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I had thought last year's Riding The Roding walk had gone well and I'd particularly enjoyed the second half. With that in mind I planned a sequel of sorts for this year but the fact that, your narrator aside, nobody from last year's walk turned up for the sequel had me thinking perhaps it hadn't been so great after all! Never mind.
I was all set to go it alone when Colin got in touch to say him and Patricia would join me on the proviso that there'd be a curry waiting for us at the end. Well, anyone who knows how we roll will know that that was never gonna be a problem.
So I was up early yesterday morning and, due to engineering works, on the 63 bus to Chancery Lane where I took the Central Line out to Wanstead. Having a bit of time to kill I had a nose around George Green and Christchurch Green, the war memorial, and whatever else Wanstead has to offer before heading to Cafe Brunch and finding that Colin and Patricia were also running early and had grabbed a table. That was good news. It meant we could set off earlier. It meant we could spend more time in the pub.
I had a veggie breakfast and it came with loads of mushrooms. Luckily the mushrooms were really tasty as were the hash browns, the beans, the scrambled egg, and the toast. The veggie sausage was a bit disappointing though. One of those vegetable affairs that falls into pieces at the merest sight of a fork heading, Grange Hill credits style, towards it.
If it had been a good sausage I'd have been disappointed there was only one. As it was the wrong sausage I was glad. The tea was nice and it was great to catch up with Colin and Patricia who I'd not seen since we walked the Thames Path from Shillingford Bridge to Abingdon back in March.
Leaving the cafe, and avoiding The George and Dragon pub which already had people in it, we followed the A12 for about a kilometre which made for a pretty inauspicious start. But it wasn't long before we turned into the Roding Valley footpath and, thankfully, it wasn't as overgrown as the one I walked last year. Covered in graffiti though. Some of it, we suspected, officially sanctioned. Not least because there was an artist at work, filling the air around us with the aroma of aerosol.
The river was narrow, shallow, and, in some places, almost obscured by the huge amount of greenery growing around it. It gives the air of a much smaller river than it actually is because the Roding is 31 miles in length and flows from near Stansted Airport to the Thames although right at the end it changes its name to Barking Creek.
The path wasn't wide but it was pretty flat and easily navigable apart from the odd thorny bush sticking out. We quite regularly picked up and passed under the M11 motorway (which runs fifty-five miles north to near Cambridge) and by pylons but we only passed a handful of dog walkers and, truth be told, there was not a great deal of interesting stuff to take in. It gave us a lot of time to chat about other things.
Just before we would have crossed under a railway bridge, and after consulting with a friendly local, we came off the Roding and headed over a couple of rugby fields to the edge of Buckhurst Hill (strictly speaking in Essex but still inside the M25 so still within the LbF remit) for a brace of pints (for me and Colin at least, Patricia had a half and a pink lemonade) at The Monkhams. We were the only ones sat outside but inside it seemed friendly enough as Brentford played out an all too predictable 3-1 victory over a Man Utd team who are already flirting with relegation.
Once we left the pub and made our way back to the Roding, through rugby fields again - very much a theme of the day, the weather had improved. The sky looked bluer and Roding Valley Lake (which Pam, Shep, and I had passed through on the London LOOP back in 2019) looked glorious even if we weren't at the magic hour just yet.
We passed the Roding Valley Cricket Club and a bench that somehow reminded me of War of the Worlds (and has ended up as the blog cover star) before we came to a field where the path was blocked by a group of longhorn cattle. There was a gate between us and them but to follow the given route we would have needed to open that gate.
Thoughts of the bullocks of Buxton came flooding back and though Colin was up for getting amongst them, Patricia was less keen. I wasn't sure but thought it best to err on the side of the caution. We'd only be missing a little bit of the walk and why take the risk? I suspect the cattle would have just let us past but I can't be certain and each one of them was quite a unit. At least they helpfully posed for photos.
So we bade adieu to the Roding for the last time on the walk and headed up Alderton Hall Lane and into Poundfield Road where we saw a blue plaque to war hero William Sparks (he was the last survivor of the 'Cockleshell Heroes' in 1942's Operation Frankton in Bordeaux - they paddled 85 miles up the Gironde estaury to place limpet mines on merchant ships supplying the Nazis), some kind of statue of a gryphon or something (the suburbs of London are full of weird and wonderful Forteana), and The Black Deer pub.
Which, despite its rustic sounding name, is very much a council estate pub. In fact it's more like a social club. We weren't certain at first and the landlady came out to ask us what we were doing hanging around. Politely. So we went in and had a cheap pint while England beat Canada 33-13 on the big screen to win the women's rugby world cup final.
Leaving The Black Deer, we headed down Traps Hill (we were all surprised at how we had somehow climbed) and passed some very nice big houses on the way to Loughton High Road where we took another drink in The Hollybush pub.
Loughton has an Iron Age fort (Loughton Camp), a mention in The Domesday Book, and is the headquarters of no less a company than Clinton Cards. Loughton Hall was once owned by Mary Tudor though it now serves as a care home and the now demolished Wake Arms pub once hosted the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Status Quo, and Van Der Graaf Generator. It's said that Ray Dorset of Mungo Jerry got his big break there.
Other Loughton notables, musical and otherwise, include Mark Knopfler (who lectured at the local college), Matt Johnson of The The (whose parents ran a pub in Loughton), the comedian, actor and tramp biter Alan Davies, and Thomas Willingale who is said to be the man who saved Epping Forest.
Our plan had been to get a curry in the highly recommended Grand Cholan but on arrival they were fully booked (so very highly recommended) which proved only a minor disappointment as we repaired to the nearby Forest Tandoori. I had korai tofu with a chapati and though the tomatoes and peppers were great the tofu itself was overly chewy and not that tasty and there was too much onion for my liking.
The Cobras washed it down well and the poppadums and dips had been good but I couldn't help eyeing up Colin's jackfruit biryani as he raged against incorrect use of apostrophes and English people pronouncing the letter z as zee rather than zed. He was on happier ground when the subject turned to watches although I was surprised he had never heard of the Braddon. A wrist chronograph for the ages and possibly the worst watch the world has ever seen.
From the curry house, we were all done so we took the short walk down to Loughton tube and got the Central Line together. I hopped off at Bank, took the Northern Line to Elephant & Castle, and a 63 bus home to watch (some of) Match of the Day (Palace had beaten Liverpool to go second in the league and become the only unbeaten Premiership team of the season) while Colin and Patricia headed off to Shepherd's Bush to pick up the Oxford Tube back to Oxford.
It hadn't been the most eventful or picturesque walk but it had been a fun one and I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks to Colin and Patricia for joining me and to Colin for the map and (some of) the snaps included here. London by Foot go again next month in a Pogues themed walk (Transmetropolitan) but before that the TADS are back with this year's penultimate walk. A yomp from Meopham to Swanley that I have hilariously called Kentish Countryside. See (some of) you soon.
