London Loop Section 20, Chigwell to Havering-Atte-Bower

10th July

You’d have to be slightly unhinged to go hiking when the temperature was forecast to reach 29° C, wouldn’t you?

So a week after completing Section 19 I was back at Chigwell Station to carry on along Section 20. I wasn’t the only hiker out but they must have been going somewhere else since I didn’t see any of them on the trail.

I walked up High Road to rejoin the Loop at the junction with Chigwell Rise and carried on northward past St. Mary’s Church before turning right up an alleyway on a footpath signposted as Epping Forest Countrycare walk. This came out on Vicarage Lane, which I crossed and went through the gap opposite, climbed over two fallen trees and walked through a scruffy bit of woodland to find a Loop waymark and a realization that it would have been easier to have carried on up Vicarage Lane and turned left up a much clearer footpath. Here I turned left through a small open field then through a gap to follow the path along the edge of a field of wheat about ready to harvest.

OpenStreetMap showed the Loop going diagonally right through this crop but there definitely isn’t a footpath there so I’ve edited it to show the correct route as per the guide directions. Which say continue to a meeting of several paths near Old Farm then turn right down a track and then left onto a green lane. This led gently uphill around two sides of another field of ripe wheat to cross the Chigwell Brook. You wouldn’t know you were crossing a brook unless you checked the map though, it seems to be partly culverted and the ditch by the hedge was dry. At the end of a hedge I bore left to follow the footpath across the next field. Which had been ploughed up.

Too much trouble to run a tractor wheel across to make a path obviously. Just keep filling in the forms for the tax handouts and complaining about townies coming into the countryside. I made it across but it was treacherous to walk on and twice I almost turned an ankle. Also it was getting quite hot. On the far side I joined the path along the outside fence of the Chigwell Water Treatment Works. A path goes left off the drive to the water works, behind some unseen houses then left at what was a stile into a paddock, under some trees to a gate and through part of the garden of the house on the left then past another stile (the stile-free alternative route in the Loop guide seems currently to be unnecessary) to go between fence and trees to eventually reach Chapel Lane.

At the end of Chapel lane I paused to look at the Victorian chapel before crossing over Lambourne Road and turning left then right through the recreation ground to the edge of Chigwell Row Wood. The route turns right after a short distance into the wood over a small wooden bridge. Or in this case beside a small wooden bridge because a sizeable working party, complete with roadworks signs, were rebuilding it. Fortunately the ditch which it spans was completely dry. I met other members of the working party clearing undergrowth and tidying up as I made my way through the wood to emerge at the A1112 Romford Road dual-carriageway. There is no pedestrian crossing here, you just have to take your chances crossing first the northbound two lanes to the broad central reservation then the same for the southbound. Once across I found the squeeze stile and entered Hainault Forest Country Park. Follow the path through scrub. Bear right on reaching a more open area by an isolated oak tree. says the Loop guide. This might be easier to follow at a different time of year but with several overgrown paths leading into, if not necessarily out of, the scrub I couldn’t say for sure if I took the right one(s). The one I did take at least passed a fallen log under a fairly shady tree (did I mention it was hot?) and so there I stopped to eat my picnic lunch, accompanied by the calls of Chiffchaffs and Blue Tits.

After lunch I carried on through the wooded part of the country park until I reached the Boating Lake, which appeared to be free of boats but not of Canada Geese who all chose that moment to get out and walk across my path while giving me funny looks. Being in the middle of a flock of geese is a little intimidating.

The section through the country park is a bit short of Loop waymarks and having followed the track uphill along the edge of the woods and looking back for a distant view of that London in the heat haze.

I inevitably then took the wrong left turn through the woods, eventually doubling back at the top of the hill to find the entrance to the golf course on my left rather than right.

I crossed the fairway noticing a huge column of thick black smoke far to the south and followed the path along the length of the narrow strip of woodland called Mile Long Plantation. There are a few Loop markers through here along with yellow paint marks on the trees to mark the footpath - although there’s no consistency as to which side of the path the painted trees are which is erm, helpful. Before crossing the final fairway and leaving the golf course I had a rest on a bench beneath a tree. Diagonally across the next field and then by field edge paths I came out on a metalled track that led through Lower Park Farm and its barking dogs and left onto another farm track, crossing the River Rom and heading up a long slope.

The way ahead continued to rise steadily, turning left at Clockhouse Lane with more views of London and then into the woods of Havering Country Park. The way through the woods lies along Wellingtonia Avenue, with Giant Sequoia tress either side which were planted in the 19th century so not quite as giant as Giant Sequoias can get. Although it was partially shaded in the woods there wasn’t a breath of wind so the long slog up the slope was hard going in the afternoon heat. Eventually the path levelled out and left the country park, passing St. John the Evangelist church and somewhat bizarrely Den’s Nosh Burger Van (open Thurs - Sun 0930-1600) with its very welcome cold drinks fridge. I bought a bottle of Iced Tea and went and hid in the shade behind the bus stop while I waited for the 375 to Romford.

London Loop Section 20 tick.

If any of the embedded photos in this post fail to display it will be due to Flickr’s increasing unreliability. At the time of writing even I can’t see them. Apparently they are aware of the problem and have added my account to the list of those affected. Here’s a link to the FlickrAlbum for Section 20 but whether you’ll be able to see it is anyone’s guess.

Here's an alternative link to the album on Google Photos just in case Flickr remains broken.

London Loop Sections 18 & 19

 Enfield lock to Chingford and Chingford to Chigwell

3rd July

Hey, the temperature has dropped back below “bloody scorching” so time to do some more London Loop. I headed back to Enfield Lock station to start Section 18 to Chingford and if things went well, Section 19 to Chigwell. Things went well, although not in any way that I could have anticipated.

I left the station and walked back down Bradley Road, a little less litter-strewn today than last time, to begin Section 18 at the little bridge over the Turkey Brook. The water was hidden in a deep channel full of vegetation to begin with although further along this thinned out to reveal patches of not-very-inviting stream before the path bore away from the brook and up over the A1055 via a long footbridge. From the top of the bridge you are supposed to be able to see the Sewardstone Hills ahead but mostly there seems to be trees in the way. After crossing the bridge the path brought me to the actual Enfield Lock on the River Lee Navigation.

From here I walked along the towpath past Swan & Pike Pool and along by the River Lee itself with quite a few Coots and Canada Geese swimming in the flowing water. This year's Coot chicks are now almost as big as their parents but fuzzier.

Two further footbridges took me across first the River Lee and then the River Lee Flood Relief channel and at the same time out of Greater London and into Essex. In this picture London is on the left and Essex on the right.

Leaving the river(s) behind the route passed first through Sewardstone Marsh, although with the recent weather the paths were dry, then along a side street and across the A112 Sewardstone Road before striking diagonally across an empty car boot sale field and carrying on along a gravel track uphill to Sewardstone Park Cemetery and “Gardens of Firdaus”, an area set aside for burial of those of the Islamic faith. Passing through a strip of woodland I reached the top of the hill and turned back to look at the view over the King George V Reservoir.

Shortly after leaving Enfield Lock I’d notice and passed another Loop walker - we’re easy to spot, standing looking about and reading from a folded sheet of A4 paper trying to work out which way to go next - and she had been not far behind me for some time. Standing looking at the route instructions was what I was doing, trying to work out where the “faint path across the field” went and was it through the building site that wasn’t mentioned at all? Now there were two of us trying to work out where the “faint path across the field” went and was it through the building site that wasn’t mentioned at all? Having decided it was “that way” which turned out to be too far to the left we found ourselves at the edge of a woodland hunting for a disused stile and the entrance to a path through the woods. With two sets of eyes and helped by my having the route marked on Organic Maps on my phone we eventually regained the route, the faint path across the field we should have taken only being obvious from the bottom of the hill but not the top, and the disused stile entirely hidden in a bush. We carried on through the woods to Bury Road.

Now I normally walk alone but I’m not entirely antisocial and since we were both heading the same way we walked on together. Besides with two of us surely we could halve the chances of getting lost on a Loop section with rather sporadic way-marking. Since my new-found walking companion was very pleasant to be with there aren’t very  many photos to accompany my words in this blog - a lot of chatting ensued and snapping was rather forgotten 😀

We turned down the main drive to the Scout Association HQ at Gilwell, turning left at its large “Leopard Gates” through a long section of woodland first west then turning south, passing through a meadow, back into the woods to a turning east which is a lot clearer on the map than it is on the ground so we almost missed it, and then alongside a golf course, mostly heard rather than seen to Bury Road again. Crossing Bury Road we turned south through the woods parallel to the road and then through a car park to a three-way London Loop sign on a lamppost near the Holly Trail Cafe and that was Section 18 ✅

And it was only about twenty-past one.

Section 19 began by heading north east onto Chingford Plain for a short way then forking left up hill towards some trees, keeping an eye out for somewhere shady to sit for lunch. The area behind the Epping Forest Visitor Centre was filled with several hundred (so it seemed) uniformed schoolkids but we managed to bag a picnic table under the trees behind the Butler’s Retreat cafe and they didn’t come out and complain about us sitting there eating our picnic lunches and putting the world to rights. Suitably refuelled we set off again across and then east parallel to Ranger’s Road past some very old oak trees, with a little diversion around where some roadworks had closed the path. There were some young Duke of Edinburgh’s Scheme participants along here, heading in the opposite direction and a bit nonplussed by the barrier across their intended path so we pointed them in the direction of the diversion we’d just taken.

Crossing once again the border from London into Essex gently uphill along a broad open grassy strip with a near constant stream of DofE walkers going the other way we reached Epping New Road and waited for a gap in the traffic to cross it. And waited. And waited. If anywhere along this section needs a pedestrian crossing this is it. Eventually we made it across, through Powell’s Forest, and across High Road too, coming out into a residential street, North End, where the route instructions had us puzzled and the way-mark mentioned couldn’t be seen.

It had become a running joke between us that the way-mark you can’t find is probably quite obvious ten paces further on and so it proved again here although when it’s high on a lamppost and only visible from alongside rather than as you approach it, it doesn’t help. The next turn took us between some houses and felt as if you were about to walk into someone’s back garden but there was in fact a footpath entry hidden in the corner which lead between the gardens, one of which contained a remarkably large Willow tree. We went along the edge of the trees by an open area, did some more head scratching as to which of the paths across the open field was the right one, picked the wrong one and as a result I now realise looking at the map more closely did two sides of a small triangle before dropping down into the Roding Valley to cross over the Central Line via a high metal footbridge.

A short walk along Thaxted Road and its classics suburban semis brought us to the turn right onto the Green Walk between the residential roads and past Roding Valley Cricket Club to the un-named lake which is a flooded gravel pit, used to supply the building of the M11 motorway. Here we paused to admire the view of the scattered clouds and blue sky reflected in the water. I actually remembered to take a photo.

Skirting the southern side of the lake we crossed the River Roding and followed it for a short distance in the welcome shade of the riverside trees before looping around the back of the sports centre to reach Roding Lane. The last stretch was roadside, over the top of the M11 and down Chigwell Rise to the end of Section 19 at the mini roundabout where it meets High Road. Turning right towards Chigwell Station I was a bit disappointed to find the pub was closed for refurbishment because some liquid refreshment would have been welcome right at that point - the forecast overcast skies had not materialised.

At least we hadn't got lost despite the missing way-marks 😀 

Section 19 ✅ 

At the station having worked out which direction each of us needed to go in we said our goodbyes, agreeing that it had been a fine afternoon’s walk improved by the company. We parted expressing the thought that maybe we’d see each other out on the Loop again and headed to our respective platforms.

And all the way home I kicked myself for not seizing the opportunity to give her my number to make that more likely 🙄

Such is life.