On the bridge over the River Lea (or Lee) navigation
channel, I got a view of the Olympic Stadium amid the almost-empty plastic beer
glasses that hadn’t been cleared away from the previous night’s drinking. The
river looked as grey as the sky, although still the only rain was the sort of light
drizzle that makes you wonder if it’s worth the effort of breaking out the
waterproof jacket. I didn’t.
Following the Capital Ring from where I’d left off, I headed south along the towpath, past locked-up narrowboats whose occupants had either got up early or, if they were sensible, were still in bed. Views from the water pointed to the buildings of the City or the Docklands, depending on which way you looked. The waterside warehouses looked disused to me, but that could’ve been because it was a Saturday.
The Capital Ring follows the same route as the Lea Valley
Walk (fifty miles, Luton to Limehouse Basin) as far as the Old Ford Lock, where
I saw a cormorant diving for fish , a couple of moorhens and a swan. One of the
green signs told me that I was 9¾ miles from Highgate Wood, and 4½ miles from Beckton District Park,
the end of section 14 of the Capital Ring.
The sign to Highgate Wood got me thinking … briefly. Since
I’d done my first part of the Capital Ring back in March, it had started to pop
up everywhere. Someone did
the walk for Time Out, and my
Dad, who just happens to own a copy of the Capital Ring guidebook, had a go at
a few stages; he told me that in Highgate Wood he’d seen a tatty-looking plaque
commemorating the launch of the Capital Ring in September 2005, its launcher
being a Greater London Assembly Member called Jenny Jones (of the Green Party).
An odd place to launch it, I’d thought – especially given that, according to
the section numbering system it’s supposed to start and end at the Woolwich
Foot Tunnel. Perhaps that was deemed insufficiently green for the big opening.
I, naturally, had somehow managed to overlook the plaque completely when I
walked through Highgate Wood.
Old Ford Lock is where the Lea’s navigation channel merges
with the rest of the River Lea, and it’s also where the Capital Ring leaves the
Lea and turns eastwards. Specifically, it joins onto another path, the
Greenway. This is a raised footpath-cum-cycleway which dates back to the
Nineties when it was built (if a footpath can be ‘built’) on top of the
Northern Outfall Sewer, which takes all manner of effluent from Hackney to the
sewage treatment plant at Beckton; like many of London’s sewers, it’s the work
of that Victorian civil engineering titan Joseph Bazalgette and it works by
gravity.
From the Greenway I got a great view of the Olympic Stadium
and the construction workers who were hard at work converting it into West Ham
United’s new home (as with the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, it seems
like one of the main beneficiaries of the London Olympics is going to be a
football team). Unlike Dad, I didn’t have a guidebook; I had a print-out for
the relevant section of the walk that I’d downloaded from the TfL website that
was getting progressively more damp. According to it, I would be following the
Greenway for about three miles but just after crossing Stratford High Street I
encountered some barriers blocking my access to the next section of the path and
a sign telling me to “KEEP OUT!”.
Being Victorian, the Northern Outfall Sewer needs some
maintenance every now and again, and Thames Water is at present carrying out
some renovation work. The accompanying notice had a diversionary route which
took me along an urban back-road called Abbey Lane which passes the Abbey Mills
Pumping Station and emerges onto Abbey Road (no, not that one). At some points I could even see the Greenway,
tantalisingly out of bounds and (just) out of reach. I somehow managed to get a
bit lost amid the terraced houses, and was briefly distracted when the road I
was on afforded me a glimpse of a series of back gardens serving a row of two-up,
two-down terraced houses, many of which had extensions at the back; interestingly,
the gardens ranged from the well-kept to the astonishingly overgrown (one of
them had a mattress and a sofa in the
undergrowth). Briefly, it put me in mind of the views of back gardens that I’d
experienced on the Parkland Walk section.
The drizzle thickened sufficiently to persuade me to dig my
waterproof out. Eventually I made it onto Manor Road, which I followed down to West
Ham station (Tube, DLR and BR; not, though, the nearest station to the football ground)
where after diverting into a nearby park I made it back onto the Greenway.
Back
on a path running between back gardens, but much more exposed than the Parkland
Walk. That didn’t stop a few hardy dog-walkers and joggers, though, as I
followed the Greenway east – wondering at how a walk through an urban area like
Plaistow could result in my encountering so few people. I could see the Beckton
treatment plant looming in the background, but the Capital Ring left the
Greenway long before it got that far.
Following the green signs, I took a left that led my to a nondescript
back-street called Stokes Road
which in turn led me onto a footbridge over the A13. After this, I made my way
through a park which apparently contains species of tree from around the world.
Alas, tree recognition is one of my blind spots as far as nature is concerned
so this was rather lost on me. I’d reached the end of another section of the
Capital Ring and could, if I so wished, call it a day and get the DLR out of East London. Or I could carry on walking; according to
the sign, it was only 3½ miles to the Woolwich Foot Tunnel.
Another 3½ miles? Why not?
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