Finsbury Park to Stoke Newington

Saturday January 3, 2009:

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day to begin our project of walking the Capital Ring. A brilliant winter sun gleamed low from a clear winter blue sky. The frosty mud crackled beneath our boots, the air cold and fresh buffed our quickly warming cheeks. Bar the occasional panting jogger, not a soul was about.

We climbed the newly fixed stairs running between 97 and 99 Florence Road and which lead up to the Parkland walk, London’s longest nature reserve. Above the houses, we walk between bare graceful ashes and oaks, fringed by tangled thorn and brier on a rutted path in which muddy puddles have frozen.

We share Finsbury Park with the geese. Only their hooting and the rumble of the Cambridge train disturb the stillness of the winter morning. The roar of Green Lanes is a temporary assault upon our peace before receding as we turn into the New River walk.

Edging past a tree and skirting a tumble of discarded cans , we step carefully along the canal bank. Gazing at us incuriously sit three coots. Beyond them, the frozen canal has captured a football, ice-bound and still. The backs of dishevelled flats on our right and slightly down at heal industrial units on our left flank the ribbon of green, edging the half frozen sluggish canal. This is the New river, which once brought fresh drinking water to teeming London a hundred years ago.

Squeezing through a kissing gate, we dodge the insanity of seven sisters Road before finding our way back to the quiet canal. The traffic recedes behind the scruffy blocks of flats of the Woodbury Down estate and we walk on.

I talk of a meeting with a pair of swans and their signets last summer. They had sat by the footpath watching us. My companions that day had been nervous, remembering that a cross swan could break a man’s leg with one flap of their wing. I had sung to the swans as we approached them, a gentle song about the beauty of the silent swan. Calmed, my companions walked by, the swans watching our progress, still and unruffled.

And there on the canal bank are some swans. Surely these are the same? Six almost grown signets, still grey and fluffy and their dame, white and magnificent. And not far beyond them the other parent watches to see that his brood is safe. As we walk past, they honk and snort as though to say, “Oh look, another human on a morning walk – boring!”.

Across another road flanked by two more kissing gates, we move onto the path leading to the West reservoir. The Canal runs between us and it, and provides a barrier beyond which flocks of merrily quacking ducks loiter in untidy groups. Further away, three long legged white birds which are not herons and are unknown to my companion hang out like gossiping neighbours on a street corner. Out on the water, a white bird belts along like a speed-boat and beyond it, geese honk like poorly oiled metal gates.

The second reservoir is entirely another matter. It is neat and tidy. The bird life here is less in evidence. We move quickly now, for I have begun to regret the large cup of early morning tea and need fairly swiftly to find a toilet. Alas, the reservoir centre is closed, but relief is found in the Climbing Centre opposite, a former Victorian water tower built like a castle, complete with different shaped turrets and crenulations in the butch Scottish style.

A short walk down Green Lanes brings us to Clissold Park. There is a very fetching little cottage on the left just inside the gate. We wonder if it is a private residence or something to do with the park. We speculate on what it would be like to live in it and have the whole park as a back garden.

Soon we hear the distinctive sound of water going somewhere in a hurry. Could this be the new River with a new lease of life? We head towards a tumbling water feature and a frozen lake. Here, ducks skate happily on the ice then scoot into the churning water. A babble of honking, snorts, quacks and hoots competes with the white noise of the fountain.

We walk on, bent on finding a refreshing cuppa and maybe a nice cake too. Someone is standing on the grass nearby doing something energetically marshal arty. Deer lye down in a fenced off area, dogs and their owner’s dash about amongst toddling wayward children and their admonishing parents. The sun lures us to sit outside the café and bask whilst munching on home-made shortbread.

Time to move on. We pass someone else doing a noisier and jerky form of marshal art, watched by his cohorts. WE walk between two churches and out onto Stoke Newington Church Street. Turning left, we march up the obstacle strewn pavements, past posh cafes, book stores, a double-bass shop and someone setting out bric-a-brac on the pavement to sell.

To our left, the steps of Abney Park Cemetery lure us away from the bustle of a Stoke Newington Saturday into the peace and quiet of this nature reserve in the heart of the bustling city. Cracked and fallen headstones, ornate obelisks and tombs jumble together. Ivy rampages about in competition with the immovable carved Victorian wreaths.

On a breath of wind the pungence of wood smoke greets us. A log lies smoking and smouldering. Last year’s blackberries hang dried and unpicked, tangled with the dark hedges of the vigorous holly.

As though the greenery and the tombs willed it, the world beyond the walls of this place cannot be heard. Time moves on and so do we, moving out of the gates and back to the world.

Stoke Newington High Street is the end of this days walk. The 106 bus bears us back to Finsbury Park. Tired but exhilarated, I sink gladly into my chair beside the gas fire to snooze contentedly over the afternoon play.

Saturday January 3, 2009:

Intention

I love that time between Christmas and New Year. It’s a welcome pause, a time to reflect and to be before the world turns and we are vaulted into the everyday reality of another year. This is the time when I invite myself to withdraw behind thickly closed curtains, to curl up on the sofa with that book I meant to read for months, to occupy my fingers with slightly bobbly knitting lest they stray to the computer and temp me into checking my emails.

It’s a time to sigh deeply and nod off by the gas fire listening to the afternoon play on the radio, to wake again feeling slightly peckish and remember there are still Dunn’s mince pies in the fridge and Lady Gray tea to be brewed in that tea for one teapot.

Tea and mince pie in hand, thinking fleetingly of crumpets I settle down to savour the sweetness of the fruit and the citrus freshness of the tea. All is well in the world … oh if only time could stand still.

But this is the perfect time to go for a walk! When everyone else is cocooned indoors, the green and interesting places of the city are deserted. Only a hard core jogger or dog walker is to be met with, the fair weather walkers are nowhere to be seen and the nutter talking loudly on a mobile phone is somewhere else, possibly on a train! Alone and content one can walk peaceably admiring the winter stillness. Here, one can imagine that this is some secret country grove far away from the rumbling city and not a piece of green reclaimed from suburbia.

Walking the green spaces of London, one is never far away from a warming cuppa and a piece of cake or a flush toilet. What more could one want?

So on a day between the glitter of Christmas and the fizz of New Year, my companion and I walked the parkland Walk to Highgate and back. We met few people. Occasionally a bird would chirrup. The trees watched us pass as we picked our way through queen’s Wood. The more ordered paths of Highgate Wood invited us to perambulate, like two Victorian ladies taking thee air. We sat and enjoyed the peace on a bench dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Tina Grigg. We rested beneath the beech tree she loved, and admired the quiet stillness of the woods.

Via reviving tea and cakes in the Highgate Wood café, we bent our steps along a disconnected bit of the Parkland Walk to Alexander Palace Park. And as we walked, we talked of walks and decided that this year, we would do the Capital ring.

Ever one for doing something with purpose, I went home and meditated upon the idea. 78 miles of green walks linked by pleasant streets sounded like something even I could manage. An impossibility by myself (for I am blind); to walk with a companion who loves to walk and enjoys describing what she sees, what could be more congenial?

Over chocolate coconut macaroons and mint tea, I thought about my intention for this enterprise. The Capital Ring is the thread through the bead that is London, or perhaps to keep with the cake symbolism the jam through the doughnut. I would walk the Capital ring as an act of homage to this city, my own personal walking embrace for the place of my birth and domicile. I serve London in public life; why not quietly honour its magnificence by walking its green spaces?

So my intention in walking the capital ring is to honour and give thanks for this wonderful, diverse and vital city that is London – if you like, a walking embrace!