London Summer Walk
Saturday 26 August 2023 · 24.30 km · Elevation gain: 149 m · Steps: 32,616 · Moving time: 4h 49m
The Action Challenge London Summer Walk is a 25-kilometre loop around the Thames bend through Woolwich, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich and back — a stretch of the river that carries perhaps more concentrated industrial and military history than any other comparable length of the Thames. The route was organised by the same team behind the London to Brighton, and the format was familiar: event signs, rest stops, a start area on the common with the usual marquees and friendly atmosphere. What was less usual, at least for me, was my walking companion. Several of us had originally planned to do this one together; in the end it was just my youngest son Dash, who was thirteen at the time, who came along. We parked a couple of kilometres from the start using JustPark to find a spot at an accountancy firm closed for the weekend, and made our way to Woolwich Common for the eleven o'clock start.
Woolwich Common sits at the southern edge of one of England's longest-established military districts. The Royal Regiment of Artillery was raised by Royal Warrant at Woolwich in 1716, and the regiment moved from the Royal Arsenal to new barracks on the Common between 1776 and 1802. The Common itself — 74 acres of open ground — was used for artillery training and remained under military control for the better part of two centuries. The Royal Artillery Barracks that face it, completed in 1802, form the longest continuous Georgian façade in the country at 323 metres. By August 2023 the weather had set the scene with the variability that a bank holiday weekend reliably provides: the morning was clear enough at the start, but the sky had a theatrical quality to it throughout the day, the light shifting between brilliant sunshine and the kind of low, anvil-shaped stormclouds that produce the best photography and the worst walking conditions.
From the Common the route heads north to the river, crossing the Thames via the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. The tunnel opened on 26 October 1912, designed by Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice — who had also designed Vauxhall Bridge and the Rotherhithe Tunnel, and would go on to work on the Aswan Dam — and at 504 metres it is 134 metres longer than its more famous counterpart at Greenwich. It was built primarily for the workers of Woolwich and the Royal Docks who needed to cross the river on foot, and the white-tiled barrel vault, unchanged in its essentials since 1912, gives it an oddly time-suspended quality. Walking through it in the company of other challenge walkers — bib numbers, rucksacks, the painted "NO CYCLING / KEEP LEFT" arrows on the floor — it functions as both underpass and mild spectacle. Dash's verdict was broadly positive.
On the north bank the route heads east past London City Airport, which sits on the former Royal Docks in the London Borough of Newham. The airport was first proposed in 1981 by the chief executive of the newly formed London Docklands Development Corporation, developed by Mowlem between 1986 and 1987 on the site of what had been the largest enclosed dock system in the world, and officially opened by the Queen in November 1987. Its single runway — 1,508 metres, with a glide path angle of 5.5 degrees, still steep by European standards — means the aircraft using it are of limited types, and the approach and departure over the water is low enough that walkers on the riverside path are treated to an unusually close view of commercial aircraft coming in over the Thames. The route passes directly alongside the dock perimeter, and there were several aircraft movements while we were on this stretch that required very little effort to watch.
The route loops west around the tip of the Isle of Dogs and down the south side of the river past the O2 on Greenwich Peninsula. The O2 — originally the Millennium Dome, built to house the Millennium Experience exhibition and opened on 31 December 1999 — sits on a former gas works site that was one of the most contaminated in Europe before its remediation in the 1990s. The dome structure itself, designed by Richard Rogers and engineered by Buro Happold, is 365 metres in diameter and 52 metres high at its peak, its twelve yellow support masts corresponding to the months of the year. Its commercial reinvention as a live music and entertainment venue from 2007 onwards has proved considerably more durable than its original purpose, and from the south bank of the river the scale of the thing — the white roof, the masts, the surrounding towers of the Peninsula development — is properly impressive under a stormy August sky.
The return leg follows the south bank of the Thames back east towards Woolwich, through Charlton and past the Woolwich Dockyard, with the developing skyline of the north shore visible across the water. The afternoon brought the heavy showers that had been threatening since lunchtime, and the rest stops and marquees along the route proved their worth. Dash managed the whole 24 kilometres without complaint and with rather more energy in reserve at the end than seemed entirely fair. We arrived back at Woolwich Common in time to eat chicken burgers and chips in the marquee while the heaviest rain passed overhead, then made our way back to the car.
Totals for the day: 24.30 km, 149 metres of elevation gain, 32,616 steps, and a moving time of four hours and forty-nine minutes. A Relative Effort score of 80 — modest by the standards of the events either side of it in the calendar, but a solid afternoon's walking in changeable weather, and the only walk in this series done with Dash for company.
