Drifting up the River Roding in a Coracle

The experience of floating up the River Roding in Ryan Powell’s Sensory Attunement Coralce will now be my most potent association with this blessed River. I’ll leave the video to explain how this came to pass and the beauty, drama and comedy of what unfolded. But it’s safe to say this was an experience I shall never forget.

Find out more about Ryan’s project here

Make sure to also watch Sean James Cameron’s video of this eccentric escapade up the River Roding.

My walks with Paul Powlesland in 2021 provides important context for this unforgettable riverine odyssey.

“The coracle – also known as the currach, bull boat, quffa, parasil – is a small, keel-less boat. Their main uses has always been as a means for fishing or transportation. Today, certainly within Europe, their main use tends to be recreational, although in Wales a number of licences exist to permit use as a fishing vessel. In other parts of the world, particularly the Middle and Far East, they are still used for their original purpose – as a workboat for fishing or transportation. The coracle has a long history spanning thousands of years, evidenced in cave paintings of their use from the early Bronze Age and perhaps as far back as the Ice Age. The coracle is likely to be the first form of water transportation” https://www.coraclesociety.org.uk/coracles

Secrets of the East: along a Hidden River to a Medieval shrine in Ilford

This January walk takes us once again back into the past, where the landscape reveals the deep history of this area and tells us its stories. We start by exploring two Possible Prehistoric ditches on Wanstead Flats near Centre Road/north of the Jubilee Pond and running Southeast to Centre Road.

You can read the archaeological report here: https://bit.ly/2KLv5ZG

Then we pass through the uncanny suburb of Aldersbrook to pick up the River Roding. We follow the Roding as it runs beside Ilford Golf Club and find the mysterious little Alders Brook, a beguiling rivulet that for some of the year is little more than a muddy ditch hidden in the undergrowth. The dramatic January floods and the high tide filled the Alders Brook with water and revealed it as a flowing river. We follow the Alders Brook as it passes beneath the railway bridge at the Butts (possibly named after the rifle butts on adjacent lands in the 19th Century) and then runs parallel to the Roman Romford Road and returns to the River Roding at Ilford Bridge beneath the North Circular flyover.

The final stretch of our walk takes us up Ilford Hill to the Hospital Chapel dedicated to St Mary and St Thomas of Canterbury. The Chapel was established around the year 1140 by the Abbess of Barking as a leper hospital. It became a stopping place for pilgrims and medieval travellers passing through the area. It’s a wonderful hidden location.

The Enchantments of the River Roding

A walk along the west bank of the River Roding from Barking to Creekmouth

There was a strong pull back to the River Roding to complete the walk I’d started with Paul Powlesland of the River Roding Trust. Paul had shown me the path the Trust had opened up with volunteers from the Friends of the River Roding, restoring an ancient right of way from Ilford Bridge to Barking Town. A lost world had been revealed of salt marshes and swaying reed beds, as the invasive growth had been hacked back and hundreds of sacks of dumped rubbish hauled up to the roadside to be carted away. That walk had ended at the Trust’s self-built moorings just on the edge of Barking Town Centre, another occluded world of plank walks stringing together narrowboats bobbing amongst the riverside growth, scored by birdsong. It was a complete revelation.

Today I would continue alone without Paul’s puckish energy leading the way, narrating the walk infused with his infectious enthusiasm. He’d set off from the source of the River Roding at Molehill Green near Stanstead Airport in Essex, with another member of the Trust, Jenny, to walk the entire length of the river over the Easter weekend. I’d imagined their quest may have ended by Easter Monday as I made my way to riverbank by Barking Tesco, but dropped him a text anyway.

This first section of the walk is a series of development invoked diversions, pushing me away from the riverside to the North Circular then around Fresh Wharf. The towers have marched along the Thames and are now progressing inland up her tributaries like a marauding Viking fleet. While admiring the calm waters at Town Quay beside one such construction site, a gust of wind blew my 1863 map into the river. I then received a text from Paul saying they’d stopped at the moorings to dump their camping gear and would be right behind me soon. The two events seemed connected in some way.

River Roding near Jenkins Lane
River Roding

The Metropolitan Police Detention Centre at Fresh Wharf casts a bleak shadow across Hand Trough Creek, which appears from old maps to be the remnants of the Roding’s Back River. A footpath branches off into a grove of fruit trees in blossom. Heading into Cuckold’s Haven and beneath the A13 Alfred’s Way, epic pylons rise to electrify the sky. The enormous Showcase Cinema enjoys its last month of being dormant before the hoards kick the doors down in May. I hear a voice behind me, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’. I turn and there’s Paul and Jenny on the final stretch of their River Roding hike. They wear the tint of three nights sleeping in fields beside the riverbank, jumping hedges to strictly follow the course of the river.

We pass Jenkins Lane sewage treatment works, the end of the Northern Outfall Sewer. The treated water flows along a concrete trench beside the path and gushes out in the Thames beside the River Roding Flood Barrier. Paul and Jenny hop the wall and clamber across the stones to toast the walk at the exact confluence of the River Roding and the Thames. It’s a real treat to witness this special moment, all part of the magic offered up by this beguiling eastern tributary of the Thames – one the enchantments of the River Roding.

River Roding walk - Paul Powlesland
Paul and Jenny at Creekmouth

Watch my original walk with Paul Powlesland along the west bank of the River Roding from Ilford Bridge to Barking Moorings

llford Bridge to Barking Moorings

Video Description:

This walk takes along an ancient footpath beside the River Roding from Ilford to Barking moorings that has recently been opened up by the Friends of the River Roding. This previously overgrown, inaccessible strip of land between the North Circular and the Roding is hoped will form part of an ‘Edgelands Park’ linking together existing green spaces near the river with this riverside path which will then connect with the Roding Valley Way at Ilford. Paul Powlesland formed the River Roding Trust with a group of people living on narrowboats who work on maintaining the river and the riverbank. Due to their efforts the River Roding is now navigable from Barking Wharf to Ilford Bridge for the first time in 50 years.

This River Roding walk starts at Ilford Bridge and picks up the path on the west side of the river, passing through the edge of Ilford to Little Ilford. Here we see the Saltings formed by the semi-tidal waters of the River Roding creating a beautiful wetlands environment of swaying reeds. There are also a number of concrete bases stretched along the riverbank that appear to be part of its industrial past. Across the river we see the housing development built on the site of a chemical works, which had been built on the site of Uphall Camp – an Iron Age enclosure and possible hillfort that had also been used by the Romans.

Old Map Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

Roding Valley Edgelands Walk from Wanstead to Chigwell

Finding myself in Wanstead near the Roding at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to head for Chigwell – a great place to end a walk in the dark. I would like to have had more daylight to go looking for the springs that gave Chigwell – or Cicca’s / King’s Well its name. But it wasn’t to be. In daylight hours Chigwell has been a place I’ve passed through, crossing the Roding Valley or heading up to Hainault Forest and Havering-atte-Bower. I’ve yet to find the time to dwell there hunting for the wells and springs. That feels like a summer pursuit.

I crossed the Roding and climbed the steps to Roding Lane South, the terminus point of the 366 bus route. There’s something so romantic about a single-decker in a layby at the end of a bus route. This is a road that has it all – not only the bus terminus but the river, the pylons rising from the throbbing substation, the private hospital opposite the pet cemetery, the listed Victorian pumping station, the industrial estate complete with transit bus depot. A limping lady who saw me filming came to tell me that one of the industrial units had been converted into temporary housing and she was sure the pylons were draining her energy.

Trebor Woodford

Trebor House 1956

The large blue building on Woodford Avenue opposite the Toby Carvery, always draws me in. A 50’s industrial building it’s almost perfect in its symmetry and form. I often feel a slight guilt in my admiration. The comments on the YouTube video banished any such guilt in focussing my attention on this functional building as people told me that it was originally the Trebor sweets factory – a legendary Willy Wonka-like location. Who didn’t grow up sucking on Trebor Refreshers and still partake of an Extra Strong Mint. I had no idea that Trebor had started life in East London, one of the founders in fact from Leytonstone – Sydney Herbert Marks. The original factory was in Katherine Road, Forest Gate and was destroyed by a German bomb in 1944.  This glorious building, Trebor House, was built in 1956 on the site of a bungalow as the Trebor HQ.

subway sign

subway woodford

I took the subway beneath Woodford Avenue and made my way along Roding Lane North towards Hospital Hill Wood where the water tower from the Victorian Claybury Asylum still dominates the summit. The light was starting to fade now. It’d been a wet and  gloomy day and the hopes of sunset from the highlands was dim. The strip of shops along the Green at Woodford Bridge were a welcoming sight but I couldn’t afford to linger, even with the second lock down looming and chances to sit in a cafe diminishing by the day.

Claybury Hall Chigwell old picture

Claybury Hall 1797

In Chigwell Road, Thurlby House sat back off the road remembering former glories from the end of the 18th Century when it was built, and through the 19th Century when its Doric columns were added. It became a Dr. Barnardo’s Home in the early 20th Century and a public library after the Second World War. It’s now private apartments.

The Three Jolly Wheelers sits right on the Essex border as you enter Chigwell. It feels like a border crossing. Dark woods lining the long road. You can imagine the scene in the inn in stagecoach days when a passage through the forest after dark would have been ill-advised. It did look cosy, but I was saving myself for a final Sunday pint in the Red Lion back at Leytonstone – itself an old coaching inn.

The 12-minute wait for a tube at Chigwell Station on the Central Line Loop offered time to absorb the walk. I didn’t get to properly explore Chigwell at my leisure once again but studying the map on the platform did introduce me to the Chigwell Brook, a tributary of the River Roding that I’d previously overlooked. But that will be a walk for another day.

Last long walk before the Lockdown

This walk on Saturday 21st March feels like a very long time ago now. The pubs had been ordered to close the night before. Supermarket shelves were emptied in a frenzy of panic buying. Social distancing measures had recently been introduced. People had been urged to only use public transport for essential journeys. We knew the lockdown was imminent and that this was likely to be my last decent walk for a while.

I wanted a route that took me out into nature and kept me clear of the crowds. It also needed to deliver me home without the need for public transport. My feet knew the way and trod a path through Epping Forest from Leytonstone to Highams Park then down through Woodford to the River Roding.

Lockdown walk

On the way out I passed Leytonstone House, which had been home to members of the Buxton Family from the late 18th Century until 1868. It’s where Edward North Buxton lived for a time before he moved to Buckhurst Hill and authored his definitive guide to Epping Forest in 1884. There’s a mulberry tree in the grounds of Leytonstone House that’d been adorned with brightly coloured tree dressings, I imagine to mark the Spring Equinox the day before.

There were an alarming number of people on Leyton Flats heading towards the Hollow Ponds drawn  by the arrival of Spring. The Gorse bushes and Blackthorn trees were in full blossom. I paid homage to the Birch Well and headed for Gilbert’s Slade, giving the crowds the slip in the process.

Crossing the North Circular I picked up a footpath I hadn’t used before running parallel to the road and followed it to new sections of the forest for me. The white noise of the road was oddly cleansing. Turning back through the thick trees of the forest, all was calm. The trees seemed to be murmuring that everything would be ok.

lockdown walk

After skirting Humphrey Repton’s Highams Park Lake it was time to make the turn over the ridge occupied by Woodford Green and cross into the Roding Valley. The streets slumbered like a deep Sunday afternoon in the 1950’s. Views over rooftops stretched to the far side of the river valley. The water tower at Claybury Hospital stood proud on its hill. Passing through the streets of Buckhurst Hill I found myself on Forest Edge, crossing tracks once more with E.N Buxton. Knighton Wood contains the remnants of the landscaped garden of his house.

lockdown walk

I eventually picked up the River Roding on the other side of Ray Park. Of all the many times I’ve walked the Roding between Wanstead and Buckhurst Hill I’ve only once walked it in a southerly direction, and that was 13 years ago. Today it was blissfully free of people. I stopped to pause just after passing Charlie Brown’s Roundabout. An Egret swooped low to the water and elegantly landed in the shade of an overhanging tree. For a moment it was as if everything was how it should be. All the troubles of the world were far away from that riverbank.

River Roding Walk – Wanstead to Buckhurst Hill

A walk along the beautiful River Roding from Wanstead to Buckhurst Hill on the 24th February – a day when it felt as if Spring had come early. This is one of my favourite walks – following the meanders through Wanstead, Woodford to Buckhurst Hill (although I’ve yet to walk the Roding beyond Debden). The wooded ridges of Epping Forest rise on the horizon, herons glide over the rushes, and I once saw a snake slither across the path one summer near Woodford Bridge.

 

Transcript of the video

Just a footstep step away from the brutality of Eastern Avenue. We have the glorious little River Roding.
Such a beautiful day. Today is the 24th of February and it feels like spring is really here. And what better thing to do on a day like this than a wander along this beautiful river, the River Roding. This is actually one of my favourite little walks along here. Longtime viewers of the channel may remember the videos I made probably three years ago now, so it’s overdue a revisit, although I don’t expect it to change very much.

One Sunday, about a month ago, I hadn’t been out for a walk, and so I suddenly headed out about an hour before sunset and walked that last hour along here and it was really, really wonderful.

Here’s the first of a collection of really quite interesting and lovely bridges over the River Roding. Forget the bridges of Madison County. Here’s the bridges of the Roding Valley.

This section of the River Roding here is flowing through Wanstead, or ‘Wan Stead’, the white house ‘Woden stead’. I was up here yesterday, given a little tour of the churchyard and the church of St Mary’s Wanstead, really glorious church and still has a very active and quite sizeable congregation. However, their regular services are under threat for some reason. So there is a Save St. Mary’s Campaign.

I’ve been asked a few times about the viability of kayaking or canoeing on the Roding and when you see it here, you think that looks like a reasonable idea. Further along it looks a little bit trickier and the water at the moment is actually quite shallow.

Here we have our next bridge. It’s amazing the variety of bridges on this river I suppose because they were all built at different times. We have a fantastic old pumping station, great cathedrals to the Victorian industrial age aren’t they.

I saw a little grass snake along here once when I was walking along in the morning, I doubt, I’ll see anything today, but you never know.

Just stopped back there by the pumping station to make a little video talking about the things I take on a walk with me. Sean, South London gardener Sean, walking the London Loop Sean, he requested it and I’ll upload it as a separate video though, but it means I’ve been sat there for a while so I better crack on.

All hail the pylon

Sounds like a rather obvious thing to say, but with river walks it does make a difference which side of the river you walk on and the first few times I walked along the Roding I walked on the other side there just like a big park mown grass and it takes you right underneath that pylon. Whereas on this side, a bramble covered bank you’ve got the pylons here and then you’ve got these industrial units that run alongside the Roding.

The first time the jacket comes off after winter is always a magical moment. A day that is marked in the memory for a long time. 24th of February, 2019 look, here I am just a shirt, I could even just be down to a tee shirt if I was a little bit more adventurous, but it’s a big moment, no jacket.

This is where we pass beneath a number of big busy roads. I think that’s where approaching Woodford or in Woodford, I think we’ve got a combination of the North Circular, the Woodford Avenue, maybe a little bit of a feeder road for the M11.

We have to cross the busy road here. This is Charlie Brown’s roundabout and there is some delightful old footage on YouTube of Charlie Brown’s roundabout being built. I believe there was a pub here wasn’t there, called the Charlie Brown? I know there’s going to be several people in the comment section who know all about this.

I should have said this back at the beginning of the walk, the Roding rises up near Stanstead Airport, I can’t remember the exact name of the little village where it rises, and it makes its way down through the Essex countryside and then it’s confluence with the Thames is down at Barking. I’ve walked it as far as Abridge. I have crossed it other points further North, but it’s a little bit more difficult to follow after Abridge. The footpath doesn’t run along the river, so you’re zigzagging across it. But I would like to go and walk the upper reaches of the Roding at some point because it’s such a beautiful, magical little river.

Some glorious birdsong in the trees and bushes on the river bank here. The birds are obviously very happy that the weather’s improved. The path here is so overgrown I don’t think it’s legitimately passable, so you have to go up service road here that goes to the waste disposal, sort of recycling area and see if I can get back on the river further up. If you’re interested in the idea of edgelands, you could do no worse than walk along the River Roding, classic edgelands in the urban part of it anyway. Everything you could want along here.

I do remember actually going along this little sort of alleyway. So that’s the way ahead. Couple of different generations of Thames Water facilities here. The more a recent utilitarian brick block on the right, and then the picturesque what I would guess is a Victorian utility over there. Close to the banks, the river. The Wynn Valley pumping station.

Now we’re back on the banks of the River Roding.

Here we have another bridge across the river. I don’t think any two bridges have been the same so far. We start to see the terrain around the river open up slightly, passing through Woodford still heading towards Buckhurst Hill and the wooded Hills there rising in the distance, which I guess must be the edge of Epping Forest.

How good does it feel to have a 5.30pm sunset? It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s just that extra sort of hour from a month ago is enormous. It feels like we’re being propelled into a glorious summer. It’s just after four. Now about a quarter past four, and this is obviously, as I’ve said, probably every walk, this is a time when the magic happens. This is glorious. It uplifts the soul as you walk into the sunset.

So a little bit of a decision point coming up ahead because when we get to Roding Valley, that’s where can’t carry on to Buckhurst Hill you have to kind of go up the hill and around to rejoin the river. So I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do there. I suppose we’ll see, we’ve still got a little ways to go before that and actually really glorious section of the river.

The Roding Valley hinterland.

So peaceful here. I suppose it’s the time of day and also as the river kind of frees itself from the urban fringe.

That’s interesting. I have no memory of this housing estate here beside the river makes me wonder whether it’s been built in the last three to four years. [Looks at map on phone] This is where I am. Looks as if this estate is part of the old London Guildhall University sports ground. That’s my Alma mater.

Believe the word meander is the name of a river in Turkey. I extrapolated that information from the title of a book where a guy kayaks along the Meander in Turkey. It’s a book I really need to read, isn’t it?

Here we have the bridge that carries the Central Line, over the River Roding, really majestic structure.
This is one of my favourite little stretches of the river, it’s where my first walk along the Roding ended and I think I may end today’s walk here as well. The other side of this recreation ground, you have to depart from the river and work your way up through the streets of Buckhurst Hill and do a big loop to rejoin the river at the park where I was recently. If you look at the video, I go to Linder’s Field. That’s a continuation of the Roding there.

I’ll just walk to the far end of this recreation ground here where the allotments are and where the Roding then can be left in peace for a while before it gets to the Roding Valley recreation ground at Buckhurst Hill, and we were just before Christmas.

What a really wonderful walk. I’m so glad I came back out here today, to mark really what I hope is the beginnings of spring. You can never be too sure, it did snow twice in March last year, but no, not this year. Anyway, again, thanks again for coming with me, see you on the next walk, wherever that may be.