Thursday, May 24, 2007
Beckton District Park > Woolwich:
After a long break for holidays, Xmas, bad weather and pure laziness we finally got round to tackling another section of the walk. Luckily we didn’t have any transport problems this time and made it from the flat in North London to the start of the walk in Beckton in just about an hour. The DLR station is sandwiched between a huge empty glass box shaped building and a section of Royal Albert Dock and it all seemed very soulless and techno. We walked back to Beckton District Park, round the edge of some playing fields past some generic 80s style housing developments – it was all very cul-de-sac-arama!! The only signs of life were a couple of grazing horses and some kids playing football and again I didn’t really have the feeling we were in London.
Bored with the houses we detoured at Cyprus DLR station across a footbridge to look at the super modern campus of East London University; opened in 1999, it’s a complex of modern buildings and cylindrical hobbity looking accommodation blocks (thou I bet the hobbits never had such beautiful butterfly-shaped roofs!). The whole complex overlooks the huge expanse of the Royal Albert Dock and the City Airport. All the caffs and toilets were shut on Saturday morning (dammit) so we didn’t linger and went back to continue the walk. After a while we passed the scariest looking pub (The Ferndale) that we had ever seen – the windows (half of which were broken) were covered in suspicious brown smears as though someone was having a dirty protest or something –come to think of it the ex-Maze prisoners would have felt right at home in the Fern.
The housing thinned out and we passed through an area of roundabouts and building sites before coming to the Sir Steven Redgrave bridge, built in honour of the 5 times gold medal Olympic winner – personally I was fuming to learn that this heap of steel replaced a lovely ancient swing bridge, boooo!!!! It’s only when we crossed the bridge that you get the sheer scale of the Royal Albert and King George V docks – the Royal Albert opened in 1888, were the largest docks in the world and are now used for massive watersports events – no doubt they’ll be much in use for 2012 but I would think the Dock was too choppy for even Steve to make much progress on the day that we were there. You get a pretty good view right down the length of the docks towards the Dome and Canary Wharf from the middle of the bridge and the planes are close enough to wave to the trolley dollies serving gins and slimline tonics.
We walked over another little dainty gate bridge to the very end of the dock, where there is a little marina and then got a bit confused before picking up a crappy gravel path by the side of some flats and coming round to the river bank, where there is a park and path between a load of swanky flats and the Thames. We had a pretty good view of Woolwich and the old Arsenal buildings as we walked but it isn’t exactly the most picturesque part of London. There is quite a nice park en route, with an original steam hammer from one of the old factories. Pretty soon we caught sight of the Woolwich ferry pier – this section of the walk is very short. Mark wanted to ride the ferry but Ethan wanted to walk every step of the way and insisted that we go through the Woolwich foot tunnel, opened in 1912 – after all, what better way is there to cross the Thames than underground in a passage that smells of wee! Once you got past the corroded steps and urine stench it wasn’t that bad, honest.
We came up in another of the little Victorian brick cupola style buildings that mark the entrances to the tunnel and began to explore the delights of Woolwich - a fairly typical London suburban town centre, a bit scruffy and run down but with a wide range of shops and facilities and a nice square and market. We popped into the most highly recommended pub – Rosie’s - but it was pretty quiet so we didn’t stay long. There was lots of darts action going on! It seemed to have a pretty good range of beers, though was way too early to start going through them all.
We fancied a bite to eat but the nicest looking place that did food was charging a cover fee to watch Chelsea get beaten by Liverpool (which would have been worth the money in retrospect, esp to see Jose’s gurny face) so we had one more drink in (oh the shame) a Wetherspoons before grabbing a snack and heading off to Woolwich Arsenal station and back into town. The walk was so short that we almost considered doing the next section in the same day – before seeing that it was an additional 6 miles. Yikes!
The rest of the pictures are here
Next time: Sarf of the river! Gasp!!
After a long break for holidays, Xmas, bad weather and pure laziness we finally got round to tackling another section of the walk. Luckily we didn’t have any transport problems this time and made it from the flat in North London to the start of the walk in Beckton in just about an hour. The DLR station is sandwiched between a huge empty glass box shaped building and a section of Royal Albert Dock and it all seemed very soulless and techno. We walked back to Beckton District Park, round the edge of some playing fields past some generic 80s style housing developments – it was all very cul-de-sac-arama!! The only signs of life were a couple of grazing horses and some kids playing football and again I didn’t really have the feeling we were in London.
Bored with the houses we detoured at Cyprus DLR station across a footbridge to look at the super modern campus of East London University; opened in 1999, it’s a complex of modern buildings and cylindrical hobbity looking accommodation blocks (thou I bet the hobbits never had such beautiful butterfly-shaped roofs!). The whole complex overlooks the huge expanse of the Royal Albert Dock and the City Airport. All the caffs and toilets were shut on Saturday morning (dammit) so we didn’t linger and went back to continue the walk. After a while we passed the scariest looking pub (The Ferndale) that we had ever seen – the windows (half of which were broken) were covered in suspicious brown smears as though someone was having a dirty protest or something –come to think of it the ex-Maze prisoners would have felt right at home in the Fern.
The housing thinned out and we passed through an area of roundabouts and building sites before coming to the Sir Steven Redgrave bridge, built in honour of the 5 times gold medal Olympic winner – personally I was fuming to learn that this heap of steel replaced a lovely ancient swing bridge, boooo!!!! It’s only when we crossed the bridge that you get the sheer scale of the Royal Albert and King George V docks – the Royal Albert opened in 1888, were the largest docks in the world and are now used for massive watersports events – no doubt they’ll be much in use for 2012 but I would think the Dock was too choppy for even Steve to make much progress on the day that we were there. You get a pretty good view right down the length of the docks towards the Dome and Canary Wharf from the middle of the bridge and the planes are close enough to wave to the trolley dollies serving gins and slimline tonics.
We walked over another little dainty gate bridge to the very end of the dock, where there is a little marina and then got a bit confused before picking up a crappy gravel path by the side of some flats and coming round to the river bank, where there is a park and path between a load of swanky flats and the Thames. We had a pretty good view of Woolwich and the old Arsenal buildings as we walked but it isn’t exactly the most picturesque part of London. There is quite a nice park en route, with an original steam hammer from one of the old factories. Pretty soon we caught sight of the Woolwich ferry pier – this section of the walk is very short. Mark wanted to ride the ferry but Ethan wanted to walk every step of the way and insisted that we go through the Woolwich foot tunnel, opened in 1912 – after all, what better way is there to cross the Thames than underground in a passage that smells of wee! Once you got past the corroded steps and urine stench it wasn’t that bad, honest.
We came up in another of the little Victorian brick cupola style buildings that mark the entrances to the tunnel and began to explore the delights of Woolwich - a fairly typical London suburban town centre, a bit scruffy and run down but with a wide range of shops and facilities and a nice square and market. We popped into the most highly recommended pub – Rosie’s - but it was pretty quiet so we didn’t stay long. There was lots of darts action going on! It seemed to have a pretty good range of beers, though was way too early to start going through them all.
We fancied a bite to eat but the nicest looking place that did food was charging a cover fee to watch Chelsea get beaten by Liverpool (which would have been worth the money in retrospect, esp to see Jose’s gurny face) so we had one more drink in (oh the shame) a Wetherspoons before grabbing a snack and heading off to Woolwich Arsenal station and back into town. The walk was so short that we almost considered doing the next section in the same day – before seeing that it was an additional 6 miles. Yikes!
The rest of the pictures are here
Next time: Sarf of the river! Gasp!!
