London LOOP Challenge - Day 1 - Erith Riverside to Crayford

Last weekend, we didn't do a walk - shock, horror. Usually, with me, the first time I don't pursue a hobby, it's the beginning of the end but I am pleased to report that this time, this is not the case. We did another walk today and have set ourselves a challenge into the bargain.

While doing the Shuttle Riverway walk, we noticed that it intersected with the Green Chain walk. I was intrigued enough to look it up and in the process discovered another walk called the London LOOP. You can read all about it here, but to put it in a nutshell, it is a 140 mile walk around London, through the greenest and most rural places the designers have been able to find. The idea is to highlight how much countryside we have inside this great city and also to have a walk that Londoners can do with the help of a Zone 1-6 travelcard and their own two feet. No car needed.

This sounded really appealing as Claire was at a wedding last weekend and chickened out on the walk today (Claire, hope you're reading this!) She has promised to join us on the next one (after I bullied he into saying yes!) but since Arup and I are confined to public transport without her, the London LOOP sounded really appealing to us. Also, the starting point of the loop is local to us which makes it feel even more like it's a walk that we should do.

Cutting a long story short, Arup and I have challenged ourselves to walk the complete London LOOP over the course of the next 1-2 years. Not the most challenging timescale perhaps, but our ojective is really just to finish it, however long it takes.

Today was our first day. Now the website divides the walk into 24 sections of between 4-10 miles and my book divides it into 15 sections of about 8 miles. But the beauty of this walk is, it provides links to nearby train stations so you can stop at various points along the way. So though the first section should have been Erith to Old Bexley (8.4 miles), we knew we would be stopping either at Slade Green station (4 miles) or Crayford (6 miles).

Arup and I have fallen into some walkday routines - we carry sandwiches (especially for afternoon walks) - peanut butter and jam for me, onion relish and butter for him, three packets of Snack-a-Jacks, two bars of Nature Valley cereal bars and two bottles of water. Oh and we have burgers afterwards as that's the easiest thing to make when we get home exhausted.

Anyway, back to the walk.

We started near Erith station and walked along Erith pier. The Thames at this point is very wide and impressive but not particularly pretty.

Working in central London and going in to Charing Cross, means I cross the Thames twice a day at a point I think it is very pretty. So while it was nice to see and quite a shock how close it was to us, we didn't spend too long loitering along the pier.

Erith council has obviously worked hard to make this a nice place to visit but the sign saying life buoys weren;t available due to vandalism summed up the uneasy balance between the smart suburb Erith is trying to become and the slightly rough area it has been in the past.

Nice riverfront apartments

What was pretty cool though was being able to look across the Thames at the point where the London LOOP finishes - we'll get there sooner or later!

Our destination awaits!

Leaving the pier was the only point at which we got slightly lost (we tried to leave too early along it!) but eventually we figured out we were meant to leave along the road behind the huge Morrison's not in front of it. The next bit was a slightly bizarre walk along a main road between various scrap metal yards - including one called 'Pulp Friction' :).

At the end of the road, the Crayford Marshes suddenly began and they were quite a surprise. I've seen hills and dales and valleys from the trains and I've often marvelled at the variety of landscape the UK has, but I don't think I've ever seen a marsh let alone walked along it.

It was a very different experience espacially since we seemed to have it to ourselves, except for the horses grazing.

My idea of a marsh is solely from the Lord of the Rings films with dead people floating spookily underwater. There were no dead people and no water on the Crayford marsh (not that I could see anyway!) though as we walked only on the elevated causeway, it is possible what looked like solid ground lower down was not as solid as it looked. It was however a vast expanse of shrubs and heath-like land and quite unique in my experience.

Erith Yacht Club in the distance

The two faces of Crayford Marsh - ponies and industry

When we got to the end, we were greeted by the Darenth Creek Flood Barrier, which my book described as a 'Tower Bridge made of concrete'.

 Er no, not really unless I can descibe the letter H as a 'Tower Bridge made of lines'. But anyway, it prevents the local area from flooding and can operate on very little power so it's a good guy (if a bit ugly) in my eyes. Plus it had a very charming bench not far from it where we had a picnic.

A dragonfly - after Arup sat on it

We then walked along the opposite side of the marshes, with the Darenth river on our left.

Remember the Cray walk we did a few weeks ago? Well the Shuttle meets the Cray at Hall Place, the Cray meets the Darenth and the Darenth meets the Thames at the flood barrier. It's quite cool actually seeing the local river system from the ground. This section of the walk is a bit strange with a pretty river on the left and scrapped cars on the left but then I guess rivers have always been more than pretty bits of water - they serve an important purpose for trade and industry and long established industrial areas can't just move when technology improvements mean being near a river is no longer necessary.

After a while the scrapyards disappeared and though we could hear cars (and gunshots from the shooting range across the river!) and see industrial estates in the distance, for the most part it was a really beautiful, countryside-like walk.

There's a road up there somewhere

Eventually we got to the place where we would need to turn off for Slade Green station. We sat on a bench and pondered about it but we both wanted to go on.

More riverside walking later we arrived at the junction of the Darenth and the Cray, where we had another rest and admired the surroundings.

Darenth on the far side, Cray near the camera

From this point on the LOOP follows the Cray so in effect we were completing the Cray Walk from the opposite direction.

Some time later, we go to the end of the trail and had to go through a bit of industrial estate, under a railway bridge and across a main road until we got back onto a track next to the Cray. It started out feeling suburban but got back into countryside mode as we proceeded.

Here be dragons

It really is quite amazing how much green space and countryside there is within these Greater London suburbs.

There were people fishing and little boys swimming but on the whole not a lot of people seemed to be using the trail.

At the end of the trail we walked through a residential street whose houses have the Cray river in their backyards.

There were dinghies tied up at their own personal landing stages - what an amazing place to live. And the funny thing is from the street the frontage of the houses is really ordinary - but the back- wow!

At the end of the street, the trail continued along the river. This time we seemed to be walking past the backs of people's garages and sheds which was sad because the Cray is still very pretty here and though the path runs along a higher level, there are lots of rough steps down to the river bank.

By this time I was getting really footsore so we had a rest on some of the steps and really enjoyed the secluded tranquil atmosphere.

At the end of the path we came out onto a main road and hey presto, we were back in civilisation on Crayford High Street.

We walked through a tiny but pretty park, visited Sainsbury's for tenderstem broccoli to go with our burgers, caught the bus and went home.

Overall, we must be improving at walking because we did 6 miles and Arup wasn't tired at all and I - well I wasn't tired but my feet were really sore and I was really struggling at the end. My excuse is that I have flat feet but I'm starting to get the feeling that 6 miles may well be my limit. Still, as people who know me will attest, the fact that I can walk 6 miles is not something they would have expected.

So that's our LOOP journey begun - I really enjoyed this section and am looking forward to the next one. Watch this space for more updates.