Peninsula Pandemonium.

Last month (last month!!! - what a slacker) I was pleased and proud to lead the London by Foot walking group (or at least some of them) on a walk I'd called Peninsula Pandemonium. It wasn't the longest walk and it did cover some ground that some of us had covered before - but it also took in areas that were unfamiliar to the vast majority of us. It was, for the most part, a fun day.

 

It had started early. Id taken the bus from Peckham down to Rotherhithe, Millwall fans were supping from cans and sitting outside pubs early doors as the football season got under way, and made my way (via signs pointing to Norwegian and Finnish churches - the first clue to the area's commercial identity) to H's Cafe on Neptune Street.

A place "where you know you've had a sandwich". I didn't have a sandwich though. I had chips'n'beans with bread and butter and a cup of tea and in the cafe I met with Bee, Pam, Mo, Vicky, Roxanne, Clive, Katie, and Rodney. A walk I thought would be poorly attended suddenly had nine people on it and, on leaving H's, that soon became ten as international man of mystery Eamon appeared. The sun was out, the gang was out, the walk was flat. It felt like an enjoyable day was ahead of us. As long as I don't take a wrong turn. With great power comes great responsibility (snort!)

We made our way to the rather lovely Southwark Park and it was here I dished out my first piece of spiel. Remarkably, I resisted doing so from the bandstand (what's wrong with me, need to get my mojo back). The sixty-three acre Southwark Park first opened in 1869 and was designed by Alexander McKenzie. Its Old English Cottage however is the work of another man, our old friend Colonel JJ Sexby (as I regularly joke, he had a surprisingly light touch for a military man).

Sexby's work can also be seen in Dulwich Park, Peckham Rye Park, Brockwell Park, Hilly Fields, and Ruskin Park among others) and the man is surely crying out for a walk to be devoted entirely to him. Back in Southwark Park it was time to round up some of the various trees there:- standard plane trees but also rarer ones:- a red oak, a walnut tree, three silver maples, and two swamp cypresses. When the Queen bought the farm a couple of years back the queue to Westminster Abbey to gawk, sorry - pay respects, stretched all the way back to this very park.

Through the park we went and out on to Hawkstone Road, past Surrey Quays station (very familiar territory for Rodney), the Surrey Docks pub (a 'Spoons), past some rather lovely murals depicting the area's maritime history, and out on to Greenland Dock, the oldest of London's wet docks.

Now used purely for recreational purposes. it was originally laid out between 1695 and 1699 on land owned by the 1st Duke of Bedford. From the 1720s it was surrounded by some rather unpleasant sounding blubber boiling houses (making oil) and that gave it the name Greenland Dock. Presumably the whales were caught around Greenland. Before that the dock was called the Howland Great Wet Dock. When the blubber trade dried up, the dock pivoted to timber.

Statues, traditional and curious, line the sides of the dock and there's also a sign from many years ago warning people not to swim in the docks as people have died doing so. One of the less generous members of the group, someone who is on record as saying they hate ALL people, said that far more people would drown these days because people are more stupid these days.

Negativity like that doesn't sit well with me and it's not wanted on my walks but I ignored it (for the moment) and we continued on in to Russia Dock Woodland, a place I'd only discovered in the last few years and quite a find it was too. I was pleased to introduce the others to it.

Russia Dock Woodland was created by infilling one of the old Surrey Commercial Docks - the former Russia Dock (which dealt with dead wood from Russia, Sweden, and Norway for newsprint and furniture). There's a series of winding paths, bug hotels, playgrounds for kids, curious seats and in Stave Hill, a 30ft high artificial mound with a viewing platform in which you can admire the skyscrapers across the Thames or take in a cast bronze by Michael Rizzello. Most of us went up and had a look while Bee hung around under a lamp post. If she'd still been there when it got dark she'd have been able to extract a shilling or five from a costermonger for a glimpse of her ankle.

We came out of the park, not exactly where I intended but near enough, on Nelson Walk (cutting under the route of the London Marathon) and then passed through Pearsons Park and Durand's Wharf and picking up a stretch of the Thames Path that Pam, Mo and myself had covered before.

Near Durand's Wharf we took a break and a drink in The Ship & Whale pub and on leaving that pub Katie was the first to depart the group. Some of us took a pointless, but pretty, little bridge back over Greenland Dock and others walked along South Sea Street. We all soon reached South Dock and did a little walk around it. It was an easy walk, flat and relatively short, but it was a squiggly one.

South Dock, near the excellently named Calypso Way, was built between 1807 and 1811 and was originally called East Country Dock. It was mainly used for timber and grain and during World War II it was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe. From the 1960s onwards the container ships became too big for South Dock and most of the industry moved out to Tilbury. South Dock, like most of the others, is now full of yachts. Do you yacht?

I hadn't really done any spiel for the rest of the walk through Deptford and Greenwich because it's been covered before in other walks but we passed through Pepys Park and The Dog and Bell looked so inviting it was inevitable we would make another stop. Which we did. A rather delightful one for most of us I believe. So good to sit in a pub and chat with nice people. Much better than doomscrolling through one's mobile phone. That'll only make you angry.

On leaving the pub we passed Twinkle Park, some graffiti informing us that STEVE NOLLER WEARS FLARES (is this the eighties?), a staircase that led to nowhere but made a great viewing (or indeed spieling) platform, some curious sculptures, and some mossy rotting wood constructions in the river that proved highly photogenic.

The weird statue of Peter the Great now has his favourite court dwarf covered up and a young lady sat on the seat which forms part of the statues got chatting to Roxanne, Clive, and myself. We explained how Peter the Great had come to Deptford to learn about shipbuilding and she said she didn't know that London had a history of shipbuilding! I pointed to the Cutty Sark, highly visible from here, as a very famous example of that history.

On reaching Greenwich and that Cutty Sark, I'd come up with a couple of different options for people. I suggested going through the foot tunnel (which Mo vetoed) or going through Greenwich Park (which Mo also vetoed despite it being, literally, a walk in the park). No dice so instead I suggested we just head past the Naval College and to The Plume of Feathers pub.

So that's what we did. Past The Trafalgar Tavern (where I had my 40th birthday party - seems a long time ago now) and its statue of Nelson and down Park Row where Roxanne and Clive said goodbye. I walked Mo and Vicky back to Maze Hill station and then headed to The Plume of Feathers (a Crystal Palace FC pub or at least it used to be) where I met again with Pam, Bee, Eamon, and Rodney. As well as the pub cat.

We'd finished earlier than planned because of missing out on the park and the foot tunnel (and the cable cars but that's a whole different story) so we were quite enthusiastically refreshed by the time we arrived in Mountain View Nepali restaurant for our curry (Eamon having dropped out after the final pub). 

It being over a month ago I can't actually remember what I had to eat but I remember it was pretty good and photographic evidence suggests Gurkha beer and mint chocolates were involved at some point. Pam and Bee headed back to Maze Hill station and Rodney and I to Cutty Sark DLR - although we managed to stop for a sneaky last drink in The Coach & Horses - to head home.

Thanks to Bee, Mo, Pam, Roxanne, Clive, Rodney, Katie, Vicky, and Eamon for the day (and for the snaps included here) and the next LbF walk will be in October. The previously postponed (possibly more than once) Homes for Heroes around the untested streets of Becontree. Come and join us - and stay positive.