How can it have been two years since I ended Section 3 of the London Loop at Petts Wood? It felt both fantastic and odd to find myself back at Petts Wood station picking up the 150-mile long trail and knocking off the final couple of sections of the London Loop. I’ve loved all of my London Loop walks, which quite incredibly started with Section 17 in January 2018, and Section 2 did not disappoint, passing largely through woodland for a big chunk of the 8-mile route. I visited Scadbury Moated Manor, Sidcup, crossed the Kyd Brook and most memorably, strolled beside the River Cray as afternoon passed into early evening.
A freezing cold night in January I found myself ensconced in the Thameside Inn having stumbled upon the ruins of the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace in the narrow lanes near Borough Market. Supping a pint of Adnam’s Ghost Ship from Southwold, I looked across the river at the City lights reflecting in the Thames and the flashing blue lights on the ferry coming in to dock at London Bridge. I must make a video of this short deeply storied strip of the river between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, I resolved as I lined up the second pint.
A couple of weeks later a friend and former colleague messaged me to say that I had to visit Hopton’s Almshouses just behind Tate Modern, a rare secluded gem hidden amongst the rush and tear of Southwark. This is what gave me the final push to go and shoot the Bankside stroll in this video.
The Route: Crossing Blackfriars Bridge we first visit Hopton’s Almhouses built in the 17th Century. Then we pass through Tate Modern and then Cardinal’s Wharf where Sir Christopher Wren stayed during the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral. Next door is Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, a reconstruction of the famous Elizabethan theatre. We pass along Bear Alley the site of a Tudor Bear pit and into Park Street where we find the sites of the Rose Theatre and the original Globe Theatre. Our Bankside amble then passes the notorious Clink Prison and the ruins of the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace before ending at the reconstruction of the Golden Hinde ship famously skippered by Sir Francis Drake on circumnavigations of the globe.
I often overlook the Capital Ring. Partly because I’m always encountering those little waymarkers on my walks. I collected a full set of free fold-out maps from Thornhill Square Library about 20 years ago, detailing the 72-mile route broken down into 15 sections. However, I’ve only intentionally set out to walk the Capital Ring on one occasion, in March 2020 when I walked from Richmond to Horsenden Hill.
Capital Ring Walk 4Upper Norwood Recreation Ground
So last week, with a false Spring breaking over London, I set off from Crystal Palace Station to walk Section 4 to Streatham Common, and wow what a glorious walk it was. There were spectacular views throughout – looking south towards to the North Downs, and across the Thames Basin to the north with the shimmering towers of the City below. From Biggin Wood we looked across the high-rises of Croydon to distant hills. And at the end of the walk we gazed west over the Wandle Valley. Between we strolled across beautiful open spaces at Westow Park, Upper Norwood Recreation Ground, Norwood Grove and finally Streatham Common. We passed beneath the boughs of one of the remnants of the Great North Wood in Biggin Wood and explored the secret garden at The Rookery on the site of Streatham Wells.
view from Biggin Hill The Rookery
I now can’t wait to get back and continue the Capital Ring to Wimbledon and Richmond.
I’d never heard of the River Shuttle until it was mentioned in the YouTube comments under my video of a walk along the River Quaggy. A crisp, bright, sunny Sunday felt like the perfect time to seek out this suburban watercourse. The River Shuttle rises on Avery Hill and flows through a sequence of parks and patches of woodland before making its confluence with the River Cray beside the A2 Rochester Way. The Shuttle Riverway is a 5.5-mile walking trail that follows the river.
I found the Shuttle running along a narrow concrete culvert just inside the gates of the University of Greenwich Avery Hill campus and next to the Charlton Athletic Training Ground. I remembered that my Uncle Stan had turned down a professional contract to play in goal for Charlton in the 1950s leading me to declare that the deity of the River Shuttle was a former Charlton Athletic goalkeeper. [*note: in Ben Aaronovitch’s brilliant Rivers of London books all of London’s rivers have a living, breathing deity who moves among us]. I followed the river through the campus and across the road, through Parish Wood and connected with the Shuttle Riverway as ran alongside Berwick Crescent, Sidcup. It was here I encountered my first Shuttle Riverway signage – always a great moment to add a new walking trail sign to the memory bank.
Shuttle Riverway
In Hollyoak Wood Park the Shuttle meets its tributary, the Wyncham Stream which rises in Chislehurst. Just past the confluence of these two rivers an egret elegantly strode along the edge of the water. The river led me on through Willersley Park and Marlborough Park in magnolious late winter sun.
River Shuttle in Parish Woodconfluence of the Wyncham Stream and the River Shuttle
As the Shuttle crossed Burnt Oak Lane into Sidcup Golf Club I followed the Shuttle Riverway round the streets when later I learnt that a footpath runs around the edge of the golf course emerging near Viewfield Road. However, I’m grateful that my detour took me past the great pylons that straddled the houses and the stink pipe in Albany Road.
The daylight faded as I traced the river across the edge of Bexley Woods and a luminous full moon broke through the clouds. It made me think of Steve Moore’s Somnium, a brilliant weaving of the mythology of the moon goddess Selene into the landscape of Shooters Hill, not far from the source of the River Shuttle. The moon and the river seemed intricately linked. How I connect this to the goalkeeping deity of the Shuttle I haven’t worked out yet.
confluence of the River Shuttle and River Cray
Selene guided me down Love Lane in the moonlit night to the Holiday Inn laden with ennui beside the A2 East Rochester Way. The Shuttle shimmered in the headlights of passing cars. The confluence with the River Cray was not far away. A fox slid through the undergrowth along the riverbank. Somebody had left a can of energy drink on the railing as a votive offering. It was a perfect ending. I paid my respects and then headed off into the moonbeams to Bexley Station.
The River Quaggy, or Quaggy River as it’s marked on maps for some of its course, has beguiled me since I first heard its name mentioned after a screening about twelve years ago. I encountered it for real in Lewisham Town Centre when doing one of the walks for my book, This Other London, and passed it briefly on a walk tracing the River Beck. So one day in November I set out to walk a section of the Quaggy, starting at Lewisham Station where the Quaggy and the Ravensbourne meet before the conjoined rivers become the Deptford Creek and flow into the Thames. The River Quaggy rises at Locksbottom in the London Borough of Bromley and is known as the Kyd Brook in its lower reaches.
On the first walk, this gentle river led us through Lewisham Town Centre to Manor Park, formerly a pig farm, then to Manor Gardens Park with its fantastic library situated in the 18th Century Manor House. We then returned to a stretch of Lee Road to Lee Green and followed the river into Blackheath where we were thwarted by locked park gates and the black of night ended the first walk.
The Quaggy at Manor Park, LewishamThe Quaggy at Sutcliffe Park, Eltham
I returned just over a week ago to pick up the Quaggy trail in Sutcliffe Park, Eltham where the Quaggy is free of its culvert and allowed the flood parts of the surrounding parkland, before it’s corralled back into a concrete channel to make the journey through the suburban realm. It passes beneath the South Circular Road and once again through sports grounds. We walk beside its waters along Mottingham Lane before it enters the grounds of Capel Manor College. Picking up the river on the other side of the College I arrived at Chinbrook Meadows just after sunset to see the Quaggy running free once more meandering through this charming park. My South London river odyssey ended not long afterwards in the dark on New Street Hill looking across at Sundridge Golf Course, where, somewhere between the bunkers, the name of this magical watercourse changes to the Kyd Brook.
What a fantastic walk, at every turn a wonder, making me more determined than ever to dedicate the coming year to walking London’s rivers.
Just turning left instead of right can change your whole perspective on your surroundings. If I’d done that when leaving my front door during the six months I lived in New Cross Gate in the early 90’s then my impression of that area would be completely different. As it is my memories of the only time I lived south of the river are of walking from my flat at the foot of Telegraph Hill to New Cross Gate station to travel into the West End where I worked, and occasionally coming home on the 53 bus which stopped near the end of my road. Had I turned right instead on a rare day off (Sundays) then I would have ascended Telegraph Hill and enjoyed some of the best views of the City skyline (which would have looked quite different back then).
But it never happened for reasons that I can’t accurately remember. I’d loved exploring all the other areas I’d lived in London around Forest Gate, Harringay and Hackney – my roaming on foot taking me from Barking to the West End and from Mare Street through Islington and Hampstead to Muswell Hill and Crouch End. But until this summer I’d never been to Nunhead despite it being a relatively short stroll from New Cross Gate.
view from Telegraph Hill Upper ParkNunhead Cemetery
Having made a couple of trips to Nunhead Cemetery in the past six months, I decided to put right this wrong of the past and plotted a walk from New Cross Gate to Nunhead Cemetery and then down to Nunhead Green. It became an almost perfect autumn walk with the bronzed leaves scattered across Telegraph Hill Upper and Lower Parks. Nunhead Cemetery has cemented itself as my favourite of the Magnificent Seven London cemeteries. Nunhead Green was the perfect place to conclude the video, where the head of a Mother Superior of the convent that stood on the site was said to have been placed upon a spike during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. One commenter on the video reported that her ghost was said to haunt The Old Nun’s Head pub.
Packing my camera away I closed the loop of the walk munching on a bag of chips and revelling in reconnecting with those six months spent living on Telegraph Hill. It’s a period that turned out to be a pivotal point in my life, ending with my departure to head off with a round-the-world plane ticket on a journey that lasted three years, led me to my wife and in many ways has never really ended.
In this walk we go in search of the course of the ‘lost’ River Peck that gives its name to Peckham in South London. The Peck is said to rise near One Tree Hill in Honor Oak and then flows above ground across Peckham Rye before re-entering its culvert as it flows through the streets of Peckham just to the west of Copeland Road. Our walk then goes past Peckham Bus Garage to Kirkwood Road and picks up the course of the river again at Asylum Road near Queens Road Station. The river most likely flows beneath Brimmington Park but we continue along Asylum Road to look at the Licensed Victuallers’ Benevolent Institution Asylum. The walk takes us along the Old Kent Road to the point where the Peck crosses the road and heads along Ilderton Road to make its confluence with the Earl’s Sluice near Bermondsey South Station.
Route of the walk/ course of the River Peck: One Tree Hill – Oak of Honor Brenchley Gardens Marmora Road Homestall Road Peckham Rye Rye Lane Copeland Road Blackpool Road Peckham Bus Garage Brayards Road Kirkwood Road Lugard Road Queens Road Peckham Asylum Road Peckham Old Kent Road Ilderton Road SE16 South Bermondsey Station
