It's fair to say that life has changed quite a bit in recent times - and while my excursions to London are less frequent they have also become a little more important in terms of keeping me connected to the city. This weekend has been a purely tourist jaunt in many ways, though even a sightseeing trip can't avoid re-treading old paths. I found myself stalking the corridors of Windsor Castle around thirty years after I last visited - but also finally explored the tunnel between South Kensington station and the museums which I'd read about so often but never actually needed to use. But on a Sunday afternoon in surprisingly good weather I found myself with a little time for the kind of wandering which wouldn't work well on the tourist itinerary.

I began in the unlikely territory of Wanstead, hopping a bus in the High Street and heading into the suburbs. Curving around the wide, yellowing expanse of Wanstead Flats, we nudged through traffic and shadowed the railway through Maryland to Stratford. In more familiar territory I disembarked and changed for the DLR. It was odd to be unencumbered - no bag, not even a coat - and I felt almost inauthentic and exposed. The DLR took me to All Saints, where I ascended and crossed onto Chrisp Street. No market today, just baked pavements and cars sluggishly trawling, banging out dance music. I felt even more out of place, unwelcome - a rare feeling here and one I wasn't expecting.

My target was the Brownfield Estate. I'd read an article which had extolled the virtues of Balfron Tower - the eastern cousin of Trellick Tower which signalled my arrival at Paddington each time I found myself in London. Trellick is brutal but oddly graceful - tall, set away from other buildings and surrounded by a low-rise development of sister blocks. Balfron Tower soon made it's presence felt too - squatter somehow, the service tower seemingly more delicate against the bulk of the utilitarian residential block. It too was the tallest building for quite a distance, but it didn't seem so completely free of clutter and couldn't been seen clearly until up close. When it did loom up out of the ground, it was stark, shocking and unsympathetic. But, doubtlessly impressive. The ground level area was dirty, empty of people and subject to redevlopment. A few children yelped by after bursting from a nearby door. A student couple looked disdainfully at me as they left the tower, scornfully regarding me flicking my camera out to get a shot of the building. Otherwise, any sound was confined to the hum of the distant East India Dock Road and an occasional Heathrow bound jet scoring the otherwise blue skies.

I picked my way north, skirting Glenkerry House - another block with a Goldfinger style tower attached - but this one was less residential and looked like some sort of lookout tower policing the Blackwall badlands. The lazy summer sunday feeling returned a little as I progressed towards Langdon Park. A bus slowly plopped over the traffic calming measures, and I found myself beside Langdon Park DLR station, where a new youth centre is being built from gleaming pink plates of copper which beat the sun back at me pleasantly. Each platform was adorned with chunky, cast metal writing which looped the name of the station in friendly hand script.

My short excursion was done - and I considered how London and it's environs could still fascinate and draw me in. From the surprising interest of Windsor Castle to the odd, magnetic presence of Ernö Goldfinger's powerfully brutal blocks, the built environment and it's affect on the city and the people remains a strange attraction. As the anniversary of the grand spectacle of 2012 approaches, and I gain a year of perspective on the feverish, almost desperate walks I undertook at such a strangely liminal time of my life, I'm beginning to understand how important the city is to me too.

Flying has always been a solitary experience for me. Save for one ill-fated trip to Glasgow which I took in the company of a small group intent on birthday revelry, I've always been in the company of my own thoughts. Over the past few months I've spent a lot of time flying - and a lot of time thinking...anticipating strange new adventures to come, or miserably regarding a return to reality. In either case, I've rarely slept, and looked too often at the moving map telling me how many of the 4792 miles I'd covered so far. The thing was it didn't feel very far at all...the journey to Heathrow was fraught with obstacles, but once I was in the air it was a mere few footsteps. That was of course until my last jaunt with it's abortive first attempt to pressurise the cabin and a return to Heathrow.

But that seemed like a lifetime ago. This flight had been different. In company I felt calmer, the flight felt shorter, I even slept a little. The last hours dragged of course. We were eager to land - and we did so in suprisingly pleasant weather, not unlike what we'd left in Seattle. It was cold and bright - still Winter in March here. We lingered a while in Terminal 5, just enjoying being here without the pressure of a departure. Then the complicated journey began - five huge suitcases were lugged onto the Heathrow Express, trollied across Paddington and then into a taxi for the short run to Leinster Gardens. The grand but peeling stucco houses of this western corner of the city had been my first taste of London many years ago - but now they took on a new significance. We were back.

Our first excursion after washing away the inexplicable film of grime which air travel seems to leave, was eastwards. We headed out of the hotel and made leisurely progress towards Paddington. It became clear pretty soon that we weren't too far away at all - just at the end of Praed Street, in territory which I'd not walked since getting lost trying to walk from the station into Central London around twenty years ago! On that occasion I'd accidentally zig-zagged off the straight path and managed to get confused by the endless rows of plastered white buildings. It took a moment of panic and an A-Z to get me back on track - no GPS, no 'phone. Just a sense of direction and a map which would eventually become scuffed and torn from similar wanderings. But this little village around the station was more extensive than I remembered. A host of little restaurants - exhibiting a range of cuisines and degrees of dilapidation - alongside charmingly disorganised hardware stores, newsagents, hotels and almost concealed Orthodox churces with mysterious inscriptions on their gates. I remember finding myself here and thinking that the Bureau de Change and Aberdeen Angus Steak Houses were so metropolitan, that this must be London. My view has altered immeasurably over the intervening years, and our eastward bus step described this arc via St.Pancras, Clerkenwell and eventually the City.

So, if you'd been in the English Restaurant in Brushfield Street tonight you might have seen a tired but happy pair quietly reliving an earlier meal, savouring the novelty of being in the same place again, then slipping out into the chilly night to head back to the western suburbs. The entire journey to arrive here - from the Edgewater Hotel, via SeaTac and Heathrow, then the 205 bus route - felt like a single curve. Nowhere felt very far from anywhere anymore. The tiny village at the bottom of Praed Street could be anywhere.

Movebook Entry

A trip to London has rarely seemed so bleak. I have been kidding myself for weeks that I'd do something significant or defining today, that after leaving Heathrow airport, I'd take some sort of diversionary bus ride east to find the land on which all this began. That I'd stalk the Old River Lea to rediscover the summer locations where I pored over missives from across the ocean, before walking on into the post-Olympic haze across endless expanses of empty ground resplendent with possibility. Of course I've done nothing of the sort. Fresh from a painful parting at Terminal 5, I've stumbled back to London and drowned my sorrows in free coffee. Now I'm sitting in the corner of the station, watching a disinterested falconer chase away pigeons. She chunters into a mobile 'phone while her charge strains at its leash to escape her arm and tear apart a pigeon which, wise to the incarceration, looks quizzically up at the bound bird of prey. There is some sort of metaphor here for not getting what you want, but my tired, emotionally overwhelmed brain can't quite grasp it just now.

But London hasn't always been like this of course - and just a week ago there was another trip here. Originally it would have been the trip on which I wrote about how painful and harrowing things were, but illness and re-arranged flights have changed things - strangely for the better. This left us with half a journey to London booked, which meant a Saturday afternoon departure from home. On arrival we checked into the Hilton Paddington - a hotel I'd always wanted to visit, and which I'd ended up getting an absurdly good deal on. It was by far the best hotel we'd visited during the trip - a beautiful haze of art deco features and furnishings, a curved staircase leading to a period frieze, and rooms which echoed the same heyday of the Great Western Railway perfectly. We settled into this immediately. It was our kind of place.

The purpose of the trip was to take in a comedy show in Wandsworth. I've walked these environs before in search of William Kent, and I knew that this wasn't going to be a salubrious jaunt. We took the bus as far as the ludicrous but oddly interesting ski-ramp roof of Vauxhall bus station, and negotiated the crossings to Wandsworth Road. Passing the hulk of New Covent Garden Flower Market, I reminisced about my 2004 wanderings here to find the address of Kent's father's print works. As we made further progress, side-streets stood out - Larkhall Park, sharing a name with one of his street addresses. Wandsworth has changed little in the intervening eight years - except for the area immediately around Vauxhall. Rebranded St.George's Wharf, an absurd skyscraper is beginnning to loom above a modern, waterfront development which rivals anything the north bank has to offer. But a walk south into the Local Authority blocks sees a distinct cultural and demographic shift. The Lost Theatre is tucked into a curious, modern building - a small but well-equipped venue which puts the audience close to the performer. The audience was a little sparser than I expected - but this provided a perfect, conversational air to Andy Zaltzman's performance. Despite asserting that he's "not a banter-based comedian", his set was gently interactive despite hauling in some of his 'greatest hits' too - including the sprawlingly silly, and very funny tale of "Mickey Paintbrush".

Heading back on the bus, it's good to be out of the cold evening and watching the lights of the city rising as we head north again towards Vauxhall. A quick change here sees us on a 436 heading along Park Lane, the hotels and car dealerships glittering in the winter night, while taxis line up to take people home from the whirling, gaudy fairground rides which are still operating in Hyde Park. It's strange to be arriving at the front of the Hilton and walking up the red carpet into the beautifully appointed reception hall, and even stranger not to be heading into the station for the ride home. There is a sense of luxury, not least at the extra days which seem endless now, and which mean that an early morning trip to Heathrow tomorrow can be deferred. London has rarely seemed so intimately scaled, so rich with possibilities and options for future visits. I think about my plan to head back into the city after the Heathrow trip - at this point almost a week away - and it still seems like the best possible idea...

Back at Paddington, the falconer has moved on and the pigeons have returned to an unconcerned search for discarded food. My train will soon be ready for boarding, and I'm aware that it's going to be an effort to drag my aching back and legs onboard. The flight will have been airborne for almost two hours now - and will have cleared the tip of Scotland for sure. I think of Scotland, of future trips planned - and of desperate dashes around Glasgow last October. Feverish 'phonecalls from dingy music venues, pictures of junk shops, revisited locations seen through new perspectives. The year is starting from a whole new viewpoint for me, informed by that trip and all that came after it. London will figure large in this future I'm certain. It's time to go home - but it doesn't feel quite like home just now. There is something missing...

Movebook Entry

I've written little in recent months, but one recurring theme has been the experience of seeing places through new eyes. It's become a defining characteristic of the second half of the year, and it's perhaps no longer surprising to me to find myself challenged or intrigued by places I thought I knew. But the last week or so has been a little different - experiencing London, and specifically some segments of it I really don't know well at all, completely afresh. Exploring in tandem with someone who has never experienced the maelstrom of the city before, and who has probably been exposed to - and equally cynically rejected - most of the storybook pre-conceptions that I arrived with all those years back. This was a strangely fitting way to end the year.

The first new horizon broached was Camberwell. Until now for me, a conspicuous gap in the atlas. It has no railway station anymore - despite once being a desirable village suburb on the southern fringe of the city. In the intense, hot whirl of the summer the BBC ran an episode of "The Secret History of Our Streets" which covered the rise and fall of the area, and the durability of some pockets of leafy perfection. At the time this seemed like an interesting but anodyne programme - why did I care about this southern suburb which wasn't even worth a stop on the train? But arriving at the junction of Camberwell Church Street and Denmark Hill, we found the intensely busy hub which is repeated all over London. The locus of thousands of lives - which really is their London, and bears little relation to the gilded gates and ancient towers north of the river. Buses edged around the traffic, the Sophocles Bakery leaked enticing fumes, the pubs belched merry punters onto the after-work streetcorners. In the midst of this, the Church Street Hotel. A strangely latin influenced hipster boutique. A strong vein of Catholic iconography, lots of bold colour and crazy tiling. A beautifully detained interior behind a suitably anonymous, toned-down grey frontage. This was our home for a couple of nights - and a base to make some early forays into the city. First impressions are of course important - but where places are concerned they are malleable. Few cities more so than London, which throws surprises in at each turn of a corner. Starting as we meant to continue, the first night was a whirl of activity. A bus to Waterloo, and dinner under a railway arch. A walk along the river, Parliament lit yellow and looking deceptively benign across the water. Then another bus along The Strand and through the City. St. Pauls gleaming above the Thames, the Bank, the towers of Bishopsgate. Then south over London Bridge and through The Borough to return to Camberwell. It was dizzying - perhaps over-ambitious for a first trip into London. But it was an arc through the layers of history which is something I've always tried to convey in words and likely failed. Tired and bewildered, Camberwell felt strangely homely on our return. The little knot of streets still busy with traffic and pedestrians, little open now except the supermarkets and convenience stores. We stop into a pub, where there is surprisingly good music being played and a pleasant babble of conversation. Despite the incredibly cosmopolitan nature of the district, the clientele is surprisingly uniform.

Regular readers will know that the West End is a closed book to me, as is much of Westminster and the more traditionally tourist side of London. This isn't wilful obscurantism - I'm really not fond of crowds, and my first visit to London during a cold December many years ago included being swept along Oxford Street in horribly dense eddys of humanity. I've avoided the place since - I've rarely the urge or the means to shop, and there has always been something more interesting elsewhere. Aside from the area immediately surrounding Victoria station, the environs of Buckingham Palace are equally obscure to me - but it was here that we ended up. After a superb and lazily drawn-out breakfast at a tiny cafe near Victoria, we skirted the back wall of the Palace - the drab, spike-topped cordon which would appear entirely un-royal if not for the frequent plaques warning of its special legal status, posted in suitably discreet white on grey and in a less-than-officious font of course. This approach has the advantage of concealing the grandeur until the very last second, the great facade suddenly appearing to our left, St. James' Park and the public space around the Victoria Memorial opening before us. As ever, a crowd of tourists milled and photographed. We did the same, and I confess I enjoyed it. It might have been the company of course - and certainly the novelty - but seeing this at the end of a year when royalty has been ever-present was odd and surprising. It hasn't felt particularly real to most of us I'm sure, and the dreadful TV coverage of the Jubilee did nothing but distance the Royals from the viewing population. But here, in the middle of the whirl of the city is the iconic balcony - smaller and lower, strangely close to the people milling about. Guards march back and forth, cameras flicker for the shot. We walk along Constitution Hill - our original plans changed by jetlag and time constraints. Another bus ride later I'm in more familiar territory around Marylebone, a stroll up Baker Street marvelling at the line for the Sherlock Holmes museum even at this late stage of the tourist day. Sick, dizzy and tired - it was time to head home.

But this wasn't the end of the London experience... Travelling on the last day of the year, we returned to more familiar ground for me, descending on Bishopsgate in the early evening. If the first part of the visit had been a confusing, sometimes disconcerting whirl - I wanted this at least to reflect a little of the London which I experienced. A city where one can step back from the tumult and see the accretions of time. We wasted little time into getting out into the evening - the city was shifting into party mode, the stores closing early and the crowds beginning to appear on the street. New year in London is an event, a public spectacle of fireworks and drunkenness. We skirted this and turned east, heading for The English Restaurant in Brushfield Street. Oysters and robust, excellent fare in the dark, wood-panelled dining room was a fitting way to spend the evening. It was possibly the best meal I've ever eaten, and it was distinctly of the city. The dark but warm interior of the building discharging atmosphere, the solid Englishness of the dishes completely in context with the surroundings. In true London style, we were served by a range of non-natives - Australian barmen (naturally) and a genuinely pleasant northern waitress who was enthusiastic about the food. We wandered in the chaos of the late evening happily fed and watered. This was a new experience for me - this part of the city is about desperate, high-speed runs, about snatched moments in busy days. So to be here with accommodation on the brink of the east was a luxury. We plunged into Spitalfields, navigating around the glowering hulk of Christ Church and sliding into the darkness of Fournier Street. This part of the city seems so familiar, but it's new to see it in the dark of a winter evening. The buildings glow with an inner warmth. Generations of ghosts cluster at the windows, clamouring for a look at the gaudy, neon swirl of Brick Lane. We emerge into the maelstrom. The curry houses are doing fine trade - but still the patrons send their staff out to press-gang more trade from the streets. The New Year has been adopted by the locals here, and Indian girls totter by on impossible heels while another of their number tries to loudly encourage a drunken colleague back onto her feet. She hasn't quite made it to the new year - slumped against an old brick wall which has propped up the dissipated for many, many years. We turn a corner and regard a significant spot - the sundial on the Jamme Masjid. It's odd to be here now, tonight - completing a circuit begun years ago when I first took the picture of this curious device and it's sonorous motto. Then continued when I sent the picture flying across the world last summer - a significance which only now begins to reveal its magnitude. We stand a while, and yes - it's an emotional moment - one which closes the dizzy, unbelievable swirl of 2012 in an appropriately reflective tone.

We want to get back in time for the bells and fireworks, and take a crazy dash through the detritus of Petticoat Lane market and the commercial edgelands which divide the City from the East End here. It's been a whirl of new experiences these past few days - endless dashes from train to bus and back, time spent renewing my acquaintance with the city through entirely new eyes. I appreciate again what an enormous, unmanageable churn the city is. I remember how early on I learned to break it into chunks - the villages of London, so well illustrated by our entry point at Camberwell. Real life, of course, is always different - but to be reminded that this is practically on my doorstep is never a bad thing.

Movebook Entry

There is a fairly certain sense to my London wanderings, built around a particular set of trains and a surprisingly uniform pattern of travel. I haven't, in the main, set out to do this consciously - more it's a mixture of necessity, comfort and the repeated urge to walk certain paths. In part this has been down to a sense of impending change to the structure of the area or the looming denial of access necessitated by the Olympics. However, today was different on many footings. Firstly, I was arriving from Marylebone having spent the previous evening at the London Palladium seeing bands. This in itself was a strange take on London, with me having to negotiate the less than loved West End. Secondly I was very conscious that my mind was elsewhere today - an ocean away in fact - and that my focus was dominated in a far from unwelcome way by influences elsewhere. Oddly though, this dazed and planless situation led me to familiar territory - and after a winding and surprisingly warm sun-drenched journey atop a No. 30 to Hackney Wick, I found myself touching down on Eastway - resuming the lost threads of earlier walks which seemed to unravel in the incomplete traffic interchange.

This meant initially managing the mess of pedestrian facilities at the end of Ruckholt Road once again. I dashed across, uneasily eying a pile of memorial flowers in the circumstances, before discovering that the route I'd picked my way along before was stopped up - a barrier pointlessly cable-tied across the path with no obvious purpose. I had to turn back and make an increasingly fraught set of dashes across roads of uncertain priority. The last one took me uncomfortably close to the decaying flowers, but suddenly and unexpectedly I came upon the continuation of Homerton Road, and beside it the slope down to the course of the Old River Lea. The history of the river in this area is complex - with channels being opened and dammed, made navigable then abandoned. But this ancient course persists despite falling on hard times more than once in the last millennium - a sluggish, curling, snake-like presence which defines the eastern edge of the vast and dizzying space of Hackney Marsh for much of its length. Once on the official path I quickly realised that the river was hugged by an unofficial path which ran close to its western bank. This well-worn trail was almost silent, occasionally frequented by dog-walkers roaming off plan, or by fishermen - but usually oddly silent beyond a screen of trees which eventually became a thick tangle of woodland. I set off, dodging the odd encampment of blue bags and burnt logs which indicated recent, if provisional, occupation. It was quiet and cool at the waters edge and I found my way to a quiet spot near a stopped-off bridge bearing the ODA's "Changes" notice which now looked forlorn, damaged and inconsequential. However, the changes it wrought were still real enough, as at the end of the bridge was East Marsh. Now the Eton Manor Transport Hub - a temporary facility now being inelegantly removed and restored against all good advice. Still this process confounds and destroys, even after the last javelin has been thrown.

I wait at the bridge, take pictures and with a desperation and enthusiasm which catches my still bleary-eyed self off-guard, read the latest transatlantic tract. Cheered beyond reason, I move on - the river cast in a new light as a channel of hopeful emerald, swinging to the west and skirting common land - Lammas Land no less. Ancient and open by statute, but today occupied by a loud, howling tannoy as part of the Countryside Live event. I can't imagine any speck of wildlife for miles around tolerating the keening noise of feedback and banal chatter, and I follow the path towards the confluence with the Lee Navigation which completes the circuit for me. At the junction, a grassy path leads away under the range of electricity pylons which dominate the scene, towards the familiar exposed innards of the abandoned power station - a brooding presence. I stop for wide-angle skyline shots to indulge my obsession with the changing and shifting London boundary here. To the south, the Arcelor Mittal Orbit and the upturned skeleton of the Olympic Statdium, to the west is Canary Wharf, the sinister pyramid atop One Canada Square dominant, and to the north, the ruins of the power station. Between them, the barcode facade of the flats on the Lesney Site and the inelegant high-rise planning gain of Stratford City. But separating them from me, a sea of marshland and bent municipal football goals. The sea image is strong, distance acutely observed. It's time to move on...

I take an uncharted path which promises access to the Waterworks Nature Reserve. However this seems to be tucked inside another fence which runs parallel, a ghost of the path on the other side of the fence. None of the gates are open, but the route turns into a long straight dipping valley. This is the point where the Waterworks River heads underground - it's gummed up, filth strewn junction with the Lea a little way back. I take the path which climbs to Lea Bridge, walking slowly behind a group of Polish mothers and children. The kids play creatively with found items, while the mums on one of their rare outings are glammed-up absurdly for a walk on the river. I realise how hungry and thirsty I've become and hop onto a No. 48 back towards Liverpool Street. I especially enjoy it's slow crawl through Clapton and Hackney Central. I'm seeing the city through strangers eyes now, observing details to report back in near-obsessive fashion. At times like this I delight in the complexity and darkness of London, drawing light from outside. But it's a strange contrast being out of the green-tinged tunnel of trees on the edge of the water. I soon find myself in the churchyard of St.Botolphs, a little of the day's sunlight still lingering and bouncing off the unrelenting glass facade of the Heron Tower. I take a snap of the skyline with the intention of comparing it with one thousands of miles away from here. The light flares from the windows of the inelegant building as the sun edges down behind the aspirationally incomplete skyscrapers of the city. But I can honestly say, I'm not afraid of the dark.

You can see more pictures from the walk here. As an experiment, you can also follow the route on the map below - the blue line is the walking route.

Movebook Entry

The difference today was that I had at least planned to be here. My year planner is peppered with these trips to London in the safe knowledge that they will find me exploring some new geographical obsession or other, and that I'll have a reasonably relaxing journey on the rails. Sometimes, they become little excursions beyond the city - but even then there is always the luxury of an early arrival and perhaps a bus ride. With the world of railtouring changing considerably there have been more trips than I ever quite planned, but this has lead to walks across the eastern side of the city I'd probably not have countenanced before too. In this sense at least, the fractured and haunted summer has been a success in retrospect and I look back fondly on those walks which sometimes didn't seem significant on the day, but which have clicked into place later. I could only hope today would do the same for me. Because, today I had half a plan.

Today was, essentially, a completion. I'd read online that the towpath along the Hackney Cut was open - if still patrolled by G4S around the Olympic Park perimeter. But it was open nonetheless, so after a lazy breakfast in welcome late summer sunshine I set off east on my usual bus route. It was quiet, a cool but shining morning as we headed around the arc of the bus route. I saw it through almost to its end, hopping off near Bow Garage for the walk to the Church. I stocked up on water too, it looked like later when the sun was high it was going to be hot. I dodged traffic at Bow Interchange and found the footbridge down to the towpath just how I'd seen it on that excursion months back. I pondered what that had started: campaigns, obsessions, imaginary love affairs, endless wanders. I descended slowly, savouring this progression onto what had become hallowed ground. A battle fought over a strip of scraggy land beside a turgid canal, walkers and cyclists uneasily united. It was good to be back. Quickly, The Fence is alongside. Beyond it? Nothing. No movement. The occasional distant crash or scrape as unseen contractors strip back "the overlay" from the park. Empty staff buses circuit, the contract outliving their usefulness. Occasional security cars emerge. Overhead, a helicopter constantly drones. Crossing and recrossing the park. Even now it's a focus for paranoia and concern. I walk on, past the Northern Outfall Sewer carrying the still off-limits Greenway, past Hertford Union Junction, White Post Lane. I'm on the stretch which was guarded when a small orange boat called "Vigilance" passes by. They're not interested anymore. I stop, take a picture, watch the sun bounce of the gilt lettering of Formans, speculators on the Olympic dream. I could oppose Lance Forman's take on the Games, but he's still here in the Wick, his modern but organic new headquarters swooping gracefully and cheekily nodding at the Orbit across the water. Finally I reach the closure point - further than I ever managed on this side. The little brick circle still allows cyclists to pause and read maps. The boat ties off here, the lime green shirted guards head into the park. I make a decision - I'll press on out of its gravity - I'll get free of this place at last...

Under the Eastway bridge and into the unknown - except it's far from that, I've studied and reviewed this part of the world endlessly over the last few years. There is a gate here where the river can be closed, and on it scrawled in pen strokes which my camera can't pick up some graffiti about the Games - ending in "No Locals". The path broadens, a flat screed of yellow stones leading onwards. Almost immediately to the east the terrain is wooded and scrubby. Flats and boathouses hug the western bank, with occasional glimpses and shouts of dismay or protest from footballers on Mabley Green beyond. Boats are lazily moored once again, and I find a curling notice from British Waterways advising what should be done if birds nest on boats which need to move for the Olympics. Both British Waterways and the Games have passed into memory over the summer of course. The world has changed immeasurably down here on the river. Marshgate Bridge looms, jutting half the width of the cut and carrying Homerton Road. Buses fly back and forth and I think that this could be the place to return to civilisation. I always do this - worry about the return trip, experiencing pointless range anxiety. I don't of course. I press on by the colourful block which has replaced the defunct Lesney factory. I rather want the factory back - and while the building itself isn't entirely bad, it feels insultingly out of place in the greenery of the Lea Valley. It also looks rather empty, a woman almost nervously picking her way onto the riverside terrace with her book. Uncertain of her rights on private terrain despite living within it. I've decided now - I'll walk to Tottenham. I've no idea how far it is, but I know the escape routes there, so I'm safe to head on. To my right, the land opens out into the flat, endless football pitches of Hackney Marsh. I divert briefly to look at the expanse of grassland. Games are underway in the distance. I consider an improvised urinal in the bushes, but dog walkers emerging unexpectedly convince me otherwise. It's back to the path again, regarding what appears to be an abandoned youth facility or community centre at the end of the footbridge at Mandeville Street - the Paralympic mascot's moniker not even ironic here. Looming on the west bank is the opened carcass of Millfields Power Station. A huge, forlorn brick shank with the ribs of a great roof still extant. It broods oddly in the shimmering heat. Midges flit and the trickle of cyclists and joggers seems to die out. I feel very alone despite civilisation being mere metres away. This place has a strange, empty pulse - perhaps emanating from the overhead high voltage lines?

Just before Pond Lane bridge, where the towpath crosses the former structure of the tidal stop gates, I duck into a gap in the high municipal looking wall and find myself in the Middlesex Filter Beds. I'd read only a little about this site, so it was truly a voyage of discovery as I marvelled at how nature had been allowed to reclaim these vast lagoons. Picking my way along the central conduit carefully, stepping over cracked concrete and abandoned sluice winding gear, I made for a distant bench and rested. Above me, wires crackled - heading for the ghost power station which still towered over the river. Few people passed. I was alone, silent in the middle of the vast urban sprawl. A text message arrived, and I found myself composing a reply standing right at the centre of the huge concrete hub. Perhaps it was some sort of locus of microwave leylines? I headed back to the canal, crossed the bridge and pressed on to Lea Bridge where the natural river rejoined the route at a substantial weir. For all its communications importance, the bridge seemed tiny and insignificant. It wasn't right to stop here so I pushed on once again. I was tiring, and needed to keep moving. The river curves here, around the derlict emptiness of Essex Wharf and the rather pleasant new developments surrounding Millfields Recreation Ground. When the river straightens it enters a long, slow moving straight section. East of the water is Walthamstow Marsh - deceptively rural, land for grazing. It seems a world away from the buzz and clatter of the Olympic Park. I rest a while, wishing I'd deviated into the park to find a toilet. Swilling cool water and thinking about the headswimming heat. There's plenty to wonder about though - railways cross and recross the marshes here. I've seen this terrain from above so many times, and sure enough I soon pass the Anchor and Hope pub. I'd often thought I'd like to visit here one day - and almost head inside the cool, dark building. But common sense and my ability to complete the walk check me from doing so. Another time, maybe in company I mutter - though I've no idea who or when I'm thinking about. The path here deviates from the water, edging around Springfield Park. The official route of the walk is on the other bank, skirting the marsh, but I want to stay on this side for reasons I can't put a finger on. The park rises steeply away, and I think heading for the other, higher edge for facilities might just use the energy I've reserved to press on. So I do, and suddenly after a tangle of adventure play schemes and allotments, the river curves back in at my right and I'm back on course.

The last stretch is hard going - but is oddly rewarding. Busy boat houses provide a home for the canoes and rowing vessels which have passed me all morning, receiving commands from bicycling captains with loud-hailers. There has been a post-Olympic surge here, the junior section in particular is busy. Whatever the skepticism I might hold about the Games and this swathe of London, it's genuinely heartening to see this. On the east bank Springfield Marina is full of a different kind of vessel - a life on narrowboats always seemed a corny cop-out, but now I see it's attractions more clearly. Is this another mid-life crisis looming? I pause to finally empty my aching bladder at Markfield Park Cafe, in the shadow of the great Beam Engine. This one dealt in the pumping of sewage - part of the scheme which cleansed London of its filth, now regenerated into a rather fine little corner of the parkland with a museum, a cafe and places to relax and play. It felt positive and well-used. I considered lunch here, but again thought that stopping might be final. I returned to the path for the last push. Under the railway again, the curve to South Tottenham breaking off just feet from the river and the Cambridge line passing directly overhead. The river turns north and the Gospel Oak to Barking line crosses on a low bridge. Some young black guys explode from a side gate swaggering and yelling. I glance at one and with little interest he utters "Yeah. Come on then? What you gonna do then?". It's momentarily startling, but empty. He rails against everyone I guess, but fat white middle-class guys tramping river banks must be appalling to him. I press on, waiting for another walker to pass me before checking they headed in the opposite direction. Its the one time I've been even mildly concerned for my safety on the riverbank I realise. Finally, Tottenham Lock hoves into view - but just before it does, the path rises over a side-stream. Curving away in a concrete culvert is Pymmes Brook. It's an inauspicious little rivulet. Dirty and slow-moving in it's stony gully. But this leads onwards towards Tottenham where the tiny trickle of the Moselle River joins it. I have linked up with an earlier walk and it's strangely triumphant to think how there is coherence to my ramblings. I ascend to civilisation with some regret...there is more river to walk ahead, but not today.

I realise I'm hungry and thirsty, and raid the newly opened Tesco near the station. Its a strange corner of public-private land here with fine new flats, a gym and a supermarket all protected by an ugly 1980s security kiosk - unmanned of course. No alcohol allowed. I munch pastries and glug fruit juice, wondering if this is allowed. Finally, dusted off and replete, I head for a train back to Liverpool Street and welcome coffee. I also realise that I booked a much later train than usual home - so there's no hurry, and I decide to use the buses to cross and recross the territory I've walked. To get a different slant on the land I've carved through by river. Thus I find myself crossing Lea Bridge and looking down on the spot I regarded it from earlier before arriving at Walthamstow Bus Station. A drunk has stumbled into a slow moving bus, an ambulance in attendance. Ill-governed crowds crush and flock to buses. I make the back seat of a 69 to Canning Town, wedged up against a tiny but pretty Polish mother. This bus takes me via Leyton, the eastern edge of the Olympic Park pushed up against the homes and shops of the borough. It's another circle complete - and another set of possibilities and gateways opened. What started with uncertain rail journeys before the bid, turned into a curious regard for this strange strip of land, and now manifests itself as an urge to walk, has come full-circle. This is now a voyage into post-Olympic London. Legacy delivered or reneged on? I find myself already wanting to be back here.

You can see more pictures from the walk here. As an experiment, you can also follow the route on the map below - the blue line is the walking route.

Movebook Entry