NCN 1 Limehouse to Chelmsford - a day's cycle ride from London

Stage 3 - London to Chelmsford - 84.km

To read the previous post, click here.
Covid has eased its grip and the country is free to go about its business. Workplaces are open, as are pubs and restaurants, but there are warnings of a second wave, and the potential of another lockdown.

Journal Note
The National Cycle Network Route 1 links just about every port and dock along the length of Britain’s east coast. Except London, the greatest port of them all. It seems to purposely by-pass London. It slinks through the south-eastern industrial lands bordering the Thames, runnels under the Thames in a tunnel and shoots off north alongside the River Lee, gasping to be out of the City.

Journal Note written in Limehouse Basin
No one is about other than a few Eastern European workers resplendent in their yellow gilets, taking a break from their building work, sitting in their yellow gilets, on a concrete wall eating factory farmed chicken sandwiches and drinking Diet Coke. It’s eerie. I’ve never seen a London like this before. Empty. Completely empty, save for these few construction workers.

Journal Note in Bow
I slalom through the lines in the middle of the road as there are no cars in London to kill me with. I do it for the hell of it because I can in these weird times. If a wheel touches a white line I’ll be eaten by bears. It’s harder than I thought and I was eaten by bears.

WhatsApp message home
I am riding through a post-apocalyptic London. There are green shoots rising out of cracks in the road.
Hawthorn bushes are spreading across the cycle paths.
And there is no one here.
They have all escaped.

Opening Line in Richard Jefferies’ Out of London (1885)
‘It became green everywhere in the first spring, after London ended, so that all the country looked alike.’

Journal Note in Hackney, North London
Trees are growing in time-cracked walls, ivy and nettles conceal the crumbling mass of brick.

Journal note written alongside the Lea Navigation Canal in the North of London
Trees are growing in time-cracked walls, ivy and nettles conceal the crumbling mass of brick.
The canal water is filled with gyrating leaves. Longboats line the edges of the canal, like lorries in a traffic jam. Their chimneys spiral grey fumes of coal and dope into the air. They are the smoking dens for the young. Every vertical surface is sprayed with paint. Graffiti or wall art? Not sure which.

Journal note, Enfield Lock.
Here is the home of the rifles
which fired the bullets
which gained an Empire.
The Buildings still remain
but as homes
for the Empire’s inheritors.

A sign at Enfield Lock reads; ‘Once famed for its fishing, the river (Lee) runs from the hills of Hertfordshire to the Thames. It supplied fresh country water to London. However, it was for small arms, rifles and gunpowder that it became particularly known. Now its banks carry a Green Flag award, and the modern metal sheds alongside it are the settings for TV shows like Big Brother’.

Journal note written alongside the River Lee
A ride of straight lines
Canals
Pylons
hedges
we are all, they and me -
going in the same direction.

A ride of deep greens
Verdi-gris
Absinthe
Tere-vert
Green tea

Willows bend in the wind

Journal Note North of London
Somewhere I must have passed through London. It was hiding behind a hedge of willow and thorn.
Roofs of grey sheds. Pylons. A chimney of a recycling plant, billowing steam into the sky.
There were the clues that there was once a city nearby.

Journal Note on a canal south of Roydon
They walked six abreast along the towpath blocking my way like Spartans on the pass, dropping consonants behind them.
I stopped. They encircled.
Nice bike said one, taking a swig from a can and stroking the metal frame.
A little fear chilled me and I forged a smile.
”Cost a lot I bet',’ said the one with spiky hair.
A spit of beer fell upon my cheek. It stung, but I did not wipe it off.
’Where you going’? said a cropped blond man with acne colouring his soft face.
’Maldon’, I said
’Fucking Maldon on a push bike’?
’Yes’, I said
’Where’ve ye come from’? said another, waving a can of cider.
’London.’
’Fucking hell’, he said, “today’?
’Yes’, I said
’Fucking respect’, he replied, that’s what.
And a way was parted that allowed me through.
”Good on ya, mate,’ I heard one shout, as I briskly pedalled away. ‘Respect’.

WhatsApp message home
I failed to check the forecast before I left this morning. It has become very dark. Strong wind. I think there is rain waiting for me. I’ve not brought a rain jacket.

WhatsApp message home
1 p.m. Lunchtime is early in Harlow - 4 bakeries and no food, other than these last 2 luke-warm sausage rolls. (photo attached)
Harlow seems very poor and run down.

Journal NoteI written over lunch in Harlow
This is a very drab town. Moulding concrete, young girls pushing babies in push=chairs, both with bad skin and heavy eyes. Wind shuffles litter. I did not expect to see such poverty in the prosperous south of England.

Google Search
Harlow is ranked 101/327 local authorities for deprivation.

Journal note written on the narrow lanes out of Harlow
Litter everywhere with plastic bottles growing as fruit on thorns. Wrappers curl around the feet of hawthorns like children hanging onto their daddy’s legs.

Journal note on the outskirts of Harlow
Dark green trees at the end of their season, sway in the winds of early autumn around the gravel pits filled with grey water. I ride on a shared path, alongside a choked dual-carriageway which is lined with huge chain stores and burger drive-thrus. No-one is going very far, nor fast. Bored faces stare at me through glass windows and I want to knock on their windows telling them to ‘get a bike.’ I’ll be out of Harlow long before they change out of first gear.

Journal note written in the cold, damp wind on the far side of Harlow
Out of town, white bow-fronted houses with leaded double-glazed rhomboid window panes, one identical to another for miles and miles without end. Always two cars parked on the paved driveways. End-of-summer marigolds glare in tight little beds. One small plant no more than 10cm high, two metres apart. It looks like floral distancing. These beds encircle small squares of neatly mown grass. Everything is just-so. The societal pressure to maintain standards must be huge.

Journal entry written under an oak tree beside a lane edged with sand - somewhere near Chelmsford
A cold drizzle and a dark sky are dampening what remaining enthusiasm I was carrying for new places, sights and sounds. I am sure, that a bit of inclement weather never stopped Defoe from observing. Strong wind on my back pushing me along. The curving lanes are quiet, whilst jackdaws squabble in the ash tree boughs. Pigeons glean corn in the harvested fields, until both they and I spot a sparrow hawk patrolling the skies and the pigeons flee into the safety of trees. The few houses that there are, have been built to look old with beams and plaster and leaded diamond windows in a PVC frame. Each has a curving gravel driveway on which stands a large and sparkling car. I’ve ridden miles without seeing a tractor nor car. An empty land. No one about. Just me in Essex.

Defoe on Chelmsford
“….even Chelmsford itself, (has) very little to be said of (it) but it is a large thorough-fare town, full of good inns, and chiefly maintained by the excessive multitude of carriers and passengers, which are constantly passing this way to London with drops of cattle, provisions and manufactures for London..”

Journal entry written in Chelmsford’s Cathedral
The hand sanitiser has replaced Holy Water, as the Sacred liquid, designed to cleanse all sin. I am welcomed by a lady verger and then left alone to sit. I am jaded, wet and cold. The grey day was not there for the enjoying.
The cathedral does not lift my spirits, as most cathedrals do. This is because it calls itself a cathedral, but it’s really just a very big parish church. In times past, the citizens would have built a monument worthy of the name Cathedral. They would not have re-cycled an old Parish Church and plonked a Bishop’s Cathedra in it, to rename it ‘Cathedral’. It rather smacks of cheap times - or a lack of faith.
The Cathedral - dare I call it that? - needs Jocelin, the Dean who built the spire of Salisbury’s Spire, in William Golding’s novel, ‘The Spire’. It cries out for something spectacular to lift it from the mundane.

Continuum
I don’t fancy staying here in Chelmsford with its windy squares and streets lined with chain stores. We are both downcast the town and I, so I cycle to the station and catch a train home to London

Journal written on Chelmsford Railway Station waiting for a train back to London
Municipal parks planted with salvias, an endless stream of gyms and chain coffee stores. If it’s not red brick, its Brutalist concrete with as much aesthetic appeal as a dustbin. There are no plants nor trees in the city centre. Wind sends discarded soft drink bottles and stained coffee cups scurrying to corners, skirts and coats uplift, hoods are whipped off heads.

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