Meet 18.30 hours prompt outside Stratford
Station (Mainline, Overground, Underground, DLR), next to ‘Robert’, a heritage
locomotive displayed on the station forecourt on the Town Centre side
(i.e.: not the Westfield side)! [see the pdf directions for how to get
there from your platform w/o fault]
This
walk follows a meandering route through Stratford
City, a development preceding the idea of London applying to hold Olympic
Games, and including the very large Westfield Shopping Centre, as well as
through the neighbouring Olympic Park
and past its surviving Olympic venues, one of the largest urban parks created
in Western Europe for more than 150 years, and designed to enrich and preserve
the local environment, by restoring wetland habitats and planting native
species of plants along the River Lea and the Bow Backwaters. It is still a
work in progress, in its continued transition from sports venue to public park,
with many new neighbourhoods and amenities added since the 2012 Games.
This
is combined with a detour through parts of the adjacent former industrial areas
now famous for artists’ spaces and independent micro-businesses, but undergoing
speedy regeneration: Hackney Wick
(South) and Fish Island. These areas
are still noticeably shaped by their former mix of (often polluting) industries
in this complicated space, dominated by railways, canals, locks, river arms,
channels, flood plains.
For a much shorter walk, Hackney Wick Overground Station is passed after 4.9 km/3.1 mi.
For a southerly extension follow the Greenway on top
the Northern Outfall Sewer.
T=short.27
1 comment:
18 walkers assembled at the stated start time outside Stratford Station and - after waiting for a few minutes - went ahead, leaving both the walk author and the walk checker stranded, who - independent of each other - had fallen foul of London Transport's offerings.
The n=20 walkers were soon united though and proceeded in w=hot-but-dry weather, which defied the forecast thunderstorms and downpours (although some rumblings were close for a while, and about 10 drops of rain hit us along the way).
Everyone seemed to enjoy the convoluted route through the Park and its neighbouring environs, so much so that 9 of the total took to drink in Hackney Wick at the Crate Brewery & Pizzeria. The walk-checker and the other 10 walkers continued the route back to Stratford, where about half of the people had a drink at The Cow, and 6 of us (incl. some of the Hackney Wick drinkers) then had a meal at the Real Greek, an agreeable chain restaurant in the Westfield Shopping Centre (although it took ages for the food to arrive).
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