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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 4 July 2019

Evening Walk - The Ingrebourne Valley (Hornchurch to Upminster)

Open water, grassland, woodland, marshland, fenland via a series of linked green spaces along the Ingrebourne River

Length: 11.7 km/7.3 mi; Height Gain: 90m

Meet 18.45 hours prompt outside Hornchurch Station (District Line to Upminster, in Zone 6), travel time from Tower Hill 43 minutes, from West Ham (Jubilee Line, DLR and Mainline Trains) 25 minutes, from Barking 14 minutes, from Upminster 3 minutes. Your fastest option will be to take a Mainline train from Fenchurch Street (walk 2 minutes from Tower Hill, 10 from Bank) via Limehouse, West Ham, Barking to Upminster and travel back two stops on the District Line. This train will likely be crowded though in rush hour.
Return trains from Upminster: xx.01, xx.08, xx.19, xx.31, xx.38 (journey time from 22 minutes to Fenchurch Street). Trains stop Barking, West Ham and Limehouse.

The part of the Ingrebourne Valley walked through on this walk comprises a varied and unique mixture of interlinked and partly overlapping local green spaces - Ingrebourne Valley Greenway, Berwick Glades, Berwick Woods, Hornchurch Country Park, Ingrebourne Hill and the Sutton, Hacton and Gaynes Parkways. These include habitats ranging from river, open water, grassland, secondary and ancient woodland, marshland, fenland (with the largest continuous area of freshwater reed beds in Greater London), and – not to forget – some arable farmland.
Partly former airfield, ex-quarries, farmland or landfill site, it is now a continuous green space and contains – pound for pound – one of the best viewpoints of London’s Skyline, from all of 11 metres above sea!

Walk Options:

·        Several shortcuts are possible, as the southerly parts of the outbound and return routes are running close to each other, these are obvious on the route map.
·        Bus Stops for services to District Line stations are located close to the route after 8 km and 9.2 km.
·        Follow the outbound route back to Hornchurch station instead of going to Upminster: cut 1.8 km.
·        An Extension through Berwick Woods to the reed-fringed Berwick Pond adds 1.4 km.
Refreshments: Several Restaurants, Pubs and a Tap Room in Upminster, see the pdf or webpage for details.

For a detailed route map, gpx/kml file, photos and pdf directions click here. T=short.34

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

5 more or less on time, with 1 other way behind (he short cut and met us about half way along), so n=6 in w=pleasantly-warm weather. Start and Finish of the walk are some way off the green valley route, so residential roads must be negotiated first and last. Once we got to the river though, it was very quiet and peaceful, with hardly a soul about initially. The route soon veers away from the river to walk field boundaries with views and over former landfill sites/now woods or hay meadows with plenty of wildflowers. The viewpoint at the southern end of the walk did not disappoint: (most of) the NE of Greater London was on view, from the Dartford Bridge to The Shard.
Along the return route, in Hornchurch Country Park, we were delighted to see so many people use the various trim-trail and activity playground hardware while we also inspected the various info panels, memorial sculptures and leftover hardware commemorating the various RAF Stations that used to be here.
Near the end, the late sun made for some striking cloudscapes and we got to Upminster - broadly as planned - at 21.20. 4 stayed on for a meal at an Osteria, 22.36 train for those.