THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Wyncham Stream Chislehurst → Longlands → Blackfen (2½ miles)
[Wyncham Stream → Shuttle → Cray → Thames]
Eight years ago when I walked the River Shuttle, a proper unlost river, I apologised that I wouldn't be walking its tributary the Wyncham Stream. It's only a mile long, I said, and only publicly accessible twice on its run from the Sidcup Bypass. That's how it looked on an Ordnance Survey map anyway. But OpenStreetMap evolves and it turns out the Wyncham Stream flows a lot further than that so I went and walked it properly. I didn't see the river much and two enormous obstacles caused me to divert well out of my way, so it's a pretty rotten walk, but for completeness' sake here's how it flows. [map]
We're starting in Chislehurst, which if you're not from round here may be the last place on this walk you've actually heard of. Specifically we're starting in the middle of the common near the war memorial, a few steps away from Bus Stop S, amid a patch of scrappy oak woodland. This at least is where the map says the stream starts although I stepped off the path and couldn't even find a dry notch in the earth, let alone a trickle of water. October may not be the best month to look. Further scouring of the undergrowth eventually revealed a possible groove in the ground cover but this merely aimed for the point where the map said the stream entered a pipe I couldn't see either. Not a great start.
The river doesn't quite follow Kemnal Road but we have to, slinking off the common up a protracted private cul-de-sac. I first came here when I was trying to visit all the 1km×1km grid squares in London and was surprised that such an expansive reclusive oasis had stayed off my radar for quite so long. Initially the road's lined by upscale flats and normal-sized big houses, probably of Thatcherite provenance, then the pavement gives out and the mansions get better screened and better protected by CCTV on threatening stalks. Eventually even the ordinary private residents have to be warned off driving any further and the road passes between two gates down a fiercely-scrutinised hill.
The owner of the 11-bedroom manorhouse on the right seems to have bought a job lot of green signs saying Beware of the Dogs! and has spaced them out down the long drive behind spiked railings - I counted 18 signs in total. The Wyncham Stream is behind the fence somewhere, having spent the last half mile watering the estates of the wealthy (or ducking shame-faced in a pipe underneath). It then supposedly slinks under the road and drains the paddock opposite before feeding the ornamental lake in front of Brook House, a mahoosive mansion with its own floating duckhouse. Take the northbound trackway, which after the very last mega-house eventually peters out to a very uneven footpath watched over by nosey horses.
That trickle of water crossing the path isn't the Wyncham Stream, it's an even briefer tributary, but if you wander off into the woods there it properly is - a foot wide, perhaps a couple of inches deep and still impressively irrelevant. Then, sigh, it flows straight back into a pipe to pass under two extensive and unusual intrusions. The first is Kemnal Park Cemetery, a 10 year-old private facility with burial space for 10% of the population of Bromley, whose rear end remains defiantly unfinished. And the second used to be the Flamingo Park sports ground and is currently being repurposed as the new home of Cray Wanderers, London's oldest football club. The building works have just reached the "we've bulldozed a giant flat rectangle" stage, but even if a kickabout is years away you can already buy a bacon bap or get your car washed in the courtyard out front.
The Wyncham Stream flows easily under the Sidcup bypass courtesy of an unseen culvert but pedestrians are not so lucky. A fortified central reservation prevents even daredevils dashing across the dual carriageway, and remains unbroken for some way in each direction, as if Bexley is determined to keep Bromley at bay. Turn right and it's three quarters of a mile before you can dice with death and slip across, which is what I did, whereas I should have turned left towards the ramped footbridge because that's only half as far. And it's not like you can even see the river on the other side, only perhaps another tributary, the Longlands Stream. This gives its name to the very very minor suburb of Longlands, and dives back underground somewhere near the Mace supermarket.
Now for the last mile, the bit that's actually on the Ordnance Survey map, all of which threads across a grid of interwar residential streets. The Wyncham Stream first looks properly streamlike emerging under Harland Avenue, where because this is Bexley the fencing is emblazoned with a warning about not leaving bags of dog waste. It looks even more convincing under Dulverton Road, if entrenched to stop it ever rising up and flooding everyone. And then comes our second major obstacle, namely the railway line between New Eltham and Sidcup, where again the river passes merrily underneath via allotments on either side of the tracks. On foot, however, it's a 25 minute detour if you turn left or a completely different 25 minute detour if you turn right, and that's why this is a walk you should never do.
Finally a good bit. The Wyncham Stream runs straight up the middle of Longmeadow Road forming a thin green barrier between the semis on the left and the semis on the right (which OK yes, are technically in Brookend Road). It must be lovely to look out from your front garden and not see neighbours, only a stream, or at least a narrow overgrown ditch overshadowed by trees. The road crossing at Halfway Street has been known as Wincham Bridge since Victorian times. And then, hurrah, the river finally escapes and runs properly along a driveway behind all the houses on Woodlands Avenue. I followed this with relative glee, past garage doors and rear fences, past poplars and convolvulus, past birches and brambles, past a little egret searching for a snack, past a team from JR Landscaping hacking back the overgrowth... only to find the gate at the top end firmly locked so I had to retrace my streamside steps. Another half mile wasted.
Beyond the next road the stream forms one edge of Beverley Wood, three acres of crack willow you'd never know was there unless you thought of lurking up the driveway behind Beverley Avenue. I should perhaps have risked it but I was feeling cautious and not a little tired, having somehow been tracking a 2½ mile river for almost 2½ hours. Instead I knew the end was near, very near, even if another five minute detour was needed to get there. Hey presto the Wyncham Stream curved gently into the River Shuttle alongside Hollyoak Wood Park, funnelled carefully between high concrete walls, and the Shuttle is a much much better candidate for following from source to confluence.
