The long walk from Leytonstone to Ware

‘So make up your mind to be bound by no programme’

SPB Mais

The urge was to just walk. Get some miles under the belt. I’ve felt my stamina drop in this second year of the plague, becoming leg-weary at the 10-mile mark and on the handful of occasions I’ve strayed close to 15-miles, absolutely wiped out. I needed this walk to be as uncomplicated as possible – no travel on the way out, the walk would start from the front door. No filming. The only record would be jotted down in my notebook and some quick phone snaps on the hoof.

Crooked Billet Walthamstow

11.30am – leave home and head along the high ground north – Bakers Arms Leyton, Hoe Street, Chingford Road. The route I took on my first long Lea Valley walk in midwinter that ended in Hertford.

1pm – rest at Chingford Mount Broadway near the War Memorial. It’s hot and sunny, 22 degrees. Think I’ll stay on this side of the Lea till Enfield Lock.

2.39pm – rest on a shaded bench by the Mill Pond near Enfield Marina. Relish the cool breeze. Think of Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair passing through here on the Edith Walk. Birdsong. I love this walk but don’t think I’ve taken this back path to Enfield for a few years now. Great to cross paths with former walks/selves. Took the road through Sewardstone to the Essex border then onto the footpath that runs beneath the reservoir. For some reason The Boatman by The Levellers played in my head, so I played it out loud on my phone as I walked. No-one around.
Legs hurt a bit. Spent 15 mins buying sunglasses from Poundstretcher at Chingford Mount.

Read a random page of Nick Papadimitriou’s Scarp and think how great it would be to revive my old idea of publishing a collection of his topographical pieces.

Chingford

3.54pm – Costa Coffee at Waltham Abbey. Got here just before 3.30 and mooched in TK Maxx for some cooler shorts and t-shirt and picked up some running gear. Somehow I came out only with a lightweight long-sleeved top. Walked 12.3 miles to here. Legs and feet very sore. Cheese toastie, Coke and Crisps for a late lunch. I had a coffee and Danish at 12.30 from the coffeeshop near the Bell in Walthamstow. Next stop should be at Broxbourne. It’s the next section of this walk that’s the real treat in the evening light.
Although my legs are still sore there’s the sense that it’s time to move along.

4.58pm – it’s about knowing when to rest. My feet are sore so I stop on a bench somewhere between Cheshunt and Broxbourne (Turnford?). 14.9 miles

6.43pm – sat on a broken bench about half-a-mile past Rye House. 20 miles walked. Thighs and calves very sore but cardio is good. Hot and sweaty. Took the New River Path from Broxbourne to Rye House – shirtless guy boombox blaring, family gathering around a tree festooned with red balloons and decorations, group of lads smoking weed and we exchange a few words. Then throw a tennis ball several times for a young Springer after he retrieves it from the river.
Beautiful early evening birdsong by the Lea – not a soul around. Sound of the train whooshing past.

7.33pm – stop at the Jolly Fisherman near St. Margaret’s Station on the banks of the Lea. I’ve walked past this pub so many times and always vowed to stop for a drink one day. At 21.2 miles I’m a bit knackered and couldn’t find it in me to push on for that final stretch to Ware without stopping here. It became a question of where do I want my pint? And I preferred here to my usual pub on the bridge at Ware which I now associate with the day Mum died when I walked to Youngsbury burial mound and ended up here trying to absorb it all. I realise that I’ve somehow attached my mother to this part of the world through the walk that day.
I’m drinking McMullens Rivertown Pilsner with a packet of cheese and onion McCoys. This really is a great spot for a pint. I put on the new ‘supersoft’ pale blue top – feels good, but a second layer seemed unthinkable just an hour ago.

8.03pm – I order a half or Rivertown to give myself the option of continuing the walk but there’s no way I was ready to carry on.

New River Path
Stanstead Abbotts

How does this walk relate to the timeline of the pandemic? When I came through here a year ago I was breaking out of London for the first time – there was a strange atmosphere. Today it feels relatively normal. A couple row past in an inflatable dinghy.

9.23pm – a bench by the Lea at Ware opposite the Saracen’s Head with a can of Neckoil and double pack of sausage rolls. Train leaves in 20 minutes. The Saracens is throbbing. Is this the vaccine summer?

Catch the 9.43pm train to Stratford. Total distance = 24.9 miles to my front door. I needed that.

Waterside Inn, Ware

First Walk of 2020 – Beyond King Harold’s Tomb at Waltham Abbey

It seemed apt somehow to start the decade with a visit to Waltham Abbey Church and the tomb of King Harold. The supposed burial place of the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, a notable site of medieval pilgrimage and sitting on the Greenwich Meridan. But these weren’t the things that brought me to Waltham Abbey on the 2nd January 2020.

Waltham Abbey

Waltham Abbey WW1 anti-aircraft gun emplacement

A ridge rising on the outskirts of Waltham Abbey had caught my eye on a number of walks, usually at the end just after sunset where it tempted me to climb its summit to catch the last of the light. Then a recent comment on my YouTube channel informed me of a site of interest near Kennel Wood, a First World War anti-aircraft emplacement, which just happened to be in the vicinity of the hill that had called me so many times. This is where I headed after paying homage at the Abbey and Harold’s tomb.

 

Watch the video above to see the hike into the hills above Waltham Abbey around Monkhams Hall.

 

Lea Valley Walk from Walthamstow to Waltham Abbey

This Lea Valley walk from Walthamstow to Waltham Abbey is surely one of my favourites. I’d finished leading a walk across the marshlands from Leyton Water Works to Walthamstow Wetlands and had the desire to push on into the evening. I headed up along Blackhorse Lane then turned into Folly Lane which opens up the postcard image of the ‘edgelands’ – you could bring coachloads of anthropologists and urban geographers up here to Harbet Road with it’s pylons and fields of fly-tipping, mountains of rubble and stacks of shipping containers.

Lea Valley Walk along River Lea Navigation

It’s a relief to drop beneath the North Circular onto the towpath of the Lea Navigation, and slowly chug along the waterway like a listing barge. You note the phases of change passing through the outer rings of the city – London Waste, Ponders End, Brimsdown Power Station, the confluence with the Turkey Brook, Enfield Dry Dock and Enfield Lock, then Rammey Marsh and the final release of passing beneath the M25 and into the beyond.

 

filmed on 28th July 2019

Boudicca’s Obelisk in the Epping Forest Uplands

Boudicca’s Obelisk

The mythology linking Boudicca to Epping Forest is a strong one – stemming from the 18th Century belief that Ambresbury Banks was Boudicca’s Camp during the time of her rebellion against the Romans. It is also believed that she died somewhere in the uplands north of the Forest, either through eating poison berries or bleeding out into the waters of the Cobbins Brook. The mythology found its way into the landscaping of Warlies Park in 1737 with the building of two obelisks in honour of the Queen of the Iceni – one commanding views of the Lea Valley high on a hill, the other built in brick at the edge of a field near the Cobbins Brook. I passed both obelisks on this beautiful walk that took me from Epping, around the grounds of Copped Hall through Warlies Park (once the home of the Buxtons of Leytonstone) and finishing on the outskirts of Waltham Abbey with a route 66 bus back through the nightime forest to the tube station at Loughton.

 

From the Forest to the Lea – Loughton to Broxbourne

A tragedy on the tracks near Brimsdown meant abandoning my plan to catch the train to Broxbourne and walk along the Lea to Hertford. I’d lost 2 hours at Stratford Station and decided to walk off my frustration in the Forest. Picking up my favoured trail at the top of Ollard’s Grove I headed over Fairmead Bottom and plunged into the Round Thicket which consumed me for a while. Somehow the forest delivered me to where I’d set my mark – Ludgate Plain and the paths leading out towards Lippitts Hill. I could still find my way down to the Lea Valley and regain something of the original plan for the day.

Safely navigating a passage across West Essex Golf Course I picked up Green Path, a track I’d been meaning to walk for a few years now. It brought me to a gorgeous meadow of tall grasses with a view of the eastern aspect of Barn Hill, from where up on the northern ridge, there were expansive views of the hills rising around Waltham Abbey.

Barn Hill

It always feels special crossing the north-eastern boundary of London and I stopped to savour the moment before picking up the Lea Valley path at Sewardstone heading towards Waltham Abbey. Passing beneath the M25 I remembered standing beneath the same flyover discussing London Orbital with the author himself, that book as much a marker in the Capital’s time as the opening of the road. Hungry and tired I stopped in McDonalds, munching a burger and fries on the Essex-Hertfordshire border.

From Waltham Abbey I followed the River Lea Flood Relief Channel. Great views open up across the waters of Hooks Marsh and Seventy Acres Lakes where otters hunker down in their holts and I imagine Viking boats sliding through the reed beds. The setting sun throws luminous rays across Holyfield Marsh, sometimes it feels as if the day’s walk is all about arriving at this moment, a swell of euphoria basking in the last light of the day.

Holyfield Marsh

From here I submitted to the Lea Navigation, the mantra of gravel under foot, steps releasing the spores of memories deposited on previous walks, the intoxication of reminiscence. I arrive at Broxbourne as a light drizzle greys the pavement. There’s a satisfaction that the walk ends where it had intended to start. The beginning becomes the end.

Lea Valley Walk from Blackhorse Road to Cheshunt

As the Beast from the East part 2 bends the bushes in my garden in half and dusts it all in snow I look back to the walk I took up the Lea Valley last weekend. Then it seemed certain that the cold was behind us and spring appeared to be breaking over Gillwell Hill. I was feeling sluggish and dark and sought out old/new paths. I took the Overground to Blackhorse Road, then proceeded up Blackhorse Lane turning off into Sinott Road looking for the path that runs alongside the reservoirs.

Lea Valley

Down a narrow road (Folly Lane) past the Muslim Cemetery, fly-tipping in the clumpy scrub, a Traveller site, pylons, mini-roundabout, Costco – an almost textbook example of ‘Edgelands’ – you could bus academics out here to scratch their chins and make notes. I’m incredibly tired and heavy legged but really need to push through.

Edgelands

Walthamstow fly-tip

Past the pumping station on Harbet Road, on the other side of the road the fly-tip at the end of the world. A field littered with trash spread between the Lea, the roadside, and the North Circular viaduct. Tall chimneys ( do see Willard Power Vac to hire the best cleaning services) puke up fumes in the near distance. An open wound in the city’s armpit.

Harbet Road London IMG_5402

On I plod on past the North London Vehicle Pound and follow the road down to the riverside path beneath the flyover. A couple of guys with a huge dog mooch around beside the undergrowth. Cyclists buzz past, head down racing against the Monday-Friday stress (it always catches up in the end).

Camden Hells brewery

At Pickett’s Lock my spirits lift and mood improves. Is it because I’m approaching the edge of London and can I leave my cares behind under a bush?

Harvester Ponders End

The sun starts to dissolve the milky clouds. The birds sing the sky yellow. Ponders End. Spring.

Rammey Marsh

Rammey Marsh wide and clear before the summer growth obscures its view from the river path. I love this stretch into Waltham Abbey, it’s where my mind often wanders when I’m trapped indoors.

Lea Valley

The last leg into Cheshunt proceeds at a slow plod, I’d burnt off the last of my energy covering the 4 miles from Pickett’s Lock to Waltham Abbey in under an hour fuelled but the burst of sunshine. Now the sky fades slowly back to a deep charcoal grey and the cold seeps up off the riverbank. I sit on a bench to see out the last of the light as a barge chugs northbound towards Ware and Hertford.

Neolithic Trackway through Epping Forest – walk to Cheshunt

The cold biting down on the winter dark towpath out of Waltham Abbey to Cheshunt, turned out to be the perfect ending to this walk back at the end of November. It seemed a folly to eschew the cafe warmth of Sun Street to head out along the road to Waltham Cross as the sun was setting at 4.15pm. A mile-and-a-half up the Lea Navigation to Cheshunt seemed reasonable, and I needed a little more to tag onto the schlepp from Theydon Bois. A fella slugged beer from a green bottle on the deck of his barge. A single white bike headlamp zig-zagged in the distance til it fizzed past me. An illuminated barge looked impossibly cosy, like a floating Hobbit Hole. The red lights flashed at the Cheshunt level crossing where I started my Ermine Street walk in the snow in February. I like this stretch of the towpath and was a little sad to give it up – but it was time to go home.

Epping Forest

The aim had been to cover a small pocket of Epping Forest I’d somehow bypassed on previous Forest wanders – north-west of Theydon Bois, beyond Amesbury Banks – around Crown Hill and Warren Wood. Crossing Epping Road I discovered that the asphalt path I was walking along followed the course of a raised Neolithic trackway that ran across boggy ground that had recently been carbon dated.

Potkiln wood path

Potkiln Wood path

I picked up a narrow overgrown path beside Crown Hill Farm, crossed the M25 and waded through deep muddy ruts along the edge of Potkiln Wood towards the outskirts of Waltham Abbey. Open countryside gave way to scrubby fields abutting 80’s housing estates navigated via reluctant footpaths. Mangy horses chewed grass down to the roots. The sun set perfectly over the Abbey, casting it ablaze in a heavenly endorsement of the 11th Century vision that led to the establishment of the Abbey by Tovi the Proud. Popping inside the Abbey just before closing, a CD of choral music and a 2018 Diary were pressed into my hands by a member of staff for the exchange of a few pence. And then it was out to that dark winter towpath.

Cobbins Brook

Cobbins Brook, Waltham Abbey