Tracking the Tube: Central Line 06: Leytonstone to Loughton

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Weather: Very warm and sunny
Distance Walked: 15.3km
Distance By Tube: 8.70
Stations Visited: 6
Fantastic Place:Lord's Bushes and Knighton Wood

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May's weather had been record breaking and I was dreading that it would wither continue today or switch to thunderous downpours, For once it was a happy medium and although it was hot it wasn't has hot as the previous week.

The Six Stations On The Walk

Soon after leaving Leytonstone station I passed the rather impressive 1911 buildings of Leytonstone school. Looks quite posh for a comprehensive. The nearby church is also quite striking, built in the late 1800s and featuring a lot of flint. 

 The first area of open land, Leyton Flats was soon upon me. A wonderful open space with ponds and woodlands. The walk was already better than I thought it was going to be

 

Leyton Flats

After the woods a fine pond with more swans than you could shake a stick at. At work we have pons with two swans. When the cygnets emerge the cob has a murderous habit of drowning any other duckings or goslings that may be minding their own business. This bunch however were very friendly!

Swantastic

 Snaresbrook station has a wonderful wildflower and wildlife garden, very well maintained in a small very steep space. 

Wildflower Wonders

There were some splendid front gardens on this walk and one had an absolutely huge, what I assume to be, banana!

Is that a banana in your garden...

 After South Woodford the walk descended beneath the North Circular, for about the tenth time on this series of walks. The underpass here was quite pleasant however. 

 

Light At The End Of The Underpass

On the way from South Woodford to Woodford there is an odd dual carriageway that leads to a bridge that is out of use for cars due to structural issues. Looking down the road is quite spooky in a post apocalypse day of the triffids sort of way!

After Woodford station and several roads with big detached houses with big expensive cars parked out front the path goes through another large open space, Lords Bushes and Knighton Wood. Easily the best part of this very enjoyable walk, this mixed woodland offered welcome shade and the opportunity to chat with many dogs and their walkers.

After Buckhurst Hill station an area of sports fields and parklands lead to the final stop at Loughton and it's very attractive architecture.

 An interesting point is that the variety of designs of stations on this walk. There was no unifying style unlike some of the other walks I've done on this project.

 

 

    
 

 

Tracking The Tube: District Line: 05: East Ham to Upminster

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Weather: Warm and Sunny to start, becoming cloudy and windy later
Distance Walked: 18.65km
Distance By Tube: 14.63km
Stations Visited:10
Fantastic Place: Mayesbrook Park

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This leg's stations

 I have a week off this week so I plan to get two legs of my tube walk in, as long as the weather stays fair and my two legs can cope with it. Today's walk has one of the longest journeys to and from the actual walk, zone 4 in the west to zone 6 in the east and I will be entering 'here be dragons' territory once I get past Barking (though the LOOP did pass near Upminster station). Barking I know fairly well as that is where my fair wife was living when I first met her.

The walk started by passing through rows of terraced Victorian and Edwardian houses, a theme that would recur through most of the walk, though the quality and size of the properties varied and towards the end the terraces were replaced by larger, semi-detached houses with some interesting details (arched and round windows and brick detailing).

Crossing the very busy North Circular by a footbridge with very awkward shallow steps the next stretch was through a rather unattractive light industrial estate. There were a lot of men hanging around outside Wickes (DIY suppliers) with boxes of tools and occasionally a white van would pull up and a talk to the men and some would get in. I assume that this is a known pick up point for day-labourers. Not much security of income and slightly reminiscent of the way that dock labourers used to be employed.

Barking appears to have been tidied up a bit from when I used to visit on a regular basis with new modern apartments and a vibrant street market with food and shoes being a particular strength of the bit I walked through. Barking station is not attractive, but then none of the stations on this leg were, most being the brick box with flat concrete roof. Barking and Upminster being larger interchange stations were even less attractive than that!

Past Barking Hospital and Upney station the route entered the very attractive Mayesbrook Park. Two large lakes with numerous swans, ducks and geese. It was like a mini Barnes WWT site!

Large Lake in Mayesbook Park

Grazing Goose

If I lived nearby I would spend a lot of time here, wide open spaces birds, water, everything you need in a municipal park. Very neat and tidy too.

Along the long Rugby road to Becontree station I started to notice something I've not seen very much of in London - decorative cement rendering. In the country, if it was done in plaster it would be called pargeting.  I used to see a bit of this when I lived in Norwich and it is common in Suffolk and Essex so I shouldn't be surprised to see it on houses on this leg of the walk, it just looks a bit incongruous on a thirties semi!

One of many houses with pargeting

In the same area I saw the fastest sprayer in the east! On his little buggy this guy was spraying the gullies to control weeds. The car tyres of the residents should also be proof against bindweed etc. as he was not too careful as to where his wand was spraying as he zoomed along the pavement!

Ernie and he drove the fastest sprayer in the east!

Parsloes Park is even bigger than Mayesbrook Park but has only a small formal section, the rest being playing fields and is very flat and a little dull. It is however another large green lung for London and a valuable resource for the locals.

Dagenham Heathway and Dagenham East followed with much more suburban streets before a very wild section running between high fences. To the south it looked like derelict factories while to the north empty parking lots. I assume these were linked with the Ford motor works that were based in Dagenham. After a while the fences were hidden by damson trees, elderberry, hawthorn, wild roses and blackberries. In a week or two you could come down and make a very handy wild harvest here.

The path led into the Chase Nature Reserve a wild area of hummocks, horse droppings and wild life. I almost got twizzled around in this section but found my way out and rejoined the route to Elm Park station.

After stopping for a sandwich as the wind picked up and the clouds gathered I headed along through tree lined streets and larger semi detached properties (and more pargeting) to Hornchurch and Upminster Bridge where the route briefly joined the LOOP.

The last stretch from Upminster Bridge was uphill and I passed Upminster Windmill just before reaching Upminster station and the long journey back to Greenford.

That's the end of the District Line, now for the Northern Line starting at the south end and working my way north. 

London Loop: Section 2: Old Bexley to Petts Wood

Weather: Fine, sunny and warm
Playlist: LastFm Playlist
Time: 2.5 Hours

Bit of a delay blogging this walk - busy times at work. However this was a fantastic walk and I would heartily recommend it to anyone. Although not as long as some sections it crams in a lot of attractive features. The walk starts out from the attractive Old Bexley that I'm sure would repay more time exploring than I gave it. Soon after leaving Bexley you head up over a grass covered waste dump, no don't turn back, this was filled with wild flowers and several skylarks that danced in the air and sung in the summer sun. Fantastic. There were clumps of wild fennel with beautiful bronze fronds some 3 feet high beside the track and again it was hard to believe that this was London not somewhere wilder. The path then goes past cricket pitches where a host of youngsters were playing various forms of cricket. One young girl thwacked a ball almost over the fence as I was passing so take care on this leg if you are walking in the summer!
The next section is alongside the River Cray which here is very pretty and filled with little brown fish. My fish identification skills are even worse than my bird spotting talents so I can't tell you what they were! The Cray is held back by a weir under the attractive Five Arch Bridge and spreads out into a placid lake upon which swans with cygnets along with coots and moorhen with their young paddle around.

Five Arch Bridge

The path continues along the river through the meadows past the attractive Sidcup Place before negotiating the junction of the A20 and A222 - a bit of a maze but well signposted so I didn't get lost. Most of the rest of the walk is then in dappled shade through mixed woodland, up and down hill along clear paths possibly some of my favourite walking. The woods were full of jays (or the same one that kept coming back and flying past again).
The last part for the walk gave views over rolling hills with sheep grazing in the sun. Great stuff and can't wait for the next leg in early July.