Redbridge Country Ramble

The North Circular cut short my walk away from the Redbridge Roundabout so the only route left was an overgrown path beside some football pitches. The metal barrier across the entrance and the way the branches held hands across the path indicated it was little if ever used aside by some intrepid fly-tippers, and from the rusted remains of what had been dumped even they hadn’t been this way for a while. The moss speckled Redbridge Council sign poking through the foliage is like something from a future post-apocalyptic London, a still from The Day of the Triffids.

Redbridge Allotments

After running into several solid walls of bramble I end up in a patch of grassland where toppled fence posts enclose waist-high weeds and wildflowers.

The rusted frame of classic old municipal chair, its canvas covers long rotted away, stands guard over these abandoned allotments. They are still marked on Redbridge Council’s map of allotments with the legend, ‘Currently not in use’. No kidding.

Roding walk

Across the football pitches, where the fence has collapsed, another path hugs the River Roding. Mellifluous birdsong fills the warm air. I feel like an intruder – this land has been returned to the wildlife and here I am barging back in.

The River Roding runs clear. Electric blue dragonflies zip amongst the tall stems of grass and wildflowers. Long spikes of purple loosestrife cling to the riverbank. Across the water – Lincoln and Rook Islands in Wanstead Park.

The path leads through what is referred to on Wanstead Wildlife as ‘Whisker’s Island’. I continue as the Roding flows through Ilford Golf Course then take the path through cool wooded shade stalking the Alders Brook with the City of London Cemetery on my right. What was a reel around the Redbridge roundabout has turned into a country ramble along forgotten byways serenaded with birdsong and beguiled by the babbling Alders Brook.

wanstead flats

The bucolic reverie is ended as I am dumped out onto the Romford Road just shy of Ilford, looking startled, rubbing my eyes like I have slipped through time from the 17th Century. It takes me a while to readjust and work out where I am. Once orientated I soon find my way to back country London on Wanstead Flats for the fieldpath ramble to Leytonstone.

‘Patch Map’ of Wanstead Flats

http://www.wansteadbirder.com/2009/11/map-of-wanstead-flats.html

Love this fantastic ‘patch map’ of Wanstead Flats from Wanstead Birder marked with ‘boggy bit’, ‘motorbike wood’, a red cross warning (or notifying) of cruising in Long Wood, ‘Police Scrape’ (I was showing this to someone this morning), ‘Pub Scrub’ etc. Have a look at the comments as well for a list of birds spotted on the Flats.

Walk from Wanstead Flats to Gants Hill

         (click the ‘play’ button to start slideshow)

The desire was to walk but I had no idea where. In that situation you let yourself be guided by your feet which often tend to often fall into familiar tracks. So I found myself walking up the avenue across Wanstead Flats, round the Heronry then Perch ponds of Wanstead Park and over the North Circular to Cranbrook. Through Valentines Park and into a Harvester on Beehive Lane in Gants Hill. The feet chose well.

(Wanstead Flats and Park are covered in Chapter 10 of This Other London)

Wantead Flats midsummer

I was in the Weatherspoon’s on Leytonstone High Road last night and read a framed nugget of local history about the Royal Hunting Lodge that sat opposite Davies Lane and the residence of Nell Gwynne, The Cedars that was on the corner of Ferndale Road. Apparently there was an underground passage that linked the two so Charles II could slip across to his mistress unnoticed, although I can’t imagine there were many people around that end of Leytonstone in the C17th who could have spotted him.

So this evening I went out looking for traces. I didn’t really look very hard to be honest and ended up carrying on down Davies Lane and across Wanstead Flats.

 The gorse really catches the setting sun – it’s worth coming over just to see it.

There was a slightly forlorn fair parked up between ditches, a few people drifting through getting their pockets emptied.