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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.

Thursday 6 July 2017

Evening Walk - The Olympic Park, Hackney Wick and Fish Island [New Walk]

Length: 8.8 km or 10.2 km [Bailout possible at Hackney Wick Overground (4.9 km)]

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.

For a detailed route map, gpx/kml file and pdf directions click
here.
T=short.27

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

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).