Let's return to London's newest official walkway, the Green Link Walk, which was launched on 1st March. If you need a map try here, if you need an app try here, if you want 45 pages of walking instructions try here, and if you're reading this several months in the future try here.
Section three is essentially a nice walk from the Angel Islington to the Thames ending on the far side of the Millennium Bridge. For central London it's an impressively quiet route, carefully constructed to follow backwaters rather than busy roads. But once again the Green Link Walk is very much not green, indeed there are several places where it deliberately skirts small green spaces rather than deviating through and I will flag these🚩 as we pass by. This is partly because big parks are non-existent hereabouts, but mainly because the route's designers were charged with the requirement that the GLW should be accessible to users of wheelchairs, mobility buggies and pushchairs. Best not moan, and remember you can always step off the designated route whenever you fancy.
WALK LONDON Green Link Walk[section 3] Angel to Blackfriars(2½ miles)
If walking this from scratch you start outside Angel tube but I'm starting where section 2 ended up, pretty much above the mouth of the Islington canal tunnel. Here's the first signage failure of the walk, the only sign on the post pointing back towards Hackney and not onwards to the City. Here too is the first inexplicable shunning of a greenspace, namely Duncan Terrace Gardens🚩, a linear park following the footprint of the New River. Strict GLW-adherents get to follow the pavement south rather than nipping beyond the railings for two glorious minutes of snowdrops, hyacinths, camellias, bee hotels and full-on squirrel action. I'm baffled because it appears to be level access throughout so maybe it was just more difficult to sign or maybe it's because it's 'only' open from 8am til dusk and some jobsworth's attempting to be inclusive. Whatever.
The A1 is swiftly crossed, then Owens Field🚩 is the second small greenspace to be briefly avoided. "Continue
walking on the tarmac path" say the Go Jauntly instructions, lest you be inordinately tempted by some grass and a rockable metal sculpture. But Chadwell Street is a better indicator of what's up ahead, i.e. classic Georgian terraces with period lamps and traffic calming, indeed you'll likely have to dodge several bikes because the Cycleway project adopted this backway first. It gets even lovelier as you enter Myddelton Square, a large residential square centred around St Mark's where the obvious green route would be through the churchyard gardens🚩 but no, the GLW skirts outside instead. With written instructions highlighting drop kerbs and traffic islands I'm starting to sense that the directions have been optimised for those on wheels, which is admirable but the majority are consequently missing out.
Underfoot, unmentioned, are a varied selection of circular manhole cover designs, so do look down.
Lloyd Baker Street has some fabulously unusual Georgian mansions, and also private communal gardens you won't be getting into. If you're never explored round here before you're likely to be thinking "oh I'm glad I came" and "oh do I have to turn left now?", but yes you do because eventually we have to end up at St Paul's. Go Jauntly's instructions do have an occasional tendency to head off-kilter specifically to see something. but in this case it's a 1930s mansion block currently covered in scaffolding which you could have seen close-up simply by going straight on. They also suggest you might want to "have a whirl" round Wilmington Square, which I would have given a flag except it only has one entrance/exit so could never have been part of the official route. It is lovely though.
Very nearby, unmentioned, is New River Head if you fancy a brief burst of municipal water supply heritage.
Here's where we cross Roseberry Avenue and then don't quite explore Exmouth Market, only look down it. You might be thinking the GLW signage points that way but no, it's merely been overzealously used to direct you across a zebra crossing which, given the lack of traffic, probably isn't going to be necessary. I thought the next part might be our first 'green' section but alas no, it only crosses the neck of Spa Fields🚩, a paved strip divided from the lawns and playground by yet more railings. As the largest greenspace on section 3 it's a shame the route can't take full advantage, indeed it could have done by exiting Wilmington Square via a different street, but only at the expense of safe crossings and wheelchair-friendly alleyways and they of course take precedence.
Nearby, unmentioned, are the London Metropolitan Archives which usually have a excellent exhibition on.
Clerkenwell Close is a historic throwback, a quiet narrow curl passing between former Victorian workshops. Having been advised that "Traces of the cloisters of the Nunnery from 1140 can be seen on the wall" I spent a fair while looking, but because they never specified which wall I never found them. GLW3 then makes its most egregious green omission, skipping St James's churchyard🚩 in favour of more pavement. This may be because two of the exits have steps and another's too narrow for a chair, making a through-route tricky, but if these don't worry you far better to head inside because you'll end up at Clerkenwell Green anyway. Again I can imagine many Londoners have never been here before and will be impressed, indeed we are ticking off some sequential goodies here.
I haven't been mentioning it but yes, this section is pretty well signed in a multiplicity of ways.
Here's a thing to make this hour-long walk last a bit longer, the Museum of the Order of St John. A small outpost exists beside their ancient church where you simply wander off the street into two rooms (and perhaps enjoy the tranquil garden beyond). But the main attraction is further down, Wednesdays to Saturdays only, its entrance underneath the former gatehouse to Clerkenwell Priory. Beyond the obligatory giftshop is a small museum in two parts, one devoted to the medieval religious military order, the other to the good works of the St John Ambulance brigade. It's all quite modern, occasionally audiovisual and very nicely presented, not to mention free. Don't feel you have to be following the Green Link Walk to come here - it's not that far from Farringdon station - but it does make an appropriate diverting break.
To delve deeper into St John's Gate and its historic secrets you'll need to book a tour.
St John's Lane leads to St John Street and thence, excellently, passes through Smithfield market. At the weekend that's the colourful quiet space with four photogenic phone boxes under colourful arched ironwork, whereas on a weekday morning I dodged forklifts, watched men in white coats load Angus steaks into a van and inhaled the pungent tang of meat. Beyond this point the signage gets a bit more temporary, mainly flappy plastic rectangles, perhaps because we're in the City of London now and permanent permission hasn't yet gone through. Prepare to follow Little Britain, the actual street, and to pass along one edge of St Bart's Hospital. The final greenspace the walk deliberately avoids is Postman's Park🚩, the one with the amazing tiled memorial to heroism, but that's because the exit at the other end has steps so officially the route couldn't get out. You can.
Nearby, unmentioned, are the amazing St Bart's Church (free) and the small St Bart's Museum (reopens 2025).
We're now careering towards St Paul's Cathedral and, uniquely on this walk, actually going inside the gardens to enjoy some green. The instructions do point out you don't have to, you could go round the edge, but when I saw a marker pointing through the gate I almost cheered. You can probably guess where we're going next, which is over the incredibly wide pedestrian crossing and then down Peter's Hill towards the Thames. I'm not sure what international tourists will make of GLW roundels stuck to the paving but they might inspire Londoners to Google and discover the full walk. These stickers are to nudge walkers across the Millennium Bridge with its world-beating panorama, this being the optimum crossing point for a strategic walk linking north and south London. Section 3 has to end on the south bank to create a link to the Thames Path, but rather than follow that it'd probably be better to mill off towards Tate Modern or any nearby tourist attraction, you're utterly spoilt for choice.
I've grumbled a lot but this is a great backstreets walk, even if describing it as Green is almost against Trades Descriptions. It's also overly risk-averse, as if devised by the Tufty Club, so live a little and deviate off route if you want and if you can. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when the Inner London Ramblers finally publish their written guidance it'll be a bit more practical and a little more inspired.
