Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Last spring I wrote a post bemoaning the lack of hills within walking distance of my home. Bow is depressingly far from any significant contours, which is one of the downsides of living by an estuary. But I wasn't going to let a full year go by without climbing something, so yesterday I hiked up the Lea to the nearest point I'd identified as a significant slope. That's Springfield Park, a Hackney jewel with a decent gradient squished inbetween Stamford Hill and Walthamstow Marshes. It was barely a two minute climb between top and bottom but it proved seriously welcome after a year of mostly flat living, and boy it was good to finally have a view looking down over something again. I paused and soaked everything in from 20 metres up.
A row of budding trees shielded the river at the foot of the slope. The boats in the marina huddled beneath me. Tiny dogs gambolled across the marshes. The broad Lea Valley stretched off behind, packed with houses, reservoirs and the occasional crane. Here and there a cluster of newbuild towers warped the skyline. I got to observe the Lea's chain of pylons from the side, not from below. Little trains scuttled across the landscape like a model layout. In the distance it was easy to make out a ridge of low hills, maybe Chingford, maybe Woodford... and heavens I guess that must be Essex. It's the first time I've seen beyond Greater London in months, to unreachable horizons that suddenly no longer seemed unimaginable. I hope I've conveyed something of just how unfamiliar it all felt. I missed hills.
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