An east London loop

I have got in to the good habit of going for longish walks with my two sons every couple of months. These are opportunities for long chats, normally about how the world is going to hell in a handcart, and for exploring new places.

We generally agreed to head east from Tower Hill, where they both live, and Howard put the main effort into planning the detail.

Understandably the route started with a pretty route past lots of street art to Victoria Park and having emerged from there we stopped for a coffee in a mega-trendy bakery in Hampton Wick.

The next stage was The Greenway, a 7km walk on the embankment containing the Joseph Bazalgette Northern Outfall Sewer. That meant that it had no cafes or pubs along the route, hence the coffee in Hampton Wick.

I had walked that section a few times before, not leat because it is part of Capital Ring.

Coincidentally, I had just had a Twitter conversation with some fellow walkers about fingerposts and next to the Olympic Stadium (now home to West Ham FC) we saw several examples of ones I had been complaining about; this one tells you that you are heading for Stratford but does not tell you how far away it is.

The closest we got a seeing a walking distance was later on when some signs had cycling times on them. We simple assumed that the walking time was about 3 times the cycling time.

I was very glad of the company as this is not the sort of terrain that I prefer to walk in, give me interesting buildings every time.

Eventually we got to Becton and we found Galyons Bar and Restaurant just a few minutes before the kitchen closed. They did a vegetarian breakfast so that was a quick and easy choice!

That was the far point of our journey and we headed west back towards Tower Hill, taking a fairly direct route due west rather than following the winding river.

London City Airport was something of a surprise. It is fairly long, as runways tend to be, but it could only have taken us around twenty minutes to walk past it and in that time four jets took off and two landed.

Beyond the airport it was interesting to note that there were several gaps in the development on the north side of the old dock and the office blocks that had been built looked as though they had low value client.

We decided that the next section was too familiar and lacked much of interest so having done 21 km we took the DLR a few stops from Royal Albert to Poplar.

The last leg of 6km was very familiar and there was little point in trying to find alternative routes, particularly as the A1203 and the river make two formidable barriers to the north and south.

With nothing very interesting to look at we found other things to talk about.

It was just after 3:30pm when I got to Tower Hill tube station by which time I had walked 27km. That is what I call a good walk and a good day out with my sons.