please empty your brain below
Oh dear. It might have been kinder to draw a veil over the utterly incompetent execution of a good idea. Some people just shouldn't be let loose with a map.

And what is the phrase "third exit at the roundabout" doing in a walking trail anyway?

Malcolm of Kent | 19.05.21 - 7:20 a.m. | #

This is what "getting lost in a subject" really means. Stay at home and read a book, as you rightly conclude.

Waterhouse | 19.05.21 - 8:01 a.m. | #

It could be interpreted as a masterclass in passive-aggressive behavior, a badly directed tour taking women to areas most would feel unsafe walking around alone, encountering mostly nothing, in this context the wheelchair directions are a masterstroke.

Still Anon | 19.05.21 - 8:08 a.m. | #

As I always say I’m pleased for us that you do these things so we don’t have to!

Brian | 19.05.21 - 8:13 a.m. | #

This does rather confirm my suspicion that many, the majority? of published walk directions are written by people who haven’t walked the walk.

RogerB | 19.05.21 - 8:47 a.m. | #

Looking at the plus side... that walk is a great way of seeing a goodly number of LED Roadway street lighting fixtures!

cau1khead | 19.05.21 - 9:04 a.m. | #

I was expecting DG might have some ideas for my next walking day 'up town'....and I found the best views of Tate and Lyle are from the opposite bank of the Thames.

davews | 19.05.21 - 9:17 a.m. | #

I’d imagine someone would have got a few volunteers to test run the walk before pressing publish.

Amused to see that the East End Women's Museum are suitably vague in giving the address of where they are opening.

"An address near East Ham in Barking will home the new Museum."

ap | 19.05.21 - 9:35 a.m. | #

This project has all the hallmarks of a idea that was thought up to look good on a press release.
All the right boxes ticked, it was more than likely written by people sitting in front of a computer, who have never visited any of the places listed.

Michael | 19.05.21 - 9:38 a.m. | #

I would doubt that anybody from Newham Council walked this trail before it went into print.

mikeH | 19.05.21 - 9:38 a.m. | #

"Sorry Boss, I couldn't walk the route because I was working at home due to Covid, but I did get us lots of publicity on DG, didn't I?"

Blue Witch | Homepage | 19.05.21 - 9:53 a.m. | #

I wonder if the trail was cribbed from a version written some years ago, before crossrail etc, when it would have worked?
I hope you send your annotated version the council or whoever published it.

Joho | Homepage | 19.05.21 - 9:54 a.m. | #

I admit I've only looked at it on Google Streetview, so may well be making the same mistake as the person who wrote the directions, but it does look like pedestrians can turn left from Factory Road to Fenhill Street as the Crossrail lines are covered over at that point: here.

dg writes: Let me reword that bit. Sorry, I’d got lost by this point.

James | 19.05.21 - 10:10 a.m. | #

My copy of openstreetmap thinks it's Fernhill, not Fenhill Street.

dg writes: Well spotted - updated thanks.

mikeS | 19.05.21 - 11:44 a.m. | #

Just, wow!!!

Cornish Cockney | 19.05.21 - 5:13 p.m. | #

Some of the lives of SOME of the individuals mentioned here were quite amazing and the idea of the trail is great. It just perhaps wasn't followed through properly.

'The Sugar Girls' by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi is a fantastic book for those who would like a very readable bit of Silvertown's modern history.

Eleanor Marx upstaged her father in many respects as a practising Socialist and was a big influence in the area not just in the Silvers strike but the Gasworkers strike (she taught Will Thorne to read) and the 1889 Dockers strike. Her somewhat tragic life story is well worth looking into.

Daisy Parsons (first Lady Mayor of Newham) is not mentioned here, being part of the Canning Town part of the trail, but overcame a goodly amount of vicious sexism to succeed tremendously over a long period in what was a very male dominated world.

MO | 19.05.21 - 8:28 p.m. | #

Iain Sinclair would get a full book out of this material. Unknowingly a psychogeographical classic.

Johnny Topaz | 19.05.21 - 9:04 p.m. | #











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