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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday, 28 January 2024

Sunday Walk - Reworked, rerouted and now with written directions: Epping Forest Centenary Walk (half-length options available)

Length: 24.2 km (15.0 mi) [shorter options available; see below]
Ascent/Descent: 266/193m
Net Walking Time: 5 ½ hours
Toughness: 5 out of 10
 
Take the 09.48 Crossrail train (aka the Elizabeth Line) from Liverpool Street (Whitechapel 09.50, Stratford 09.53), arrives Manor Park 10.03.
[A Shenfield train from Heathrow Terminal 5, via Paddington and all Central London stations.] 
Return:
Central Line from Buckhurst Hill and Epping: frequent (with journey times of 24 mins or 37 mins respectively, to Liv Street). 
Overground from Chingford: every 15 mins on xx.10 etc, with 27 mins journey time to Liv Street.All possible start and end points are within Travelcard Zones 1-6.
 
Epping Forest stretches for 19 km from Manor Park in East London north to Epping, with the main body of the Forest being north of Chingford. It is never more than 4 kilometres wide, but is London's largest Open Space at 2,400 hectares. It lies on a low ridge between the Lea and Roding Valleys and is an area of ancient woodland which has been protected since the 12th century as a Royal Hunting Forest, though more recently it has been managed by The City of London after the passing of the Epping Forest Act of 1878.

The Epping Forest Centenary Walk runs the length of Epping Forest and it is the 100th anniversary of the Epping Forest Act that the Centenary Walk was devised to celebrate. An annual organised walk along the route - in September - keeps attracting well over 100 people, though many of those only join for parts of the route from alternative start points along. The Centenary Walk has never been waymarked but its (approximate) line has been shown on OS maps.
The Centenary Walk (now: the Big Walk) in the southern parts crosses some commons and public parks and travels along a few residential roads as well as going through woodland, but north of Chingford goes mostly through ancient woodland. The woods in the southern half of the route are well frequented and the paths here will be very muddy after prolonged wet weather, but the northern part of the walk is mainly on well-made gravel forest trails which despite some heavy usage by cyclists do not tend to get exceptionally muddy.

Due to the annual Centenary Walk/Big Walk attracting a very large group, it often choses wide gravel or tarmac tracks over more interesting lesser paths nearby and for the same reason choses to pass cafés and pubs with facilities even if that requires some road walking. These considerations are not that relevant for the SWC, so our route differs in places from both the Centenary Walk and the Big Walk. The route of the Big Walk is shown on our route map though and also available as a gpx (note: it finishes at a bus stop on the very busy High Street and away from any tea options).

Shorter walk: Walks of about half the length can be obtained by finishing or starting at either Chingford Overground (500m off route along a road) or Buckhurst Hill Underground (2.5 km off route, map-led). See the webpage and the route map for details.

Lunch & Tea: Lots of choice for elevenses, lunch, late lunch and tea, on or just off the route in cafés, bistros, a seafood bar and even a gastro pub, and a normal pub and more on a diversion into Epping. Check the webpage for details and the route map for their locations.

For walk directions, a map, height profile, photos and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.259

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

6 walkers met outside Manor Park station in w=blazing-sunshine, 4 of whom were first-timers or rare-timers. The walk poster 'led', seeing that he had just re-written the walk and route, and initially we encountered very little mud, not surprisingly seeing that we were crossing the commons and 'flats' of Manor Park, Wanstead and Leyton. Things got a bit more iffy (ie muddy) up Walthamstow way and on to Highams Park though. Still better though than a few weeks back when I did the recce...
After that, a thoroughly deserved elenvenses break at Humphry's Cafe was spent outside in the sun at one of their benches.
On then along some more mud-soaked paths through enchanting woods and along the meandering Ching River to Chingford, where we met walkers 7 and 8. One of them (a local) had started at Hollow Ponds but was always way ahead of us, and he had met the other (his partner) at the Butler's Retreat out in Chingford.
The pm part of the route is virtually mud-free, in comparison, on account of recent investments in wide gravel forest tracks and rides. But it's more undulating, which kept the 5 of us honest (3 of the first- and rare-timers had bailed out at Chingford).
We got to The Forest Gate Inn precisely 2 minutes before cutoff time for last food orders, which was just as well, as one SWC stalwart would have otherwise started a riot, I think.

On to Epping Station, just beating darkness to the much reduced Central Line service (about a third of trains are out of service due to engine problems in the ageing fleet). On the train we got chatting to a chef who had just finished his shift at some rich person's house and was tubing it home, and also saw a group of hooded suburban youth (all-white, before you ask), acting very suspiciously.

Walker n=9 had overslept, started half an hour behind, never caught up, and bailed out at Chingford.