Walking in London. Peter Aylmer
by sheets 146 and 147, 160 to 162, and 172 to 175.
The OS Landranger series, at 1:50,000 scale, is of less use in London, given how much needs to be packed in. London is covered by just two sheets, 176 and 177.
Street maps of London vary – some give more off-road detail than you might expect, but in general they won’t be using the National Grid that precisely defines start and finish points in this book.
Mapping software allows you to scale Landranger or Explorer maps as you wish and print off specific areas relevant to your walk. Anquet, Quo and Memory Map are three of the best known. All enable maps to be saved to GPS devices, and most to smartphones; ViewRanger is a dedicated app for smartphones.
Using this guide
The walks in this book start on the north bank of the Thames east of London and then progress in a roughly anti-clockwise fashion to finish near the Kent border in London’s south-east. For each walk there is a plant or animal species described that might be seen on that walk – it might be common, it might be rare, it might be seasonal, but it is in some way relevant to that particular walk. Between them, the 25 species give an indication of the scope of London’s wildlife.
A few of the walks stray outside the Greater London boundary, mostly by inches; Walk 1 is the only one to start outside, but even that is within the M25, London’s ‘second boundary’.
There should be enough detail in the route descriptions, including the map extracts, to follow each walk without using a separate printed map, but it’s always good practice to relate the description to the map as you go; this will help make sure you don’t go wildly off beam, and also guards against any changes in the waymarking: signs can get overgrown in high summer, for example, and if a sign near housing seems to point the wrong way, it might possibly have been ‘adjusted’ by local scallywags. Street names in brackets don’t have a sign showing that name in the location given by the text.
More to the point, relating to the map gives you a fuller account of the townscape or countryside you are walking through, and not just its shape; the alert map user will spot many details, historic and natural, that the guide can’t hope to include.
At the beginning of the route description for each walk there is a box giving a range of useful information: the start and finish of the walk; distance; an approximation of time (see further below); the relevant maps; places to buy refreshments; details of public transport, parking and local interest groups. Some of this information is also summarised in the route summary table. Throughout the route descriptions, place names and features that are shown on the map are highlighted in bold.
The estimated walking time is calculated at a fairly relaxed 4km per hour plus an extra half hour – adjust it as you wish to take account of your own speed plus time for a picnic, pub stop or just time spent looking at the flowers. In the route descriptions, a ‘minor road’ carries very little motor traffic, a rural ‘lane’ even less and may be unmetalled, while a ‘track’ is both unmetalled and less robust than a lane.
London has never been a static city. What was in place when this volume was researched may change with the course of time; please see the Updates to this Guide at the front of the book and let Cicerone know if you find that this is so.
Lastly, Appendix A contains details of long-distance paths in and around London, and Appendix B offers details of useful websites and interesting books relating to the capital.
EAST: ESSEX TO THE LEA
Arcelor Mittal Orbit tower (Walk 5)
INTRODUCTION
Eastbrookend Country Park (Walk 2)
Until 1965, the Lea was the boundary between London and Essex, and this boundary had a very real effect on how what is now east London developed. In particular, much of the London-specific legislation preventing noxious industries had no effect here, and so refineries, gas and chemical works, and heavy industry from shipbuilding to railway manufacture were located here instead – especially in what are now its two westernmost boroughs, Waltham Forest and Newham.
Yet wild London was not pressed out of all existence. The River Lea itself became home to reservoirs for London’s water, and hence a green corridor for wildlife. Tipping down its gravel ridge between the Lea and the Roding, Epping Forest was saved as London’s eastern lung by the steadfast vigilance of locals and city folk alike. The marshes of the Thames below Barking have to this day precluded large-scale development, while further out, town and country battled an uneasy draw that persists to this day.
WALK 1
Rainham Marshes and Coldharbour Point
| Start/finish | Purfleet station (TQ 554 781) |
| Distance | 8 miles (13km) |
| Time | 3½hrs |
| Maps | OS Explorer 162, Landranger 177 |
| Refreshments | Royal Hotel, Purfleet; café at the RSPB centre |
| Public Transport | Trains every 30 minutes off-peak |
| Parking | Rainham Marshes RSPB centre, New Tank Hill Road, RM19 1SZ (TQ 547 787) |
This is a walk around one of the best places in southern England to see its birdlife. The marshes east of Rainham were formerly used by the military, which kept other users away, and the recent refurbishment of the area by the RSPB is an object lesson in conservation. The walk starts with a circuit of the reserve, just inside Essex, before taking to the riverside, at London’s easternmost edge – industry hems in the path, but many species of gull, duck and wader rest and forage here.
The southern edge of the RSPB reserve
Turn right out of the station and walk along London Road to the Royal Hotel. Here turn left on a path for a few metres to the Thames, and turn right beside it, passing the Purfleet Heritage Museum housed in a former munitions magazine on your way to the RSPB centre. Here, get a ticket to enter Rainham Marshes Nature Reserve – it’s free for RSPB members and residents of Thurrock and Havering.
Despite its name, the RSPB reserve in fact occupies Aveley marsh. The reserve is open daily except for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Check www.rspb.org.uk for opening times and entry charges.
Cross the bridge from the end of the café and go ahead at the map sign, soon passing the first and most simple of the hides, known as the Purfleet Scrape. Ignore two left turns at the cordite store – at the second (where there is a little tunnel) go half-right – and also ignore two right turns on a boardwalk. In a little while you will come to the Ken Barrett hide, a good place to observe birdlife on the adjacent ponds.
Beyond the hide, there is a lengthy boardwalk section through a reedbed, and then a path takes you to the very substantial Shooting Butts Hide. Continuing, there is a picnic area to your right, then more boardwalk leads you to a bridge. Here, it’s a simple matter to continue back to the RSPB centre, but for the full walk, leave the reserve through the turnstile (1), and turn right on the path signposted ‘Rainham Village’.
THE RESURRECTION OF RAINHAM MARSHES
Rainham,