Walking from Becton to Crystal Palace (37km)

One of the reasons that I wanted to walk Capital Ring again was that I had not always mapped my walk (using, er, MapMyWalk) the first time so sections of it did not appear in my City Strides Life Map leaving a lot of white space in the Lewisham area.

Another reason was that I would not have gone to Woolwich if not for walking Capital Ring and I liked what I saw there, enough to want to see it again.

Capital Ring is 15 sections and 126km and my rough plan was four days of 30km each but that was a hard square to circle as the sections are of uneven lengths and SE London has two long sections (over 12km) which brought the four Sections 15 to 3 up to 37km.

I suspect that the sections are longer in SE London because of the relative lack of public transport for convenient start/end points and that certainly made this day harder than the others, it took me best part of two hours to get to the start point and more than that to get home.

Woolwich was again my highlight of the walk and I would have liked more time to explore (the app actually made me walk further than I needed to, which was a bonus!).

Woolwich is one the up and there is no greater proof of that than this collection of sculptures, Assembly by Peter Burke. There was also a trendy cafe next to it where I had a coffee and cake break.

After that it was a succession of parks and hills, none of which were particularly remarkable.

This is Oxleas Wood and, to be honest, is not the sort of view I go walk for; give me buildings any day.

The relentless stream of parks and suburban roads meant no pubs for several hours and I finally got a much needed pint in a Wetherspoons in Brixton; why Brixton and why a Spoons is a story that does not need to be told.

That only leaves three sections of Capital Ring to go and, while that is essentially home turf, I am quite looking forward to it.