I SPY Almost-LONDON the definitive DG guide to places a few yards over the border into Essex Part 1:Gunpowder Park
Location: Sewardstone Road, Waltham Abbey, Essex EN9 3GP [map] Very nearly in: the London Borough of Enfield Admission: free 5-word summary: reclaimed firing-range, now arty park Website:www.gunpowderpark.org Time to set aside: an afternoon, maybe
On a sunny summer's day, there are few things better (and cheaper) than visiting a country park. Gunpowder Park is one of the newest, opened three years ago on the site of an old munitions testing ground near Waltham Abbey. Don't worry, they've removed all the unexploded nitro-glycerine shells and tarted up the 250 acres a bit, because nobody would come and visit otherwise. Although it was a bit quiet here yesterday, with just six cars in the car park, so I had vast tracts of land all to myself for a lot of the time. Magic.
An awful lot of effort has gone into making this a 21st century park, even if at first glance it looks like a few fields and some woods. The park has been zoned into four distinct bio-regions, each with its own ecological identity. There's a "comprehensive network of surfaced paths accessible in all weathers", because cyclists and pushchairs are very important these days, and because some people hate mud. And there's a visitors centre in the top right hand corner of the park, cunningly constructed out of caged rubble, where you can use the toilets and change a nappy. I was expecting a café and gift shop but no, the shutters were down and the "exhibition space" was closed. At least the invisible park rangers had kindly left some maps in a waterproof box outside the door. Do take a map - you might miss some of the good bits otherwise.
Somebody let a crack team of landscape artists loose on Gunpowder Park. This is no ordinary country park, oh no, this is a "physical and virtual focal point for exploration, innovation, communication and collaboration.". Yeah, right. And that's why there are big swirly earthworks and lumpy mounds everywhere across the top half of the park - supposedly an arty manifestation of a "dynamic landform explosion". The design looks great on an aerial photo, but I must say I never realised I was walking around a giant picture until I got home and looked "from above" on the internet. The scorched landscape in the northern meadows has a "not quite all grown yet" feel to it, and a large area has had to be fenced off recently while some suspect underground utility shafts are investigated.
Further south is a large area of wet woodland, once the dominant ecosystem across these parts of the Lea Valley. I wandered into the heart of the Osier Marsh, along specially constructed wooden walkways, to view the wildlife in some old flooded gravel pits. They look far lovelier now that the Ministry of Defence has left and indigenous wildlife has taken over. A notice attached to one of the hides overlooking the East Pool advised us to look out for a pair of Mute Swans and their "three signets", but I couldn't see them. Nearby a French artist had set up four fluorescent tubes on a white board and called it a "Love Motel", in the hope that it would attract nocturnal insects to mate and feed on his sculpture. Alas the only animal life I spotted in the area were an Essex family out walking their pitbull, and an old man taking his poodle for a ride on a mobility scooter.
The remaining quadrant of the park is given over to arable farming. There are seven fields, each currently teeming with something thin and stalky that isn't quite ripe yet. I particularly enjoyed walking along the central footpath, up to the highest point of the park with views in all directions. To the east are the rolling hills above Sewardstone and Gilwell Park, to the south a chain of pylons snaking down the Lea Valley towards Ponders End, and to the north an utterly huge Sainsbury's warehouse conveniently located for the nearby M25. But best of all was that the footpath precisely followed the Greenwich meridian. I'm a sucker for any physical manifestation of the line of zero degrees longitude, and this mile-long rural trackway was a right charmer. South of the summit the path skirted the edge of one of the fields, along a precisely aligned "meridian hedgerow". What an utterly delightful idea. Why stand straddling the brass line in the tourist-packed courtyard at Greenwich when you could stand in an empty Essex field and pick zero-degree sloes and red berries instead?
Don't bother making the effort to visit if you're a confirmed townie or seek only some genuine countryside. But if you enjoy the experimentally rural, Gunpowder Park might well be worth a few hours exploration. by train: Enfield Lockby bus: 121, 491, 505 by bike: National Cycle Route 1by car: M25 J26
I SPY Almost-LONDON
On a sunny summer's day, there are few things better (and cheaper) than visiting a country park. Gunpowder Park is one of the newest, opened three years ago on the site of an old munitions testing ground near Waltham Abbey. Don't worry, they've removed all the unexploded nitro-glycerine shells and tarted up the 250 acres a bit, because nobody would come and visit otherwise. Although it was a bit quiet here yesterday, with just six cars in the car park, so I had vast tracts of land all to myself for a lot of the time. Magic.
Somebody let a crack team of landscape artists loose on Gunpowder Park. This is no ordinary country park, oh no, this is a "physical and virtual focal point for exploration, innovation, communication and collaboration.". Yeah, right. And that's why there are big swirly earthworks and lumpy mounds everywhere across the top half of the park - supposedly an arty manifestation of a "dynamic landform explosion". The design looks great on an aerial photo, but I must say I never realised I was walking around a giant picture until I got home and looked "from above" on the internet. The scorched landscape in the northern meadows has a "not quite all grown yet" feel to it, and a large area has had to be fenced off recently while some suspect underground utility shafts are investigated.
The remaining quadrant of the park is given over to arable farming. There are seven fields, each currently teeming with something thin and stalky that isn't quite ripe yet. I particularly enjoyed walking along the central footpath, up to the highest point of the park with views in all directions. To the east are the rolling hills above Sewardstone and Gilwell Park, to the south a chain of pylons snaking down the Lea Valley towards Ponders End, and to the north an utterly huge Sainsbury's warehouse conveniently located for the nearby M25. But best of all was that the footpath precisely followed the Greenwich meridian. I'm a sucker for any physical manifestation of the line of zero degrees longitude, and this mile-long rural trackway was a right charmer. South of the summit the path skirted the edge of one of the fields, along a precisely aligned "meridian hedgerow". What an utterly delightful idea. Why stand straddling the brass line in the tourist-packed courtyard at Greenwich when you could stand in an empty Essex field and pick zero-degree sloes and red berries instead?
I SPY Almost-LONDON