bar the odd urn. Lady Jane's Wood is artificially hillocky and might require sturdier shoes. Keep walking and you'll eventually reach a belvedere amid pine trees, tucked so far into a narrow corner that most never get this far. A lot of the sheer variety and well-tended husbandry is helpfully explained by the size of the gardener's enclosure. This is very much not your average park.



A fine body of volunteers help keep the place in shape too, and you can sense both their pride and their admonishment from the tone of their chalkboard ("Toilets ARE open. If they remain well kept they will remain open"). Admittedly you should really visit later in the year - the Rhododendron Dell is only budding, the Rose Garden has yet to flourish, the Maple Avenue will be an autumnal treat and the Cherry Walk has already peaked. And pick a day when it's not pissing down - not many of us were traipsing round, and I felt properly bedraggled by the time I squelched past the restaurant jury. But the green side of Wimbledon's not just about tennis courts and the common, there's this hidden treasure too.
by tube: Wimbledon; by bus: 93

 Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Let's return to London's newest official walkway, the Green Link Walk, which was launched on 1st March. If you need a map try here, if you need an app try here, if you want 45 pages of walking instructions try here, and if you're reading this several months in the future try here.



The second section is the longest and I had the sense to walk it on a sunny day. It's an urban trek across the borough of Hackney, via admittedly attractive streets but again not especially 'green'. I had my stopwatch out as I walked so I could add up all the potentially green bits and I think I scraped 30 minutes out of 2¼ hours. Such are the consequences of devising a 100% accessible trail across built-up inner London. On the plus side, on this section it is at least clear what the Green Link Walk actually links.

WALK LONDON
Green Link Walk
[section 2]
Lea Bridge to Angel (5 miles)




If you haven't walked here from Epping Forest the best way to the start point is via Lea Bridge station or aboard the 55 or 56 bus. Things kick off officially outside the Lea Valley Ice Centre but more practically at the actual Lea Bridge - a bridge across the River Lea. Descending to the riverbank we find three iterations of signs for walkers, the first being one of those lovely metal fingerposts erected in the 2000s to show where strategic walks go, the second a 2010s-style post with thin black pointers. It hasn't proved possible to retrofit either of those for the new route so two small Green Link Walk signs have been affixed to a lamppost instead, and they stand out. The two other key walkways we're linking to at this point are Capital Ring section 13 and Lea Valley Walk sections 3 and 4, both of which follow the river for a heck of a lot longer than we're going to.



[Along this brief waterside stretch I spy a cormorant, a weir, a couple of jogging dogs and the Princess of Wales, which in this case is a pub and not a convalescent playing hide and seek. The path bears off just before the footbridge to enter Millfields Park, one of Hackney's largest, which it crosses diagonally on a broad solid path. Look for the London County Council boundary marker at the start, the huge electricity substation in the middle and the dense swooshes of daffodils near the end. By the time I reached the pedestrian crossing I reckoned that'd been ten solid minutes of 'green', which I'm going to flag up as green text like this 🕐 10 mins]. I also intend to flag up the frothier nonsense in Go Jauntly's walk description in red, for example their description of Millfields Coffee on the far side of the crossing as that lovely coffee shop. It is admittedly buzzing.



And now for a lot of pavement walking as we follow Millfields Road due west. The directions say nothing other than be mindful when crossing the side roads but one special thing to look out for is the rare streetsign with an NE postcode at the end of Chailey Street and another is the old shopfront of Ansells (Upholsterers of Distinction, Estimates Our Pleasure) at the top of Alfearn Road. At Clapton Pond the GLW signs disappointingly direct you around the outside of the pond complex, whereas the written instructions are vaguer and merely say follow the park around. [Assuming you're able-bodied do absolutely take the opportunity to enter, get a close-up of the fountain and cross the ornamental footbridge 🕐 1 min], because obeying the route too literally would be a wasted opportunity.



Our next green stop is Hackney Downs, which at 40 acres is another of the largest parks in Hackney. Having made a bit of a detour to get here the GLW peculiarly chooses to follow a single path along the shortest edge rather than venturing any distance into the centre. [You get to follow a fine avenue of plane trees and admire a splendid Victorian terrace 🕐 4 mins] but I say stuff that, head into the middle and then turn left along 'New Cross Fire Avenue'. You'll get to learn a lot about a 1981 conflagration and how it took the life of a local teenager, plus the opportunity to sit on a week-old memorial bench, then get a closer look at the delightful doggy mosaics the official walk marginally misses.

In the southeast corner is the walk's first signage aberration courtesy of local mischief makers or vandals. One of the GLW signs has been turned to face completely the wrong path, and it looks like they tried to shift the other and bent it in the process. Another of the signs out on the pavement has also been spun to point the wrong way, and it's a bit dispiriting that this has happened within ten days of the walk launching.



In central Hackney the route meanders somewhat to try to tick off any available medium-sized greenspace. That means filtering back east past the best Vegan cafe! A visit here is a must! to find a lovely small park. [This is Clapton Square, a remnant from the reign of George III when Hackney was a prosperous country village, although the central playground and drinking fountain are later additions. By good fortune a chain of paths now heads south via St John's Churchyard, bypassing Mare Street, along the tombside alley of Churchwell Path. Keep an eye out, if you can, for Blind Fred's plaque. After one of the pleasanter stretches of the walk 🕐 9 min] you emerge onto Morning Lane, home to the disastrous gentrification experiment of Hackney Walk where every single business attracted to the fashion-led honeytrap has now closed, apart from the Burberry outlet store that first triggered it.



It's back to backstreets again as we approach the heart of Hackney via the Hackney Picturehouse, Hackney Empire and Hackney Town Hall. Here the wayfinding signs reappear, having been unhelpfully intermittent during the last paragraph, so best not try walking the GLW without instructions just yet. I broke off here to enjoy the temporary photographic exhibition in Hackney Museum, an evocative social retrospective, before continuing down the unusual cross-grid pathway of Hackney Grove. If you've never explored Hackney off the main streets before you'll be amazed that these snickety backways exist, although the steady stream of cyclists confirms that locals very much know. Best ignore the Italian restaurant amazing pizzas. Good vibes aplenty! unless you've hours to spare because we're coming up on another marvellous greenspace, London Fields.



The official path stays outside the fence for the first couple of minutes, only cutting in by the toilets, then another unhelpful sign points ambiguously down the wrong path. [Instead cut across the centre of the park, alas its narrowest dimension, enjoying an all too brief burst of plane trees, spring blossom and exercising dogs 🕐 5 min]. If you've been adding up my green timings you'll realise they already total 29 minutes, which is disappointing because I only promised you half an hour of green and there are still two miles to go. On stepping out of the park expect plenty of pavements ahead, and although these are unexpectedly attractive backstreets the 'green' motif is now relying heavily on street trees and whatever's planted in people's front gardens.

Here's the next signage disaster, a repeater sign at the first fork in the road which plainly points left (along Shrubland Road) whereas it should point right (along Albion Drive). I was so convinced that I walked the wrong way for over quarter of a mile, admittedly along a parallel street but without any signs to guide me back onto the correct route. Please fix this one.



Albion Drive goes on a bit, which is good because it's easy to follow, and ends with a gorgeous railinged haven called Albion Square Gardens. Think shrubbery, flower beds, palm trees, even a gardener's hut, all in a long thin enclosure faced by prime terraced villas. A carving on the central drinking fountain confirms that this hideaway was laid out in 1899 by the Metropolitan Gardens Association and its Passmore Edwards gusher was added 11 years later. Alas the GLW signs ignore ASG, ditto Go Jauntly's instructions, whereas you should definitely walk through and lap it all up. They also bypass Stonebridge Gardens, the triangle of grass below Haggerston station, [although arguably the brief daffodilled remnant of Stonebridge Common allows the walk to accumulate its final minute of green 🕐 1 min].



There's another trail-based miss at De Beauvoir Square, Hackney's largest and possibly finest garden square, where the Green Link Walk signs merely skirt the Jacobean-style houses on the southern edge. It may be that the route's designers wanted to avoid a garden that might be locked, it may be the route was deemed not step-free enough or it may just be that the entrances are in impractical positions, but for goodness sake don't be a slave to the instructions and instead nip in and lap it up. The rosebeds are sure to be great in the summer (I watched two gardeners tidying them up). The road ahead is glorious - broad, blossomy and quiet enough to wander up the centre, this because the quiet streets of De Beauvior have been low traffic since the 1970s. The quality of life here barely flickers as we cross from Hackney into Islington.



I walked pretty much all these streets during lockdown but somehow missed Elizabeth Avenue, another aesthetic winner, where small circular Green Link Walk signs appear on the lampposts for the very first time. You're unlikely to get lost now as the roads flow sequentially and quietly towards the southwest. We're following a residential channel midway between Essex Road and the Regent's Canal, and although the latter's towpath would have been a much more obvious target for a long distance walkway, the route's architects (or non-step-free connections) have kept us away. Instead there are almshouses to admire, multiple aspirational terraces to pass and also cafe owners who think £12 for 'wrap and juice' is a Meal Deal worth shouting about. Unfortunately there are no further parklets to walk through, the only green patches on the map proving to be segregated playgrounds or jumped-up verges.



Finally the road reaches a Cajun pub A taste of Louisiana you'll never forget! beside a quiet bridge across the Regent's Canal, a tranquil car-free walking route through North London. Again no attempt is made to join the towpath, not even for the short dash to the mouth of the Islington Tunnel, most likely because a wheelchair user could never tackle the steep climb at the far end. The strategic walk which does follow the towpath is the Jubilee Greenway, one of the lesser known in the ambulatory basket, and our link to that is why Green Link Walk section 2 ends here. For section 3 expect a much shorter walk across the inner city, but for now you can duck off here for the joys of Upper Street, welcome refreshment or temporary escape via Angel tube.


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jack of diamonds
Life viewed from London E3

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