Capital Ring Day 1 (20 January 2007) - Part 2

(c) Oxleas Meadows café to Downham Woodland Walk

The sun was out again by the time we left the café; somehow the weather was all the more perfect because it had rained whilst we were indoors than if it hadn’t rained at all. We headed downhill on woodland paths which were muddy enough that even Jim briefly admitted that perhaps my walking boots were more appropriate than his new £20 Karrimor walking shoes that he’d been boasting about all day. This was one of the more “remote” parts of the Ring, and seemed almost silent, but when you stopped and listened for a moment, you realised that this silence was only relative to the rest of London; in fact, you could hear a permanent background roar of traffic. The “silence” was not actually quiet at all! Crossing a road we entered more woodland in Eltham Park; a circuitous route bought us out by a small fenced-off duckpond, by which a squirrel was to be holding court over a number of white doves. By now the roar of the A2 was becoming overwhelming, and crossing it on a footbridge we left the first “official” section of the Ring. We had much further to go though.

The start of the second “official” section continued the run of parks from the first section as we entered Eltham Park South. Unfortunately there was also tarmac underfoot for the first time since Woolwich Common. This park was bland and unappealing; little more than a tree-flanked path across a large expanse of grass. Several of the trees had come down in the storms.

After a short section of residential walking (there had been astonishingly little of this so far) we followed a rough track down to a sports club. The track was surprisingly busy and it was irritating having to frequently step up on the verge to let them pass. We were glad to turn right in front of the club and take a path through a short strip of woodland. Here we were reminded of one of the foibles of the Green Chain Walk that could endanger a Ring walker who follows the Green Chain signs too closely. The Green Chain is not a simple linear walk but instead a collection of interweaving paths; here there was a fork in the Green Chain. We wondered how much use the Green Chain actually was.

Making sure we followed the tiny Ring signage we ambled on to a tumbledown brick building which the guide reliable informed us was the header building for Eltham Palace’s water system. Like so much of London it had been disgracefully vandalised with graffiti and litter, but still managed to look a delightfully anomalous little building. Round the corner was a church which had the appearance of a much larger, more important church shrunk to suburban size.

There now followed the first roadside walking of any great length on the Ring, as we headed down a long, but fairly quiet North Park road. The houses here were large, and varied in appearance, and clearly expensive, but many had a common theme; windows that somehow didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the house. Finally reaching the end of North Park, we entered the environs of Eltham Palace – first a very pretty close with what would have presumably have been the Palace support buildings, and then the Palace itself. Unfortunately from the Ring you could see very little of the Palace itself, and the bridge and moat we might have been able to see were obscured by the low winter sun. We followed the trail round to the far side of the Palace to look for a better view. There were stables blocking out the Palace itself, but instead we were treated to superb views across central London, with the Dome, Canary Wharf, the magnificent Gherkin and St Paul’s Cathedral all clearly visible. There was also a handy topograph if you needed any help identifying this famous skyline.

Unusually the supposedly “strategic” Ring and Green Chain do not provide a safe way over the very busy A20 – instead you have to just scarper through the speeding traffic. Your reward for such bravery is a bit of road walking that feels longer than it looks on the map, followed by a disappointing path across playing fields. This could so easily be a pleasant open bit of walking, but the path is held prisoner between two high wire link fences, and you end up rushing through trying to escape. This is an undignified end to the ridiculously short second “official” section, but the start to the third is even worse, pounding the tarmac roads of Grove Park for over a kilometre.

You eventually escape Grove Park via a wide alleyway, at the top of which was one of the magnificent Green Chain maps. Despite being a feature of a different path, these need to be mentioned, for they are magnificent creations. Every feature (including pictures) had been cast in relief in metal, and beautifully coloured. The signs are clearly recent, yet have the lovingly crafted feel of something of an older generation. We raised our hats to the artifice of the designer as we ran our hands over the wonderfully textured map.

The paths on these Green Chain maps are colour coded according to how difficult they are -–this alley was 3 points up the scale as it “may be steep and uneven”. We ambled easily down the gentle slope of unimpeding tarmac, passing a nature reserve on the way. The guide recommended this as a good place to see parakeets in the wild; if we hadn’t already seen some I would have been tempted to go in for a look. As it was, the one visible bench was already taken, so we hurried on, crossing a railway by a cagéd footbridge. On the other side was a further dull kilometre of road walking, the only brief point of interest being a fire brigade training tower.

So far, the third “official” section had been pretty awful, but it was about to get more interesting. We turned down a bizarre residential road – in the centre was a broad, grassy, wooded strip; each side was a road, and beyond that were the houses. You wouldn’t get away with this sort of “wastage” of land nowadays! Where two of these strips meet there is a confusion of road junctions – heaven knows which way you’re meant to go! Ring walkers are able to walk up the central grassy strip, providing welcome relief to by now tarmac-eroded feet. To our delight, there were more parakeets here zooming between the trees and looking spectacularly green and inappropriate in the midst of suburbia. Maybe the government should note that such spaces are not a waste after all!

We took a footpath into a strip of woodland so narrow that it barely showed up on the OS map, but that was over a mile long. This is the Downham Woodland Walk, which despite winding its way between housing estates has somehow managed to escape itself being developed (although, unfortunately, someone has felt the need to tarmac the path through it). We took our afternoon tea-and-chocolate break on one of the first of many benches here and enjoyed the surprising tranquility. Bird boxes were nailed onto many of the trees, and the path was inlaid with mosaics presumable designed by local schoolchildren. There was a surprising and welcome lack of graffiti, litter or vandalism, although whether this was due to well-behaved locals or extensive efforts of a conservation group was unclear.

(d) Downham Woodland Walk to West Penge

The air was starting to get chilly as we moved on again, and we knew we would have to get a move on if we were to make our target of West Penge by nightfall. It’s difficult though – there is so much to see on the Capital Ring that one is inclined to dawdle rather than stride out the miles. Through the Downham Woodland Walk, for instance, many of the benches were carved into intricate shapes such as oak leaves. Our favourite was the set of three teacup-shaped stools. After regular bird boxes throughout the walk, one of the final trees featured a multiplex of about 20 tightly packed boxes – in bird terms, this was a bustling metropolis!

A short section of road led to Beckenham Place Park. At first it looked like a normal metropolitan park - a flat, featureless expanse of grass. We crossed a bridge over the tiny Ravensbourne River; there had obviously been budget cuts as it was now surrounded by literally hundreds of rooks or crows (how does one tell the difference?) rather than ravens. Veering away from the park edge we crossed a railway, and things started to get more interesting as we entered thick woodland. We finally left the tarmac behind again as a wide path twisted its way up a gentle hill. A rabbit lolloped across in front of us. At the top of the hill was another of the fantastic green chain maps, and – for once – a Capital Ring- related feature. A wooden bench had a small plaque denoting it to be a “Capital Ring Resting Place”. It was the first one we’d seen – if this is the only official resting place on the Capital Ring one needs to be pretty fit to walk it!

We descended from the woods alongside a dribble of a stream running through the golf course that now occupies most of the park. The park used to be the grounds of Beckenham Place, and we could see what from here seemed to be a fairly unattractive grey square block of a Palladian mansion. The Ring headed up a gentle slope (unfortunately now on tarmac again after the brief respite) passing an inexplicably large stone squirrel. Jim and I agreed that even a two-foot high squirrel would be an evil little blighter, so why someone would want a five-foot high one was beyond us.

Passing in front of the mansion we were in for a surprise. It wasn’t so ugly after all. There was a huge portico with possibly-ionic-if-only-they-were-fluted columns that dominated the front of the house and relieved the otherwise cuboid appearance. Unfortunately, some scaffolding, and a large and unsympathetic car park in front dissipated the grandeur.

As we left Beckenham Place, the Crystal Palace radio mast became a dominant feature on the skyline ahead. It looked like there might be a cracking sunset on the way; we wondered if we would get any chance to see it given that the map showed the remainder of today’s walk taking a low-lying, largely urbanised route.

Indeed, the next mile or so to New Beckenham Station held little of interest bar an ugly sports ground and an imposing church. The constant tarmac underfoot was now starting to make my feet ache. After passing through the tunnel beneath New Beckenham Station, we could have walked straight on for a mile down Lennard Road. That would have been very dull though; the Ring designers have tried to make the route a little more interesting by veering off into parks on each side of the road.

First up was Cator Park. Although it was noisy with children at play, and scarred somewhat by its streams being contained in severe concrete trenches, it was a pleasant place to stroll through. Whilst views of the sunset were curtailed by surrounding trees and houses, there was still a dramatic glow to the sky. To my delight we were also treated to our third sighting of parakeets, with dozens of them screeching as they came in to roost.

We briefly rejoined Lennard Road before turning off the other side to walk down a claustrophobically fenced-in path across playing fields, followed by more road walking to reach the inconsequential Alexandria Recreation Ground. These two tiny scraps of greenery were not really worth the diversion to reach them, and I felt that walking straight down Lennard Road might have been the better option (although that would be cheating, and is therefore inconceivable!).

Another cagéd bridge took us over Penge East station, from where it was but a short hobble on my rapidly disintegrating feet through residential streets to our destination at Penge West. We were definitely snatching at the last scraps of daylight by the time we boarded the train!

So, a fifth of another long-distance trail was out of the way. What did we think of (to coin a phrase) our first sniff of the Ring? Well, it was chock full of interesting things; with things like the Woolwich foot tunnel, the green parakeets, and the Downham Woodland Walk it had shown a constant capacity to intrigue and amaze – as a result I’ve ended up writing my longest trip report to date. It had been a very easy walk, partly due to the easy terrain, and partly because the plethora of sights had meant we’d ended up walking at a very slow pace – “more a bimble than a walk” as Jim put it. But oh, the pain in my feet the next day – I don’t think I’d ever hurt that much the day after! Maybe it was that I hadn’t walked long distances for four months, maybe it was because I was wearing an old pair of boots with little give left in the soles, but I think that mainly it was because of the tarmac. There’s so much of it; I’d urge the London Boroughs to consider other options before needlessly tarmacing and concreting over the few remaining woodland paths in the city. Despite that we’d loved the walk, and would certainly be coming back.