A good 20km walk this morning on the anticlockwise London Loop (the Pool?), starting at the 294 bus terminus at Noak Hill (north of Harold Wood station). There was clear evidence of active deterrence (waymarking uprooted, blocked stiles, etc.) in various places. I arrived at Havering-atte-Bower and noted that the Royal Oak was all boarded up. There’s another pub in the village, just off-route to the south.
I continued down the avenue of Wellingtonias in Havering Park, then met a group of horse-people (not centaurs, you know what I mean) who were as surly as those in Havering had been joyful and welcoming. Then I hit the golf course and, after crossing a fairway, made my way up through a wisp of trees separating the two courses. It had been a thirsty start, but I was reserving my bottle of water for later. Suddenly, there it was — a snackbar on the golf course with a Ramblers Welcome sign.
TQ 48293 93484 — just where the Loop crosses the Redbridge/Havering borough boundary (the location’s obvious if you look at the OS map). Simple snacks, hot and cold drinks (including an impressive array of beers, though at 10am … orange juice was the order of the day).
On through Chigwell Row and Chigwell, famed for its residential excess, and over to the Central Line, breaking off for Roding Valley station (where, alas, the pub had no Covid-free cooks). Never mind, it’ll be pizza tonight.
Postscript: I needed to update the details of the pub and snackbar in my notes for the routes with which these places come into contact. This avalanched into a complete review of all my route-notes, compiling as I went a spreadsheet of locations with transport connections and/or refreshment and replenishment opportunities. The personal routes in London are now all updated with known changes made and another editing run of the text. There will still be typos, and the notes will need to change again, but for now, I have a reasonably up-to-date set of notes, and a means of maintaining consistency across routes.
Lwalks.London 