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.
Note: compared to
2017, the route has changed substantially in the middle part due to ongoing
building works.
For a shorter walk, start from Stratford International DLR Station, passed after 850m.
For a much shorter walk, Hackney Wick Overground Station is passed after 5.5 km/3.4 mi.
For a southerly extension
follow the Greenway on top the Northern Outfall Sewer.
Refreshments: Plenty of options en route, for details please check the pdf.
For a detailed route map, gpx/kml file,
photos and pdf directions click here. T=short.27
1 comment:
n=9 under w=leaden-skies with a few attempts to break out into drizzle.
A jolly group followed the leader, who had edited the write-up just 5 weeks ago and yet found that things had changed yet again since then, especially in the middle section, as frantic building projects in Hackney Wick and the parts of the Olympic Park close to it mean that paths get closed and/or re-routed all the time.
En route, we had a well-deserved break at Crate Brewery on the Hackney Cut and at the end of the walk - after some indecisiveness - settled for the ever-reliable The Real Greek for a meal. All but one partook in that.
5 of us then went on to Tap East in the far corner of the Westfield Shpopping Centre for some overpriced-but-del sour beers or ultra-dry ciders. Fab.
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