About the London Loop
London is well known to be one of the major cities best supplied with green space - inside its boundaries, that is.
From Hampstead Heath to Hyde Park, Wanstead Flats to Hounslow Heath,
locals are fortunate in having good quality open space near their doorstep.
But the reputation of London's urban sprawl is such that the countryside beyond its immediate boundaries is less well-regarded.
Anyone walking the London Loop -
an acronym for London Outer Orbital Path - will soon recognise how undeserved that reputation is.
Yes, the odd scruffy suburb is there, and the struggling industrial zone; this is a living city, with all its pressures;
but there are tranquil rivers, open downland, and any number of secret woodlands too.
Any Londoner could walk the Loop from their home, so thorough is the public transport network;
and that is what I set out to do over a succession of work-free Fridays starting in 2001.
Round and round the basin
Although it forms a loop around London, it is not a circular path, as the ends don't join.
It is generally walked clockwise, and starts in the riverside south-east London suburb of Erith.
From here you can see 150 miles - for half a mile across the river is the finish, Coldharbour Point on the Rainham Marshes.
Centuries ago a ferry linked the two; these days we take a longer way round.
(Note for non-Londoners: the river = Thames unless explicitly stated otherwise.)
Most will define the Loop in terms of human geography, and why not when the rationale is a great city.
It roughly traces the political boundary of London, and Travelcard zone 6; it runs a few miles inside the M25;
in the north, it links the outposts of the tube.
But look a little deeper and you will see the Loop's architects have been very cunning
in how they have used the underlying physical geography of the Thames basin to their advantage.
The Thames itself runs more or less across the centre, though dipping in the west and splitting the route unevenly.
Hayes, on the Grand Union Canal, is a more natural half way point, and the one used in the next two pages.
The path takes the Darent and Cray tributaries south, eventually rising to chalk downland at Coulsdon,
before descending by the Hogsmill river to its Thames confluence by Kingston Bridge.
The rivers Crane and Colne (and the Grand Union Canal, close to it) take us toward the edge of the Chiltern Hills at Moor Park.
Across the north of London, the path travels through the succession of low hills
that are familiar to train travellers out of London because the railways tunnel them.
The valleys of the Lea and Roding are then crossed, with the gravel ridge of Epping Forest between them,
before the Ingrebourne leads us back to the Thames.
Finding one's way
The Loop is a 'recreational path', one step down from a national trail.
The difference, essentially, is that one might backpack the latter but not the former.
An all-zones travelcard is a good companion on the Loop,
but you are out in the open all day, most usually without immediate shelter,
so the usual strictures about carrying wet-weather gear, when there is a chance of needing them, should be heeded.
Some sections are impeccably waymarked, and eventually all will be,
but only about half the route had standard waymarking when I walked it.
Care needs to be taken in woods and some commons especially;
the Loop is not necessarily the most obvious of the various paths that might be under foot.
Please try not to get lost in the bits with houses, not because they are not safe,
but because they are full of garden gnomes and people washing cars, which is not what you came to see.
The Aurum Press guide to the path by David Sharp (ISBN 1 85410 759 3 - quote this to any human bookseller) contains all maps,
gives hints of which pair of garages to pass between, and is recommended.
It is the only major route I have walked without the separate maps to hand. But it doesn't have a distance chart.
A good reason to download my logs.
They show a Loop distance of 145 miles, against the official 144, but links to stations will add a few more.
On the web, check out the London Loop pages
by Mark Moxon.
They are more detailed than mine, and a useful counterpoint to David Sharp.
One point of diagreement between him and me: he calls the final stage "the worst day walk I have done ... in the whole world".
Now I'm not saying it's good, nor am I necessarilly prepared to nominate a day walk that is worse.
But this is London, it's a city of all types, and it needs its Harold Hills and Ferry Lanes.
To hide them from the Loop would be to deny the nature of London.
And as an east Londoner myself, this patch is simply territory.
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