Tag Archives: london loop

city walking, wandering

London’s most industrial walk

Leave a comment

August is ending.  Summer is ending.  New jobs are starting. Sounds like a perfect reason to walk from Rainham to Purfleet.

If I offered walking tours in all possible genres, I’d be crafting itineraries for London’s most industrial walks this week. Rainham to Purfleet is one of those little magical ways which perfectly combines the exploratory feel of your childhood with the quiet epicness of your 20s. But even more importantly, it really opens up an alternative route for flâneuring in London, giving you a chance to walk past pallet factories, odd black cats, concrete barges, soft mud rivershores and even Europe’s first wind turbine park. Not to mention the apocalyptic Rainham Marshes with the grazing cows and Eurostar trains speeding away in the background, through the pylon forests.

long distance walking

Alternative London postcards. Walking the LOOP 3,4,5/24: Harold Wood to Purfleet.

Leave a comment

Name: London Outer Orbital Path

Walk: 3-5 of 24

Route: Harold Wood to Upminster Bridge (section 22), Upminster Bridge to Rainham (section 23), Rainham to Purfleet (section 24)

Date & Distance: Tuesday, 05.07.2017; 28.3 K

Fellow walkers: K.

What to expect from this part of LOOP/Essex?

So, woop-woop – 19 sections done out of 24! 🙂 Less than 200 km to go!

I must say that I did not have any expectations when entering this part of the LOOP, but oh, did it never stop to surprise us. What to expect of the sections 22-24 of the LOOP, then?

  • All sorts of very specific or motivating signs.
20170705_115225-1
The first item in the list to follow mentioned “appropriate clothing”
2017-07-06 10.38.53
Sometimes all you need for that motivation is a hole in the right fence.
If someone ever tells you to walk the walk… it is in Essex.
  • Signs of fairy life
20170705_135817
Who lives here?
  • Pets less common.
20170705_130547
Yup, that’s a goat all right.
  • That unmistakable feel of childhood (cross-overs from marshes to industrial zones)
Hornchurch country park
Rainham marshes
Rainham marshes
  • Art that looks like something out of Dr Who

20170705_185659

So far, my definite favourite part of the LOOP. Let’s see what the rest of the 19 sections bring!

city walking, flâneuring, long distance walking

New river. Old course. Walking the LOOP, 2/24: Cockfosters to Enfield.

Leave a comment

Name: London Outer Orbital Path

Walk: 2 of 24

Route: Cockfosters to Enfield Lock (section 17)

Date & Distance: Tuesday, 25.04.2017; 18.2 km

Fellow walkers: K. & M.

The second walk from our series was framed by field edges. (This is not even a pun. Framed by edges… Ah, never mind.) When our first walk was formed by bench and forking path descriptions, then this one was definitely all about following the fields. Which is not bad, you know. I can definitely think of a worst thing than walking next to a field on a cool yet sunny day!

20170425_121328

Section 17 took a bit of time, although it was not very long and did not feel very long either. Once again, we chose the sunniest day of the week and hit the road. Arriving at Cockfosters was strange. Strange in a way reaching a final destination on yet another tube line is. It did not take long for the car parks to end and greener parks to start. Also, it still had not rained in London by that time. It was getting close to 5 weeks.

There was a lot of green happening that day. A lot. Spring is getting properly ready to turn into summer soon. With the blue skies in the background, it was a lot like walking around in alternative versions to Windows’ desktop wallpapers. K. also knows that you can use a word meaning “greener than green” in Turkish in occasions just like this.

20170425_114605-1

It was a walking day which did not enwrap me (or possibly us three?) in anything impossibly magical, but gave us many small surprises that were sweet in their own everyday way:

  • little fresh oak leaves
  • ivy-smothered forest signs in Enfield
  • cherry blossoms on the grass (up to this point I had only seen them on pavement)
  • the Railway Inn of Enfield that plays opera and smells of old cigarettes
  • two women nailing “Missing: Rooney” posters on trees (Rooney was a parakeet, there was also a photo)
  • the sweetest sign post, saying “New river. (Old course.)”

This one got me thinking. Life, literature and philosophy are brimming with the idea of the opposite: old river, new course. You know, the idea that you can always turn a new page however tired or alienated you have become. There’s also the idea of the opposite of this opposite – old course, new river – meaning that some things get discovered over and over again throughout our lives, in different situations. But new river, old course, exactly in this order, contains something devastatingly romantic, if not even unforgiving. It seems to either hint (in the unforgiving version) that life has certain patterns or ways of influencing us which no one can escape, no matter which century we’re living in – or – that were there has once been life, there will be life again (the romantic version). What I don’t like about this sign, however, is how it seems to rob the one who is living (the new river) from any other options. In a way, it almost makes it not trust itself, without even giving it an option.

And this is also the reason why I finally need to take a month off work for the first time in my life. Because I am so tired that I get offended by forest signs.

20170425_150012

city walking, long distance walking

Walking the London LOOP. Walk 1 of 24, Petts Woods to Hayes.

Leave a comment

Name: London Outer Orbital Path

Walk: 1 of 24

Route: Petts Woods to Hayes (section 3)

Date & Distance: Tuesday, 11.04.2017; 27.23 km

Fellow walkers: K.

London Loop is a 240-km signed walking route that is created for the incurably curious. In other words, it makes it very easy to walk around London.

IMG_20170412_002444_288

I believe in the magic of streets, paths and roads. A city always feels like home when you know you have many streets to choose from and many ways to get to a location. The trouble finds you when you start running out of streets. I was thinking about this exact thing when looking down from the parapet in Malta’s Mdina: with a tiny squint in your eye, you could almost imagine a slice of Istanbul petting the soft edges of your horizon. But what makes Istanbul Istanbul is the feeling and the knowledge of the Possible. The same pleasant tingling you get before job interviews, exams and first dates. And Malta lacked that feeling. The streets were counted.

K. and I got the idea to walk the London Loop by an accident. I know that in my case, it is a path of solace (among other things) and a path that I slowly start building into my Denali preparations. It keeps me sane when away from the mountains and hanging low in mood. And gives me time to spend with my friends.

The other meaning of the loop

On our first walk already managed to direct us through a tiny trickster point as well. There was a parting of roads and benches whence we choose our itinerary only to end up at the very beginning of the original path at least a kilometer away. I guess this is just one of the meanings for the loop. When retracing our steps we were greeted by an elderly couple at that same trickster point who had also been mislaid from their path (yet coming from the opposite direction).

If I was free to roam forever (and immortal), I’d start mapping all the trickster points in this world. Hopefully, such cartographers are already out there, poking at the crossroads of possibilities.