I’ve walked this path each morning for six months now. But I don’t mind. On my walk the sky runs for miles. On a clear day, I see the O2 Arena waiting for me three miles ahead. I’m joined with occasional companions, some with dogs, some with cycles.
I have earphones, usually unused. This walk has its own soundtrack. Birds chirp, waves lap and crash, instructors occasionally shout at rowers – specks on the river. The wind batters and blusters these open spaces. Sometimes I am walking as if in a storm and then I pity the rowers, still perhaps a touch envious of their bravery.
Much of the walk has London City airport’s runway across the river. It’s been mainly a plane park for a while now, though. I remember when busy, I stopped to watch take-offs and landings wondering where they are going, where they’ve been.
New buildings dot the skyline all long the walk but so too do imposing remnants of old London. An old flour mill guards the river across from the Excel Centre – convention centre turned pandemic hospital. This is the Millennium Mills – of the last millennium – now defunct, derelict. The ruins add intrigue and eeriness to the skyline. But it still centres £3.5 billion of redevelopment in Silvertown where it sits.
As I near the walk’s midpoint I see, bigger and bigger, a boat. But no, it’s a hotel, the Sunborn Yacht Hotel. It will serve afternoon tea for its guests soon enough.
I finish the outward leg in a quaint little square near Royal Victoria DLR accompanied with some funky semi-futuristic buildings. This whole area is a fight between the Victorian and the Twenty-First century people. I pop in the Tesco for a coffee most times.
Then I turn, come back just the way I came, back towards my uni work and my small student accommodation. In this walk I get peace, serenity and an escape from everything. I see my own scale and regain new perspective.
Below is the walk on Google Maps – but it doesnt quite get the route.
