From Hammersmith to Limehouse

I have been continuing my regular long walks but have not written about one for a while partially because they have often covered familiar territory and mostly because I have not had the time. Guilt has forced me to finally post one.

The route was mostly my walking partners idea which I added to broadly beforehand and then refined the detail on the day as we went. The plan was to go through Holland Park and Hyde Park and then walk through the centre of London to the Tower. That did not look long enough to me so I added the bit that said carry on walking east until we get tired or bored. And that's what we did.

All the walks requiring us to get to the start by public transport mean joining the 8:57 queue at Richmond Station where all the people with senior citizen Oyster Cards wait for the barriers to open for our free transport when we all rush through to catch the tube that leaves a minute later.

The journey to Hammersmith is a short one and so we were soon walking.

Holland Park and Hyde Park are regular haunts simply because they are parks and they were a peaceful and inspiring start to the adventure.

The very different section through the centre of London started with the police escorting who I took to be Will and Kate out of Hyde Park. It got the tourists excited.

After that it was a case of trying to avoid people as much as possible so, for example, we walked along Jermyn Street rather than Piccadilly. This approach came in to its own in Holborn where, in avoiding Fleet Street, we took many narrow walkways that were new to both of us in an area we both knew reasonable well. 

After that we hit the river and followed it out of London as far as Limehouse Basin where the DLR was waiting to start our journey home again.

The walk was almost 21km and took us just over 4 hours, including a mandatory stop for coffee and cake in Hyde Park. Achieving a rate for 5km/hr was indication of how successful our scheme for avoiding people and main roads was, we can do 6km/hr if uninterrupted but this usually drops to 4km/hr when walking the streets of London.