Following on from my hypothetical increasing road journey last week, I wondered about trying it with the names of the roads rather than the numbers.
How far can I get from home by following roads in alphabetical order?
I live on Bow Road, which is a very good start. If I lived on Violet Road or Wick Lane I'd not get far.
On leaving home I can either head towards the Bow Roundabout or head towards Mile End.
If I head towards the Bow Roundabout I can't join the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road because that breaks the alphabetical order rule. Instead I have to continue across to Stratford High Street, which is officially called 'High Street' so that's an H. But I can't get as far as the Stratford inner ring road because the two roads there start with B and G so I need to turn off early. Options are limited but the best option is up Marshgate Lane into the Olympic Park. From here Sidings Street would take me to Westfield Avenue and the big shopping mall, just over a mile from home. In a few weeks time Marshgate Lane is going to be extended via Marshgate Terrace to Waterden Road, and that could get me 1½ miles to the northern edge of the park. But none of these are my best option, which means I won't be heading for the Bow Roundabout and this entire paragraph has been an exemplary diversion.
Best head towards Mile End.
Bow Road is hemmed in somewhat between two railways so there are few good means of escape. Campbell Road looks promising to the south, especially as it leads to Devons Road, but alas the best two roads across the canal both start with B. Meanwhile both Fairfield Road and Coborn Road lead north to Tredegar Road which leads to Wick Lane and this'd get me to the edge of Victoria Park, but that's not even a mile.
The odd thing about Bow Road is that it stops being called Bow Road well before the big crossroads where you'd expect a name change. The actual switch is at the end of Coborn Road, today a relatively insignificant street but originally the dividing line between the boroughs of Poplar and Stepney.
From here the main road becomes Mile End Road so I need to follow this west, and that's a fair chunk of alphabet used up already.
Grove Road and Burdett Road are now out of bounds, which is a shame because the latter leads to Commercial Road and from there I could have reached the North Circular.
Mile End Road continues for over a mile and eventually morphs into Whitechapel Road. I could go that far, and would were I trying to keep things simple, but instead I've chosen to divert off onto a historic (and lesser blogged) road.
Stepney Green looks unexpectedly characterful as you enter, curving between two Georgian terraces, one of which includes a painted advert for Daren bread above a former bakery. It gets even better around the bend as a thin strip of garden divides the street, resplendent with plane trees and chopped up by railings into four separate dogwalking segments. Down one side the road is narrow with bluish-tinged cobbles and an almost Dickensian feel, while the other is where folk park their cars and is overlooked by mid 20th-century flats. The finer mansion blocks predate the war, but the majority merely fill the gaps the Germans left.
The little clock tower by the park was moved here from Burdett Road in 1934 and has a door in one side for the benefit of whoever services the innards. Beyond is an older water fountain installed by a temperance supporter and inscribed with a poem which begins "Clear brain and sympathetic heart". The clock works better than the fountain. One end of a ruined chapel lingers at the top of Garden Street, secure behind railings erected by Crossrail project team C360. They've been building a shaft beside the City Farm for several years, marking the junction where the two eastern branches converge, and may soon finally be packing away their portakabins and returning the park to the people.
My next road, by an alphabetical whisker, is Stepney High Street. Conveniently I blogged about it earlier in the year as an example of a now-insignificant high street, so won't redescribe its few stunted metres, save to say it passes East London's oldest church and some goats.
My route is becoming more and more forced as my progress through the alphabet continues. But I have been very fortunate in the order these three consecutive Stepney streets appear.
Time to head back west along Stepney Way, one of London's many despoiled former country lanes. Architecturally it can't hold a candle to the delights of Stepney Green, having had all the character redeveloped out of it over the years. It's flats flats flats almost all the way, which is most of a mile, from low municipal fortresses to pre-war blocks with linear balconies. Interruptions come from a former Trumans pub (now a Halal Grill House), the Redcoat Centre (hosting what Tower Hamlets euphemistically call 'Day Opportunities') and an abandoned open-top Saab (outside what used to be The Artichoke).
At this point the 21st century massively intrudes, as Stepney Way ducks underneath the twin towers of the rebuilt Royal London Hospital. On one side of the tunnel is where the paramedics park up and the ambulances pull in, while on the other is the Urgent Treatment Centre's starkly-lit waiting area set out with widely-spaced yellow plastic chairs. Adverts on vehicles and windows urge you to donate to London's Air Ambulance, which could just be taking off from its rooftop helipad 18 floors above your head.
Turner Street is my only alphabetical way out, a road previously consumed by the hospital. Its northern section is where ambulances used to pull in to deliver patients to the previous A&E department - I remember it well. But these days it's much quieter, a service road for authorised vehicles only and a cut-through for medical staff on foot. And very conveniently it leads back to the A11, which I unnecessarily deserted several paragraphs back.
Mile End Road has now become Whitechapel Road, the changeover occurring back at the crossroads by the Blind Beggar pub. I've rejoined just after the market and just before the road narrows down on its approach to the City. The biggest building on this stretch is the East London Mosque, around which has grown up a cluster of shops selling prayer mats, abayas and 'modestwear'. The much-beleaguered Whitechapel Bell Foundry follows, the fight still on to prevent it evolving into some hideous luxury hotel with heritage cafe space. Altab Ali Park is the site of long-levelled St Mary's church, the original White Chapel, and much beloved by pigeons. And just beyond this Whitechapel Road becomes Whitechapel High Street, and I'm very much not allowed to go there.
I have one last throw of the dice, which is White Church Lane. This 100m one-way backstreet kicks off with a stone fountain and a graffitied red phone box, then narrows to a minor artery where the rag trade still pays. Drapers wait behind counters inside bazaars stuffed with fabrics, hats and jackets, or nip out to collect another delivery of baseball caps emblazoned with cannabis leaves in Jamaican colours. Annoyingly White Church Lane no longer has any streetsigns for me to photograph because the buildings they would have been attached to have been demolished. One's still flattened land and the other's now a luxury aparthotel without need of additional exterior signage.
And White Church Lane is, unsurprisingly, the final road in my chain. I've ended up at the western end of Commercial Road, not far from Aldgate, and 2½ miles from home. That's not a bad distance to have reached alphabetically, especially in inner London where roads are generally only short. I got lucky with my Bow/Mile End/Whitechapel chain, but I could have been luckier, and if you live on a long winding lane in the countryside you might be luckier still. Better still my Stepney diversion meant I walked over 3 miles to get here and passed a fascinating slice of London along the way. Not so much A to Z as B to W.
Bow Road → Mile End Road → Stepney Green → Stepney High Street → Stepney Way → Turner Street → Whitechapel Road → White Church Lane
