I walked this walk just over a year ago, so perhaps it's seasonal - inadvertently!
Until London 2012 I had no idea about the rivers and canals of inner East London. During the opening ceremony, I loved it when David Beckham accompanied the Olympic flame up one of these rivers or canals.
When I attended a day at the Paralympics I was impressed by many features of Olympic Park, not least the rivers. I liked that, even when there was probably quarter of a million people on site, it didn't feel crowded, and there was an element of tranquility down beside the rivers.
We started at Limehouse Basin. My great regret is that I have no memory of London as a working, even a derelict port. I find it hardly to visualise the area round the Tower. Limehouse was used by sea-going vessels to unload onto canal barges. I've seen programmes on the TV about canals and how they were abandoned, especially in the interwar years and after, until, in many cases, being rescued by volunteers. Limehouse was restored as part of the government-led regeneration of Docklands in the 1980s. This regeneration, one has to say, was probably a good thing, and better than doing nothing, but at the time and currently, it is obvious that could have been better ways of planning and managing it, and I think most people's impression of 'Docklands' is Yuppies and money alongside some of the poorest and most alienated communities in Britain.
Limehouse Marina is undoubtedly a playground for the rich, but surprisingly sterile. I'm surprised there aren't more pleasure boat rides available. I didn't notice anywhere congenial to stop and have a coffee and watch the world go by.
The walk along Limehouse Cut started well, seeing narrow boats moored, imagining the lives of people on there. Some were almost certainly permanent homes, others, perhaps short term rentals.
In my head, I imagine myself living there. It's a nice game to play, although divorced from reality.
As we progressed along the Cut I was disappointed. It was dull. An unexciting mixture of still evident urban-industrial decay and formulaic 'apartments' (never 'flats'). I still don't get that people live in flats by choice, not simply because they can't afford a house. Of course, we would all like views over water, but I just don't think this water would compensate for not being in a house. The most exciting thing we passed for seemingly miles was two drakes.
We walked, and walked, and walked, and I regretted choosing this walk. We saw the locals used it as a scenic route from the supermarket. Occasionally cyclists whizzed past. How I envied them their speed, not having to look at endless miles of dull character-less canal.
And, finally, we reached a locking system, Bow Locks, I assume. A strange area of desolation and unspecified light industry. Some signs of humanity, people out walking, some narrow boats moored. But still I regretted the walk.
Matters improved as we approached Three Mills: boats and locks and bridges
I thought the bridge carrying the Underground over the canal would make a stunning photograph. Not really.
After the gas holders we stopped at Three Mills for coffee. Odd place. It has become slightly famous post-Olympics, and think it's mainly a working environment - for example, Masterchef: the Professionals is now filmed there. but it's also a rare staging post on the walk, or cycle, from Limehouse Basin to Olympic Park.
I didn't find the café inspiring. The woman working there was friendly enough, but I wasn't really inspired by the product on offer, and I felt it was a little bit 'a local café for local people' as some gobby bored housewife gabbed away at high volume boasting about the tedious details of her dull life.
The journey became more interesting from this point, although less in the sense of being a 'journey' and more with the knowledge we were reaching our destination.
Olympic Park! No ordinary park. I'm sure everyone who attended London 2012 retains fond memories of the park. When I went to the Paralympics, I was taken aback at the sheer size of the place. The wide expanses between venues and the acres of land that really had nothing to do with competitive sport. And revisiting it, without the excitement of the games, was not a disappointment. Again, the sheer size of the place was both exhilarating and daunting. There must have been thousands of people there but other than, inevitably, at the café, one just didn't feel crowded.
The café was a disappointment. I'm sure in other circumstances, or in other visitor attractions, I would compliment it and acknowledge the quality of the product. However, it saddened me that the offer was unimaginative. Standard fare, heavy on the pie and chips, sandwiches , fizzy drinks and ice creams (very nice ice creams).
A small part of me wished, as part of the legacy of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, there could have been a conscious effort to serve food that was conspicuously healthy. I'm sure the response is that businesses have to provide what the customer wants. However, they have a virtual monopoly - the nearest competitors were in Westfield - and how could they really know what customers actually want. People know they want something, and they choose from what is available, rather than submitting information on what they would have chosen if there had been unlimited choice.
We strolled around the park for a while but the canal walk had taken its toll on me. Himself said something along the lines of 'right, we've done this now, ticked it off the list, no need to come back'. I would like to go back, maybe in a year or two, but travelling by train there and back and using all my energy to walk round the park, not knacker myself by walking along canals. Perhaps I would like to take the River Lea north, maybe one day end up in Hertfordshire. I just looked at the Park website and mentioned to Himself that you can take a 45 minute boat tour through the park. That enthused him. It's also possible to take a walking tour led by a Blue Badge guide.
The main design flaw of Olympic Park is that, in order to get to the main transport hub, Stratford, you are obliged to walk through the shopping centre. "Exit through the Gift Shop" on a grand scale. How dare you contemplate having a free day out - we will compel you to shop! You see the dead eyes and sickly pallor of those for whom shopping is a pastime and a hobby, haunted that they may have overlooked a money saving bargain. (The best way to save money is not to be a compulsive shopper!).
On the Tube are a diversity of people. A youngish couple who are having a post-shop snack and carefully wiping up with anti-bacterial gel. A retired couple who may be going to the theatre or to meet friends for dinner. Individuals of various ethnic backgrounds, dressed scruffily, fashionably or smartly.
Further down the line we are joined by professional northern football fan dad. Let his small child swing on the poles on the train. Told everyone he'd had a day out at a football match. Told us we were all boring bastards, not talking to each other like people do in the North. Burnley was it, or Blackburn, somewhere godforsaken in the inbred hills of Lancashire.
I'm a Northerner originally. In many contexts I'm a football fan. But, passively watching a football match is just one of numerous options for a day out. Just about everybody on that train could have chosen to go to a football match should they have wished. Perhaps not the cost of a Premier League game, but one lower down the pyramid; perhaps not that day, if they were working or had social obligations.
That's the beauty of football, it really is open to everybody. But it's not the be all and end all of a day out, or the only option. We've tasted football matches, and have made an informed choice, that day, to do something else. The professional Northern football fan knows nothing else for a day out than a football match - how can he know it's the most desirable. Or perhaps he has tried something else, and prefers football. But that's him. Different people are different from him.
As for Londoners not talking on the Tube. How dreary. I've lived in the North and the Midlands, and on the whole people don't talk to each other on trains, and especially not in traffic jams. And when they do, they're invariably tedious, opinionated and ill-informed. Decades ago two colleagues, Mark from Chester and Hugh from Harlow, were having a needle about this. Hugh said Londoners (in which he included himself, he lived in South London and his father had done the daily commute to the City for decades before that) don't talk on the Tube because it's full of rude, hostile Northerners. I say, we don't need to talk to strangers because elsewhere we are surrounded by acquaintances (and, hopefully, friends) - we're not yearning for a change in conversational matter.
The loud professional Northern football fan is a tiny minority of Northerners visiting London; a fairly small minority of northern football fans (many of whom travel as 'ordinary people' preferring not to be lumped in with his kind). But it's a trope and it's boring.
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