please empty your brain below
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By your definition I can't be your average Londoner, as I've done that walk.
Nigel | 17.01.23 - 7:22 a.m. | #
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Thank you for once again taking me on a not nice walk. I’ll bet it’s even more bleak this morning. Nothing better than being wrapped in a warm dressing gown, wrapping yourself around a mug of even warmer builders’ and reading your account of somewhere I’ll certainly never be taking a stroll.
I expect it’s little changed since the prison hulks were moored out there.
Jo W | 17.01.23 - 7:37 a.m. | #
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This walk is part of a route that links the end of the Capital Ring to the start of the London Loop so it is an absolute a must. The adjective Ballardian works well along here. Well worth doing, but I’d wait for a day when Crossness is open.
Dan | 17.01.23 - 7:59 a.m. | #
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Welcome to one of our lockdown walks. It's along the Thames, what's not to like?
H SE18 | 17.01.23 - 8:14 a.m. | #
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An uncharacteristically negative view.
Anyway, thanks for years and years of inspiring stuff. A very belated Happy New Year.
oapski | 17.01.23 - 8:26 a.m. | #
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Sounds gruesome. Kudos for using ‘liminal’ twice.
David | 17.01.23 - 8:32 a.m. | #
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Other reasons why all the industry is at this end might be because the river is wider, deeper and not obstructed by bridges.
Still Anon | 17.01.23 - 8:35 a.m. | #
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I enjoy cycling this route. Last time I did it, in December, there was a beautiful sunset on the way back. Fabulous.
Gap | 17.01.23 - 8:52 a.m. | #
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This is what I wrote on my blog when I did this section of the Thames Path in August 2020:
A fairly long stretch of non picturesque Thames followed until I eventually reached Crossness. The ancient building is the old Crossness Beam Engines which pumped sewage and sludge into the Thames in Victorian times. It is now open as a museum and worth a visit but only at weekends with pre-booked tickets. The sewage connection remains with the adjacent sewage works and then the Crossness Incinerator. I must say the odours in this area got well and truly into my lungs and I went into an uncontrolled coughing fit, I was glad to get away from it.
Looks like it hasn't changed...
davews | 17.01.23 - 8:54 a.m. | #
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Mmm, my kind of walk.
Sarah | 17.01.23 - 9:27 a.m. | #
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I have run that stretch as part of my North Greenwich = Erith Thames Path section. It is the end section and as you described. Still quite interesting, and the finish with the visit (or should I say experience) of coastal and downtown Erith matches this too, I would think. Thanks for the remembrance.
international reader | 17.01.23 - 9:42 a.m. | #
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Great blog. Peabody and Sustrans are looking at ways to open up this part of the Thames path a bit more including through the old golf course. They are currently doing a consultation piece which I thought your readers may be interested in... [pdf]
Ridgeway Users | Homepage | 17.01.23 - 9:56 a.m. | #
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Sounds amazing to me!! I love an industrial/commercial landscape!!
A bit of a schlep from Harrow, but will try and make it one day....perhaps in better weather though.
MikeK | 17.01.23 - 9:59 a.m. | #
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Erstwhile South-Londoners, such as myself, might say that reducing North London to a "thin stripe" is the best fate for it. And that sludge-incinerator is magnificent.
cau1khead | 17.01.23 - 10:14 a.m. | #
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Definitely tempted to visit. Today's cold but dry weather would I think be ideal.
Andrew S | 17.01.23 - 10:46 a.m. | #
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And this is part of the England Coast Path National Trail - not what you envisage when thinking of that.
I fairly recently started from from Woolwich Crossrail station but once I had reached the outskirts of Thamesmead I headed for the nearest bus stop and caught a bus to Abbey Wood. It was dreary but I thought it couldn't get worse - judging by your account it clearly could. It makes the walk from Rainham (Essex) station to Purfleet station seem positively delightful.
Pedantic of Purley | 17.01.23 - 10:55 a.m. | #
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Sadly the crossness engines are broken and won't be steaming in the foreseeable future (although the RANG railway is working again).
The Tesco warehouse is for assembling grocery home delivery orders (using a mostly mechanised process), ditto Ocado. Asda is a bulk warehouse (their ecommerce order assembly shed was in Dartford)
MilesT | 17.01.23 - 11:03 a.m. | #
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In the mid 1970s I often visited this part of the river wall to watch the Thames shipping. At the Crossness and Beckton Sewage works the sludge (or Bovril) ships loaded up to head out into the North Sea and drop their loads of waste. A ship, 'Borax Trader' would often be seen at their pier to drop off its load of, well, Borax. There was also a large car park for Ford workers who would cross the river on the Twin Star ferries. Any one could take an out and back trip but there was no exit on the north bank for non Ford employees. It was a peaceful spot and I also spent the time revising for my A-levels.
Many years later whilst out with my boss checking mileages for bus routes we were outside the golf club trying to find the roads to be used by a new route. At his request I slowly edged up a narrow slope for us to get a better view only to find I had driven onto the top of the river wall. With no where to turn I had to Reverse back down around the curving slope with no barriers which was very hairy. The bus route never started and when the roads were built the layout was very different and is there today.
AlanJS | 17.01.23 - 11:32 a.m. | #
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Looks like you were unlucky with the weather!
Michael T | 17.01.23 - 11:41 a.m. | #
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It's not just warehouses along there, there's also the "Edible Oils" factory producing most of the bottled cooking oil we use in this country.
Mikey C | 17.01.23 - 11:46 a.m. | #
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Wild, isolated, riverside and birds - what's not to like?!
Cornish Cockney | 17.01.23 - 1:43 p.m. | #
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Crossness will always remind me of the school in the film version of Beautiful Thing
Anders | 17.01.23 - 1:44 p.m. | #
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I walked this last year til the bitter end (River Darent) - and it gets much better...
deruf | 17.01.23 - 2:00 p.m. | #
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One of those massive sheds is the main processing centre for Iron Mountain, which processes government records for either storage in massive underground caverns in old Cheshire salt mines or if the record is 30 years old and deemed worthy of retention, preps the files to go to The National Archives. I got to visit back in my first civil service job in the HM Treasury records team.
Mark | 17.01.23 - 2:07 p.m. | #
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I walked this many years ago as part of the Thames Path Extension, a ten mile trail that I'd highly recommend not bothering with.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 17.01.23 - 2:23 p.m. | #
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You should try the Grand Union Canal around Harlesden/Kensal Green. Very industrial and bleak and ends with a cemetery on route!
Ted | 17.01.23 - 2:48 p.m. | #
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I walked along the Thames path from Erith to Greenwich in Jan last year and found the eastern stretch bleak but interesting. A strange feeling walking alone on the path at Crossness, hemmed in by the river on one side and the excrement of one and a half million Londoners on the other.
Graham T | 17.01.23 - 4:35 p.m. | #
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Every so often the comments offer a real insight, and this was one of them.
Mark — ‘if the record is 30 years old and deemed worthy of retention, [Iron Mountain] preps the files to go to The National Archives’.
I didn’t know the prepping was franchised out. Sometimes files are retained in departments for far longer — 50 years, 75 years for something nuclear or royal — or, of course, never released at all. As for ‘deemed worthy of attention’, some might differ: a long run of Home Office files on the negotiations on the UN human rights covenants never made it to the national archives, however relevant the department’s approach might seem today.
KS | 17.01.23 - 5:35 p.m. | #
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That walk simply wasn't possible when I was growing up in the area, you could only get to certain parts of the riverside by a couple of dead-end roads. Thank you for walking the walk and recording it for posterity.
Steven Saunders | 17.01.23 - 7:02 p.m. | #
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Did this as a surprisingly fun unplanned cycle last summer. Loads of interesting and surprising bits to see along the way. Don't think I'd enjoy the pace of walking it though!
Sean | 17.01.23 - 10:43 p.m. | #
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I was first introduced to this walk as a kid in the Cubs, at Plumstead, at which time a lot of the land was unbuilt and flat marshland. There must've been something about it because it was one of the places I'd revisit for bike rides until I had a change in health.
In more recent times I've driven there, sometimes to go to a paintshop on one of the industrial estates, and sometimes in the hope of seeing the seal(s) which have been sighted on the foreshore over the last couple of years. One in particular has been seen so regularly that it's been given a name - Fathom - and it's a pity you didn’t see this uplift from the bleakness.
I think I can guess the bus stop you referred to, having passed it and thought 'hmmm, funny place for a bus stop' ... I'm assuming you mean the one in Anderson Way
RogerW | 18.01.23 - 10:03 a.m. | #
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