August 29, 1999: Clapton to West Ham
Along the Lea Navigation – ahead is the bridge to the Middlesex Filter Beds Nature Reserve.
Three years passed before the Lees and I resumed our walk on Bob Gilbert’s Green London Way. We had been very active elsewhere, especially on the Saxon Shore Way, but I felt we needed a Saturday outing in order to have the time needed to complete the next stretch of the latter walk – one requiring a distant train journey – and there was also a special reason for completing the next stage of the GLW today. We had known for a long time that our next stage would bring us practically by the front door of our English Department colleague Patricia Barry, and now that she and Jill were thinking of selling up, it wouldn’t do to delay a visit. So on a sunny Sunday morning in the middle of the August Bank Holiday, I met the Lees shortly after 11:00 at Liverpool Street Station. The ticket seller rang up a price of £18.00 for a nine-minute journey, so I was pretty well convinced that he had sold me a single to Clacton instead of one to Clapton. “Oh well,” he said, when I pointed this out, “You’ll find things to be far less crowded in Clapton.”
The Lees had a coffee and some pastry while we waited for our 11:25 train – Harold getting separated once in the vast modernized concourse. I had xeroxed the route finding instructions and I fished these out of a pocket as we climbed up the front of Clapton station, turned left, and left again, to follow Gunton Road. A dozy Old English Sheepdog in its summer haircut was lying on a porch, its head almost in its bowl, too lazy to get up when we walked over to see the fellow. I had my first drink of water from one of my canteens as we reached a bit of parkland and made our way across grass to the banks of the Lea.
Here we turned south, passed beneath a motor bridge, and used a footbridge to cross to the opposite bank of a very stagnant navigation channel and up to the walls of the Middlesex Filter Beds Nature Reserve. Unfortunately we were sharing a path with cyclists and they had the unnerving habit of passing us at speed or tinkling their bells to warn us that they were somewhere there behind us (you didn’t want to turn around and look for fear that you might be blindsided). After the wall ended we passed through a bit of woodland and came out on one edge of the huge Hackney Marshes playing fields. We crossed the greensward to follow a path along the edge of the more swiftly moving Old Lea. This was a very pleasant stretch. Once we paused for more water and Tosh here insisted on changing her shirt in preparation for our lunchtime arrival; I insisted that this was still some time in the future (and more time was being added by the delay), but Tosh was insistent.
We then walked up to Homerton Road and turned to the right on this very busy street. On the south side, where Tosh wanted to walk because there was more shade here, the adjacent fields were full of unwholesome litter. A black man with a toddler in a pushchair commented on the pleasant weather as he passed us by. The road passed over the Hackney Cut of the navigation channel and climbed a little hill to the left as we approached another open space, Mabley Green. The Hackney Marshes had been full of Sunday football players, but we had this place entirely to ourselves as we crossed the grass diagonally, looking for a footbridge over a motor road. We saw a path climbing up to it and soon reached Red Path – or so it is called in the guidebook; there was no evidence of such a name on the ground. When it ended we turned right, passed the mouth of a bus garage and walked along the heavily motorized Eastway for a few blocks. Then we used a pedestrian crossing to approach a corner of Victoria Park; already we were walking along its eastern boundary, Cadogan Terrace, toward our lunchtime destination.
Lucky that at Liverpool Street I had thought to call Dorothy on the mobile phone in order to get Patricia’s address, since the Lees – who had been here many times – couldn’t remember it. (I had been here only once, ten years earlier.) We reached 106 at 1:05, only five minutes late. “Not to worry, ” I said with reference to the other guests, “Mimi and Keith are never on time for anything.”
We received a very warm greeting for folk who had more or less invited themselves to lunch, and Jill brought out glasses of ice water and cold white wine. We had been chatting for about twenty minutes when Patricia returned from the phone to announce that our high school principal had called to say that colleague Keith had gone out for the Sunday papers and failed to return. We decided to wait for further developments and, sure enough, there was a second call, from Keith this time, to report his reappearance. I went upstairs and put on a clean and dry t-shirt. We decided to wait for lunch until the others arrived but Pat and Jill eventually gave up and ushered us into the basement – where we had a delicious gazpacho. Then the doorbell rang. When Keith was seated I asked if I could borrow a lipstick for I wanted to write a large number 2 on his forehead – as a reminder of the time for our department meeting on Tuesday. A nice poached salmon, cold, and boiled new potatoes, hot, followed. There was also a green salad and a yummy blueberry and strawberry pie in a meringue crust. There was also a good deal of wine.
One consequence of this very lengthy and late lunch hour, however, was that we did not make our getaway until 4:00 – a three hour lunch stop – and we still had five and a half miles to go. We entered Victoria Park at the St. Mark’s Gate, opposite the Top o the Morning pub, and made our way westward along paths and over grass, tying to reconnect with Gilbert’s instructions – which we had abandoned when we sloped off to Patricia’s. These called for us to head for the Royal Gate and then round off a circle by heading down to the canal and back to the east on its towpath. We got as far as the Bonner Hall Bridge before joining an arm of Regent’s Canal.
There were lots of fisher folk about and quite a few bridges, locks and overpasses. Indeed we walked right by our turnoff because we had failed to look left as we climbed a humped-back bridge – having missed a sighting of our next canal below us on the left. There were quite a few park maps about and I could just make out (through the graffiti) what the problem was – about ten minutes later. So we turned around and passed the grotty Palm Tree pub for the second time (the Lees went inside to use the loos), this time locating the Hertford Union Canal and heading northeast on its towpath.
There was less activity on these placid waters and we made good time. Gilbert asks us to reach the second lock on this stretch and to cross over the upper lock gate to a path that joins Jodrell Road. This we did, as a suspicious Dalmatian barked at us from his balcony, but on the other side there was no escape path at all – later building developments having ended its run – and we had to retreat to our original towpath in confusion.
I knew we had to reach street level so I lead us forward under the road bridge and found an escape in the back garden of the Top O The Morning Pub! Yes, we had walked a giant circle – taking well over an hour – to reach Patricia’s Street a second time. (This, however, was somewhat typical of Gilbert’s route planning – since he clearly wanted the walker to have maximum exposure to every bit of green he could find on the London map.) I just brazenly walked through the pub, as though I had been downing a pint or two at the back yard barbecue, and passed out the front door, with the Lees in tow. Here I could see we were near the corner of Jodrell Road and Wick Lane, precisely where we wanted to be.
We headed south on Wick Lane, passed under a motorway, and crossed to the other side to locate a path, the Greenway. Here this strip of greenery in the midst of urban decay is actually built on top of a sewer embankment – and our noses proved to us that we were on the right route. The Lees fell behind on this stretch as Tosh had to read all the notice boards about the flora, fauna, history and industry of the place. In the meantime I was anxiously looking for a “second” bridge and some steps leading down to a road on the right-hand side.
I found these but there weren’t two roads in front of us, as promised and, indeed, the scene, part of the Marshgate Industrial Park, seemed to have undergone enough changes that the next few minutes required some improvisation on my part. With its junkyards and waste this was certainly one of the most depressing sections of any walk I have ever undertaken. One chap had even written in black paint on his corrugated entrance, “Back in a Munite.” I actually think I came out right on the Stratford High Street, as expected, and we turned to the left to reach canal waters again, crossing under the High Street in an underpass and hunting around for a canalside overgrown path to the Three Mills Complex on the other side. This industrial site had also undergone extensive renovation and now seemed to include a movie sound stage.
I had a lot of trouble following instructions, though I wasn’t surprised to see our path round a peninsula and head back in the opposite direction; once again we seemed to have done a circle and at this point, somewhat frustrated by all the difficulties, I pulled the A-Zed out of my pack, fixed our position and used the last half hour to get us away from the canals and onto Manor Road for a final assault on the West Ham tube station. Here, after eight and a half miles, Tosh reached her mile 1800. It was just going on 7:00 when we arrived and we were pretty knackered after all the hard surfaces we had used in the muggy weather of the late afternoon.
A District Line train came chugging in shortly after we reached the platform. It went straight to the Lee’s Ealing Common stop, but I changed to the Bakerloo Line at Embankment. I phoned Dorothy as I left the Maida Vale tube stop and got home shortly before 8:00 – where a scotch, a lovely spaghetti and a Caesar salad were waiting my return.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: