Walking Class Hero: Cake Walk

Welcome to Walking Class Hero a regular blog about walking and the walking environment. Whether you like walking on your own, with friends or in an organised group this blog will cover it. It’ll embrace walking in cities and towns and villages. Walking in the countryside and along the coast and up hills and down dales. Walking through parks and by rivers and across heath and down and moor. It’ll comment on public rights of way, access to open country, permissive paths, public urban space and countryside protection. Basically if you can walk there it’ll be in this blog.

Cake Walk (Saturday 30 May 2009)

Doesn’t the world seem a better place when the sun shines? It just makes you want to get out and go walking – provided of course you’ve slapped on your sun screen, plonked your hat on your head and perched your sunnies on your nose.

Saturday 30 May marked Get Walking Day (as well as Cup Final Day in England) and meant I was leading a walk from Tower Hill to Greenwich. (It’s no accident that the Ramblers chose 30/5 for Get Walking Day – it’s a nod to the recommended regime of 30 minutes walking 5 times a week.) There’s a big sun dial at Tower Hill and this simple technology was working like a dream on this bright sunny day. Round the outside is a frieze that portrays the history of London. I’d never really studied it before and was enchanted to see that above the segment detailing Wat Tyler’s Peasants Revolt of 1381 hovers a modern day Maggie Thatcher quite obviously not learning history’s lesson before her own implementation of Poll Tax.

As this was the walk that officially launched Get Walking Day there was a whole lot more than just waiting for people to arrive at the allotted place by the start time. There was a cake to distribute for one. And photos to take for another. All this palaver took up 30 minutes before we could all set off along the north bank of the Thames for Greenwich.

It doesn’t take long to get to Wapping. Now mostly gentrified and respectable this area of London has a dark and brutal past. On Wapping High Street hemmed in by its neighbours, a former warehouse and an elegant merchant’s house, you discover a delightful pub with the curious name of Town of Ramsgate. Men press-ganged into naval service were held in cellars at the pub while nearby at Execution Dock the condemned were hanged then chained to posts in the river with the tide rising over them 3 times before their bodies were removed.

From olde worlde London a little further along the river you come to the chrome and glass high rise panorama of Canary Wharf. This area of London contains the UK’s 3 tallest buildings. Bustling during the working week (but not so much since the recession) it can be quiet and deserted at weekends. Today’s sun had brought lots of people out to the cafes along the riverfront however.

Greenwich is of course on the south bank of the Thames and you get across the river by going under it. Greenwich foot tunnel is 370.2 m (1,217 ft) long and 15.2 m (50 ft) deep and contrary to popular misconception was designed by Sir Alexander Binnie and not Brunel. Work started on the project in 1899 and it was open for public use in 1902. The tunnel is also part of the UK’s National Cycle Route 1 linking Inverness and Dover, although cyclists are required to dismount and push their bikes through the tunnel itself.

I left most of the group to enjoy the history and splendour of Greenwich (particularly the market) while I went off in search of a pub to watch Chelsea beat Everton 2-1 and clinch the FA Cup.
 
Get Walking Day was a tremendous success up and down the country. Over 3000 people got involved on the day with about a third of those being new to the Ramblers. Best of all though is that many of these have pledged to walk more in the future.

More information
OS Map used – Explorer 161 London South
Pay less when you order this map here: http://www.ramblers.org.uk/fundraising/shop/anquet-map.htm

See the route here: http://www.mapmyrun.com/walk/united-kingdom/london/458123979933116013

Useful links:
o The Ramblers     http://www.ramblers.org.uk/
o Get Walking Day   http://www.ramblers.org.uk/campaigns/GWD.htm
o Town of Ramsgate   http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/35/3590/Town_of_Ramsgate/Wapping
o Canary Wharf    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf
o Greenwich Foot Tunnel  http://www.greenwich-guide.org.uk/tunnel.htm

Listen to:
http://www.last.fm/music/Richard+Harris/_/MacArthur+Park
http://www.last.fm/music/Gorillaz/_/Clint+Eastwood
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+Marley/_/Sun+Is+Shining
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Lovin%27+Spoonful/_/Summer+in+the+City