THE LONDON LOOP! PART 2

Old Bexley to Jubilee Park – 7 ¾ miles – Jubilee Monday 4th June 2012

If you or anyone you know is ever looking for a taste of countryside proper on your London doorstep then look no further. This is the perfect walk to meet that need. Seriously, you just jump on a train at London Bridge and in about 20 minutes you are already en route to getting that slice of pastoral pie.

Glorious scenery awaits and we don’t even know it yet as I touch the lamp post with London Loop marker signs at Bexley to herald the start of today’s walk. Almost immediately we come across loads of pretty pink wild roses and young boys playing 6-a-side cricket. This country is obsessed with the game and yes that includes my boyfriend who has joined me again today with the excuse of taking photos for the blog but I think he might be secretly getting into the idea of this London Loop lark…

He’s quite taken with the cricket and I fear we will be stuck watching forever. I also think about the blog and start to feel a little self-conscious. Last time I was just walking and the writing part came after. Now I know I am going to be writing about this walk I needily look around for inspiration. This soon starts to grate, I want to be walking carefree as usual please so I force myself to try and stay in the moment and think about the ruddy writing when I get to it!

Bexley Cricket Club behind us we are suddenly up on an open plateau of green, I read that this seemingly wild patch of land is in fact one huge pile of landfill! We eventually cross it and come to a red-brick pumping station with fields growing sweet corn on either side. Number 1, I love the fact that proper agricultural activity is happening so close to urban life (these fields are large people!). And then the joy (that would be number 2) of seeing these super neat rows of seedlings ( yes I can rather expertly confirm the sweet corn are still in seedling state and about 3 weeks old – thank you google images!). The zinging acid green lines up and down the fields are gorgeous on the eye and hard to leave behind us.

We come to the River Cray which we had spent a lot of time walking along on the first leg of the loop. How long would it be with us today and indeed on future legs of the walk? The beauty of this walk is not knowing anything about it beforehand or doing any planning. We just rock up on the day and follow the signs, can make you feel quite intrepid if you let it!

This is the nicest stretch of the Cray so far, the lush green of English countryside in June making its impact. Loads of trees to admire, pregnant with splendid verdant foliage. And the shallow clear water! Looks very inviting, if you are 10 years old and wished you were in Swallows & Amazons…the activities you could think up if you were that way inclined!

We walk on and come to the elegant Five Arch Bridge built in 1780 with a weir underneath which creates a pretty lake on one side of the bridge. Very picturesque and Jane Austen-esque, you can easily imagine a couple of her characters having a gossip or a snog here. I fall in love with tall yellow irises dotted in amongst the reeds at the edge of the lake.

Moving on we eventually get to a small urban centre, Foots Cray, and having quickly passed through it, as we are just on its outskirts once more, we encounter an elderly chap, in his early seventies perhaps, who decides to join us for the next 20 minutes of the walk. This is fun as he is full of pizzazz and has a funny face (you know those faces that you could really picture in the past? Casting Directors looking for 1^st World War trench soldiers would be thrilled if he showed up to auditions) but I am slightly sad as it means I pay my book less attention for this section. Reading it afterwards I see I have missed out looking properly at a football pitch where the Cray Wanderers play (what a cool name for a team and I have zero interest in the game); also we pass by more piebald ponies – remember those shaggy fellows from my last post? They are so close this time we could have got an excellent photo to illustrate how nutty they look and one in particular had a hilarious nose (pink and meaty like a pig’s snout, unbelievable I know) – but our new companion was setting quite a pace and it felt weird to stop suddenly with this stranger who was full of beans and didn’t want to stop chatting about the loop. He has done 4 or 5 sections around his home here and is keen to do more. He also tears us past Sidcup Place, a grand old building I might have liked to wander around but we obediently fall in line with our temporary boss and his nattering.

Mr WWI eventually bids us farewell and we have to cross a two-level junction of busy roads (the A20 and the A222 meet here) – all very well organised for pedestrians we just have to go up and down stairs and through tunnels a few times and we are on the other side of these crazy roads, right where we need to be!

My boyfriend is embarrassed to be walking along an A road (these drivers must think we’re right wallies, walking along here like lonely geekoids while the rest of the nation is having 1 big street-party) – so he is well relieved that we are off the road in seconds. I on the other hand revel in the weird randomness of being on a road meant for cars, our cut-through from 1 field to another…

We are now in Scadbury Park, named after the Scathebury family who built a fancy house and the park around it in the 13^th century. Stunning bucolic scenes here – are we in Somerset or what!? Though I must ‘fess up, there is often a faint whirr of traffic in the distance on this walk (which detracts a little from my uber countryside within easy reach of London claim). Oh well, you just have to get in the zone and blank it out, easy when you live on the A5 (like me) or similar…

It really is lovely here and we decide to stop. Last time on the loop we just carried water but perhaps inspired by our picnics in the recent heat wave, we have brought along some tasty leftovers washed down with poncey lemonade (it has rose and ginger in it) – well it is Jubilee weekend, an excuse to buy all sorts of nonsense. Except this is delicious stuff and we dream up the perfect gin cocktail with it, it’s called the Scadbuy Fizz – friends, come over to our house and we will endeavour to serve it to you!

We walk and walk through woods and woods and come across the archaeological site of the manor house, very peculiar as you would normally equate that type of ruin with pompei or similar. It seems strange to see medieval ruins, you would expect to either see the whole building or nothing at all. It turns out the building was completely pulled down in the 1730s and these are 1930s reconstructions of ruins (er…what? why?!)

Onwards through more beautiful woods and we are nearing the end now. We cross over about 3 sets of railway lines, the last set is a huge tangle of tracks, quite incredible to behold. I am standing on the bridge as 1 train comes furiously hurtling towards me. Oh god, oh god, oh god I repeat as my legs go to jelly, even though I am above the train not in front, it is fun to pretend and all of a sudden I empathise with adventurous pesky kids, fascinated by play on the tracks and the thrill and danger as trains approach.

We finally come to an entrance to Jubilee Park (named so in 1977 for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee), and I touch the loop sign post which marks the end of our walk today. A fun coincidence that I am randomly at a park of this name on this Diamond Jubilee weekend, I look forward to coming back.

THE LONDON LOOP! PART 1

Erith Riverside to Old Bexley – 8 ¾ miles – Saturday 19th May 2012


Anyone ever heard of Erith? One of many reasons why doing these walks around London is fun – walking through places you never knew existed just yesterday. And now you do. You get a train from London Bridge and here you are, it’s that easy. And beautifully random, to be in a place you would never have thought to visit were it not for the walk.

Erith is pronounced Ear-ith which surprised me, I was saying it with an open ‘e’ more like Eric all the way there – I love crazy English phonetics, no rules! 


My boyfriend has decided to come with me today - he doesn’t quite share my passion so this is a bonus. On the last walk my days were a mix of walking solo and in company and I enjoyed the mix.

We get off the train and in 5 minutes are looking at the great milky expanse of the Thames. It is very quiet and empty especially after London Bridge. Across the water are what looks like gentle rolling green downs but we read that it is actually a big fat mound of landfill. A large Latin American family are on a couple of benches on the promenade quietly enjoying their Saturday – this is not an obvious spot for a picnic so their image lingers with us as we walk and we imagine their story, how they ended up in Erith. Apparently the Victorians wanted to turn Erith into a bit of a resort for Londoners to enjoy, building a pier, promenade and gardens etc but it didn’t take off due to rapid industrialisation in the area. You see these holiday traces still here and you feel a little sad that it didn’t work out.

Onto the local industry in operation today – huge scrap metal plants everywhere and it feels old fashioned and a world away from Central London (just 20 minutes people!). And then all of a sudden we get to Crayford Marshes, a big old stretch of lush green next to the river that we walk across for about 40 minutes. There is so much bird wildlife the noise is electric, it is pretty insane how much noise they are making. Shaggy piebald ponies abound, their hairiness cutting a funny figure, all 70s funk and flared jeans…

The Queen Elizabeth II bridge is in the distance (that big one, part of the Dartford Crossing – this is probably obvious to you, but I’m not a driver so felt the need to spell it out) and serves as a neat marker – we really are walking around the outskirts of London! In the haze and my lack of spectacles the suspension cables dreamily look like Rio de Janiero type mountains, I am genuinely marvelling at these dramatic peaks knowing this can’t be right (friends will recognize this ‘quality’ in me aka momentary dumb naivety) but luckily I snap out of this nonsense after mere seconds as my eyes adjust, they’re suspension cables, duh!

We leave the Thames and follow the River Darent for a bit and then the River Cray for a bit longer. More ponies and sweet smelling blossom, as we carry on along these rivers through the marshland. We finally get to Crayford and pass through this town quickly, eager to press on. Back following the River Cray and my boyfriend is in cricket heaven as we come across local teams playing and then breaking for tea (they break for lunch and tea, how amazing is that! he enthuses marvelling at the quaint gentility of it all in 2012 - yeah whatever walking’s better). My guidebook suggests a diversion at the Sports Pavilion to visit a very lovely old house called Hall Place. We take a quick peek but have to content ourselves with a promise to return as it’s closing time.

We say goodbye to the River Cray here and have another 40 minutes or so left, walking over a railway line, this is bizarrely a piece of the busy A2, we are off it in seconds! And then skirting a pretty wood until we get to Bexley where we are
greeted by a 12^th Century church, St Mary’s, which has the most unusual octagonal spire perched on top of a regular 4-sided pyramid based spire. I really should have taken a photograph to show you, how will you ever picture it with those describing skills…


Again the randomness of being in Bexley, and gratitude to the walk for bringing me here. I touch the lamp post with London Loop signs marking the end of Part 1 and the start of Part 2, happy in the knowledge that I will be back to continue looping soon. It’s nice to feel I know Bexley and the marker post now. I won’t be coming to the walk cold next time, I’ll know where I’m headed.

MY 1ST POST

If, like me, you get a huge kick out of covering long distances on foot and it makes you happy in the simplest of ways, then this blog may be of remote interest to you.


I love long walks, especially ones which follow a route, a journey you can trace on a map and think I walked all that!

I have walked over the Apennines from Bologna to Florence (4 days) and I have followed the pilgrim Camino route from Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees west across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela (30 days). Both made me (and still make me!) very happy indeed. One winter about 3 years ago, I was feeling pretty blue and I started thinking that the one thing that would bring me true happiness would be to walk around the whole world. I’m sure it would and I did research it, reading other people’s accounts (Dave Kunst - The Earthwalker who did it in the 1970s with his brothers was particularly inspiring) but I think you have to be absolutely fearless and a little nuts. I can be bonkers when required but sadly I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to circumnavigate the globe in one hit (it would take 4 years).

That established, I reconciled myself with the vague plan to start small and try to do shorter long walks, annually please!

I started very close to home with the Capital Ring, a 78-mile circular footpath which eeks out a hidden green trail around inner London. I did this over 7 days in December 2010/January 2011 and found it very fun to be a geeky walker in a mac and carrying a guide book in my own city! Smiling and saying hello to other passers-by (in that nice way that all walkers do) and feeling like a tourist in London was most peculiar. But then I walked through a lot of lovely places I had never been to before (Penge anyone?) so I guess I was a bit of a tourist. And the juxtaposition of the countryside-esque pursuit in an urban setting felt fun too. It merely involved getting on public transport from home in north-west London to wherever I was picking up the route again from, mainly train stations in Zone 4. I started at Woolwich on the Thames and ended there, having got the ferry across from north of the river. Fellow long walk enthusiasts, you can imagine my sadness that the foot tunnel was closed, depriving me of the satisfaction of truly completing the circle!!

Anyway, enough of the back-story already. It is now May 2012 and here I am doing it again but bigger. The London Loop is a 140 mile walk and will mainly involve travelling to Zone 6 stations. And this time, keeping a record of it on this blog, blogging for the first time ever! Can I say the word blog again, it is so new and exciting! (I catch new trends fast…)

So here goes…Anne starts walking blog proper: