So, the final section of the
LOOP. I had mixed feelings about this one. In part I was ecstatic that
today we would finish our first ever Long Distance Path. On the other
hand I was sad that there would be no more regular trips to the LOOP -
it had become like an old friend and a joy to walk. Every section has
seemed to have a different character, and, considering it's the suburban
fringe of our largest city, it's been surprisingly beautiful.
Up until now we've been doing two sections from the Arum Press guide;
as there was only one section left (albeit a long one) we planned to combine
it with a walk to the highest point in London (on Hampstead Heath) to
get our moneys worth out of the trip. This one poor section seemed to
attract more vitriol than all the other sections put together - even the
usually very positive Arum Press guide said you would need "a gritty
determination to finish it". Accounts we read elsewhere were nowhere
near as polite - referring to it as the worst end to any long distance
path, and saying it was entirely industrial and road-bound and devoid
of any interest for the walker
I am pleased to say that we did not suffer the predicted miserable experience.
In fact we ended up thoroughly enjoying it, despite our initial mood.
We should have started out singing something triumphant like "And
now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain". Unfortunately
we still had aching legs from excessive pogo-ing at a superb They Might
Be Giants' gig a couple of nights before, and the only song we could force
ourselves to sing was our usual walking song "A Surfing Safari",
but at funereal speed.
One immediately good thing about this section is that you don't have
a hike to get on it; the path runs right past the front door of Harold
Wood station. Despite this, with our aching pins it seemed to take forever
to drag ourselves up the station steps. We staggered off into residential
streets with the zombie-like trudge normally associated with the last
few miles of a 20 mile hike. Local people collecting their Saturday morning
papers stared at us in astonishment - I don't think too many hikers put
in an appearance in this sedate suburb of Harold Wood.
After passing down the curious Archibald Road, where beautifully made-up
brick driveways expel their occupants onto an unfinished stony track we
left the curious suburbanites behind and headed into Harold Wood Park
and crossed the Ingrebourne River that we would be following all the way
down to the Thames. It was not impressive; "River" was certainly
too strong a word!
The park was small and we quickly passed into a nature reserve that,
if my memory serves me correctly, which it rarely does, especially when
I'm as tired as I was on the morning in question, was called Poges Wood.
The "River" was just as demure here, hidden as it was in a ditch
behind trees.
Poges Wood (if that's what it's called) was the nastiest nature reserve
I've ever seen. It was simply featureless brown grassland with gravel
paths and horsetracks through it. The only sign of nature was local dog
walkers who when I nodded "hello" to them either looked away
or looked horrified and hurried off. Perhaps it was my "nutter"
t-shirt that did it!
I would have been glad to leave Poges Wood if it hadn't been immediately
followed by a mile of roadwalking. Still, at least our legs were finally
starting to unstiffen and let us get back up to normal walking speed.
And turning off the busy road improved our spirits no end (strangely,
as a result we probably felt happier than if we'd never been on the road
in the first place).
We now gently descended through woods on a path which had been almost
totally eroded - when it rains heavily there must be one hell of a torrent
pouring off the road above! At the bottom we got only our second glimpse
of our elusive travelling companion, the Ingrebourne (still rubbish) before
immediately heading back up the opposite side of the shallow valley for
a bit more roadwalking (neatly avoiding what looked like a useful shortcut
along the back of a school).
Having instead stuck to the official road diversion around the front
of the school, we re-entered woodland and encountered a dilemma caused
by possibly the worst signposting we've yet come across on the LOOP. Combined
with directions in the normally trustworthy Arum Guide that didn't seem
to match conditions on the ground, this lead to a bit of a delay.
The book says to turn right on entering the trees, but we could see no
such path. There was however, a big LOOP sign pointing us down a path
to the left. This lead us deeper into the valley than the route illustrated
in the valley and then abandoned us with no signs.
The path eventually came to a junction by some garages and in the absence
of any LOOP signs we decided that straight on was the best bet. It's a
good job we weren't gambling though - it turned out to be a private road
and something similar to the troll from bridge 182 emerged from one of
the garages and started to bellow incoherently at us. Eventually it told
us that obviously the LOOP went right at the previous junction - from
the tone of its voice I'm guessing that a lot of people go wrong here!
Using the map in the book we navigated our way back to what the book
showed as being the correct route and - surprise, surprise - the from
this end the LOOP signage appeared to point the same direction as the
book, and nowhere near the route it had forced us to take from the other
end - sort it out someone! We cursed the terrible signposting for not
the first time on the LOOP and swore to stick by the much more reliable
Arum Press guide with its OS maps for the remainder of the day.
(b) Upminster Bridge to Rainham (5 miles)
Passing Upminster Bridge tube stop, we executed a brief transit of the
entirely unremarkable suburbs of Hornchurch, finally rediscovering our
friend the Ingrebourne on the other side of Hornchurch Football Club,
whose supporters stared aggressively at us. Their younger supporters are
amusingly called "Urchins"!
We now entered the longest single "rural" stretch of this section
- about 3 miles of "green" walking through Caynes Parkway, Hacton
Parkway and Hornchurch Country Park. We'd been quite looking forward to
this, but unfortunately someone had decided to slap a tarmac path right
through the whole lot. No doubt they thought that this would aid walkers,
but all it does is hurt your feet and scar the landscape and therefore
your enjoyment of the walk. We tried to stick to the grass verges…
The landscape here is pleasant enough without in any way being photoworthy.
And there's a bit of a bonus - you finally start to get regular glimpses
of that elusive river. It's still not much to look at, but it's nice to
have the option!
There's not much change until you get to Hornchurch Country Park, where
the path rises slightly up the side of the valley to a picnic area. In
fact, there are benches and picnic tables scattered throughout and it's
a good idea to make use of them - after the Country Park it'll be a long
time before you find any picnic spots that don't involve squatting in
a doorway or bus shelter.
We chose a bench overlooking what at first glance looked like a slurry
pit beside the river; on subsequent investigation the guide informed us
it was the largest freshwater marsh in London. There were certainly a
lot of ducks in it - one assumes they land in the mud and can't escape
again!
As we munched a couple of small children approached. I overhead one of
them saying to the other "look, they've got food, do you think they'll
give us any?" Given the general unfriendliness of the natives so
far I felt the need to make a pre-emptive opening gambit; "it's ours,
and you can't have any." Unoriginal, I know, but succinct.
Their response was completely unexpected - a pure cockney "'Ere,
mister, you bin fishin'?" "Er, no. We're hiking." "Oh,right"
[disgusted look]. As they left, I felt that on some spiritual level I'd
been defeated. But at least I still had my lunch!
It seemed a long way through the rest of the country park - just following
the same riverside path for three miles had got a bit repetitive and dull.
Near the end of the park though there was a lovely little lake with picnic
tables scattered around - a much better picnic spot than the one we had
chosen! You should make the most of this lake because you've got three
miles of roadwalking coming up taking you right through to the Thames.
One day the path will continue straight on along the riverside to the
heart of Rainham, but for the moment you're diverted onto some pretty
nasty roads. Fortunately we'd walked off our earlier tiredness and were
now “yomping” along at high speed – as Jim would say,
we had our gander up!
As a result, the long stretch of road into Rainham seemed to pass into
no time at all, briefly enlivened by an an incident in a neighbouring
field. For some reason two people had parked their car in the very middle
of it. Two local residents were exhorting them to remove it, whilst they
appeared to be indicating a nearby locked gate and saying that they had
(somehow) legitimately got in through that. Eventually a policeman turned
up, but by then our yomp had carried us too far past to see what would
happen.
(c) Rainham to Coldharbour Point (2.25 miles plus 2.25
miles of station link)
After Rainham station, we suddenly arrived at a huge, dusty, noisy construction
site – the new Eurotunnel link. The path had been diverted slightly,
but even so we were glad we were doing the loop now rather than after
completion. They were building a huge footbridge over the new link; it
looked like this would soon be a painful ascent at the end of a long day’s
walk!
We had suddenly passed into the industrial wasteland running along the
Thames estuary. A flyover on the A13 dominated the horizon ahead, and
to our right car wreckers and scrapyards presented an unappealing vista
(although we were quite impressed with one container depot, which had
mountains of containers stacked up to seven higher. However, all was not
lost – to our left lay the barren and somewhat spooky grassland
of Rainham Marshes. The juxtaposition of heavy industry and barren marshland
reminded us of Erith, 13 months ago, and provided a pleasing symmetry
between the start and the end of the LOOP.
As we approached the A13 flyover, things went a bit surreal. Someone
had stopped their spacewagon right across the industrial estate’s
road, and were seemingly refusing to budge. As a result huge lorries were
having to go up onto the pavement to get around it – most of them
without slowing down! It was obviously factors such as this which had
caused the demolition of nearly every lamp-post in the area – some
were twisted into peculiar shapes. A conscientious council had at some
time done their best to protect them with a row of wooden posts - these
too had all been snapped off by passing juggernauts.
One of the buses squeezing past had a truly surreal advert on it –
“grab five, have a parsnip”, which apparently was advertising
an unspecified brand of coffee (or possibly just coffee in general). We
didn’t really understand the advert, but I guess it certainly made
us remember it!
Eventually there was a gap in the traffic & Mr Spacewagon turned
around and left – we think he’d been trying to turn and had
just been scared stiff and frozen in place when the lorries started hurtling
past. The entertainment being over, we headed off under the A13 for the
final leg of the LOOP.
Ferry Lane sounded quite pleasant, but just lead us through an even bigger
industrial estate. Before the estate ends off, the LOOP slants off up
to the right – it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking
careful. Round a final car breakers yard and suddenly the stunning vista
of the Thames estuary is in front of you, with lots of handy benches on
raised platforms so that you see over the flood defenses.
 We
were absoluted elated, despite being still a mile or so from the actual
end of the LOOP (it finishes opposite the start point in Erith). Just
getting back to the Thames again felt like a massive achievement, and
we rested on a bench to savour the feeling.
Suddenly, too, all the passers-by were friendly; completely opposite
to the people we had met on the rest of the walk. The highlight was a
chap pushing a bike who said in a great cockney accent “I can’t
ride, me flies are busted”. Highly amused, we got up and pushed
on to the end of the LOOP.
We soon came to the Tilda Rice Factory, perched precariously on the edge
of the Thames but with enormous flood defenses – I assume if water
got into their rice vats, it would expand explosively and rice would be
scattered far and wide across the capital making everyone feel like they
were at a wedding!
Immediately after the factory is a small bay containing a fleet of decaying
concrete barges. Apparently these were towed across the channel and used
to form harbours for the D-Day landings. It seems a shame that they have
come to such an ignoble end – you’d have thought there’d
be military museums that would love to get their hands on them and preserve
them for the nation, rather than just let them rot away like this.
We crossed what the book politely referred to as a “sludge pipeline”
and a “waste transfer wharf” (it seems that the poo export
business is big round here – fortunately it doesn’t smell
too much). The path ended just a few hundred metres further on at Coldharbour
Point, next to a lorry park. A red beacon at the point itself acted as
a monument to the end of the LOOP, and across the far side of the Thames
we could see Erith pier that we’d last seen 13 months ago.
All these poo factories and lorry parks might make it sound like the
end of the LOOP is something of a depressing area, but quite the opposite
is true. Nothing can overcome the feeling of walking along the Thames
with 150 miles walking behind you. We were absolutely overjoyed, and sat
down at a very handy bench to celebrate.
 I’d
secretly brought along a very small (20cl) bottle of Lambrusco fizz (at
only 4% alcohol it wouldn’t make us dehydrated), and Jim had slipped
in a couple of Double Decker bars. We enjoyed the vista in front of us
and sang “Happy Birthday” to our Mum (she was away in Paris
this weekend).
Eventually a station link will continue along the Thames to the railway
at Purfleet, but I think that will almost spoil the end of the LOOP –
Coldharbour Point will become an indeterminate point on a long riverside
path. At present it feels kind of good that you have reached the furthest
point that you can possibly go – it definitely feels like you’ve
finished a long distance path.
The downside of this is, of course, that you have to turn tail and retrace
your footsteps to Rainham station. But as we’d just completed our
first long-distance path, we didn’t care. We strode confidently
back the way we had came, and once again started singing “Surfing
Safari” – but this time at an upbeat pace, and adding the
words “We’ve done it, we’ve done it, we’ve done
it, we’ve done the London Loop”!
Rainham station was closed due to the rail link works, but a replacement
bus was waiting to take us back to London to meet with Justin, and properly
start our next project – the County Tops – by walking to the
highest point in the old Borough of London.
I’m going to miss our trips to the LOOP though – it’s
been a wonderful experience! I’d love to see it gain recognition
as a National Trail – I don’t think there’s another
path quite like it!
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