I've now completed 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. Here too are my reports on section 1, section 2 and section 3.
Section four is the South London section, the GLW having finally crossed the Thames. It's also the most baffling, because with all of Lambeth and Southwark spread out before us the route's designers have decided to head for Peckham. No other strategic walks go there so we're not linking to anything, and if the intent instead is to "link areas of green space" it barely does that either. Admittedly you can't conjure up green spaces where none exist, but it takes a ridiculous amount of time before this section finally meets some grass and a full two miles before crossing some. The route gets much (much) better later, but the hour before you get to Burgess Park is positively underwhelming.
In good news it's all very well signposted. On the previous three sections I'd have got intermittently lost if I hadn't whipped out some instructions but in this case I walked the entire four miles without once checking a map, instead merely following the green signs. So that's a win.
WALK LONDON Green Link Walk[section 4] Blackfriars to Peckham(4 miles)
If you choose to walk the GLW in sections then section 4 kicks off on the South Bank outside Tate Modern. This spot also has the GLW's strangest sign, a fingerpost saying "Over the Bridge", presumably because the Millennium Bridge is sacrosanct and can't even be stickered. We're not going that way, we're going round the back of the gallery to head deep into the Southwark hinterland. Do make the most of the scruffy waterlogged lawn out front because it's genuinely the last grass-based greenspace you'll be encountering for at least half an hour. As you head round, enjoy the irony that it's incredibly easy to see into the flats at the bottom of the glass towers whose upper residents were so furiously litigious about being overlooked. Come on, there are pavements to be plodded.
To start with we're following the famous orange lampposts, eight of them, before they turn off to link to Southwark tube. Instead we pass deeper down Great Suffolk Street, passing several hotels and boho eateries and underneath a lot of railway viaducts. If these excite you then you should spin off and walk the Low Line instead, a BetterBankside concoction where food, drink and participatory consumerism top the menu. Faced with how best to negotiate the maze of streets ahead, the Green Link Walk instead dodges off and misses them all, bar a tantalising glimpse of a cosy terrace on Glasshill Street. The blossoming fruit trees along Pocock Street currently mitigate the scaffolding in front of the council flats somewhat, but for eleven months of the year this is no scenic route.
Suddenly we're on Blackfriars Road, a busy trafficked artery. This does at least have broad pavements but also a lot of flats, with 19th century social housing facing off across the street against 21st century private glitz. GoJauntly's instructions wax lyrical about the coffee shop here, even namechecking "fun-loving and super friendly barista Eurico!", but you might feel more comfortable in the Tesco Express. Continue to St George's Circus with its fabulous obelisk, note that the former pub on the corner has been absorbed by London South Bank University and prepare to enter student territory. I was a bit surprised to see the GLW sign pointing through the campus but yes, the upcoming ambience is all resource centres, subject blocks, library facilities and (on the day I walked it) dozens of milling lecturegoers. It seems a walking route that deliberately dodges traffic isn't always quiet.
And so we emerge at Elephant & Castle, a throbbing nexus which is rapidly turning into somewhere else entirely. Thankfully we'll only be crossing the first two arms of the ex-gyratory, thus dodging the unashamed upthrust of the former shopping centre. Instead we're aiming for the cohesive community Southwark council previously displaced, namely the Heygate Estate... or as it's now known Elephant Park. For a tiny reflection of the past look under the railway arches - proper coffee, cooked meats, auto repairs - and to see what's replaced it look everywhere else - gelato, sushi, margaritas, dogs. We're stepping into the sanitised space between the towers to enter the actual Elephant Park, the first greenspace of the walk, although you won't be stepping onto the "biodiverse grass" because it's all roped off for winter. Also the Green Link Walk doesn't follow the central paths, it hugs the restaurants, because the route is always drawn with wheels rather than curiosity in mind.
Don't worry, a genuine greenspace lies straight ahead, immediately beyond a patch of 25-storey apartments they haven't built yet. Alas the Victory Recreation Ground has been locked since November for a major revamp, currently at the reseeding stage, and the Green Link Walk has of course been signposted to skirt three sides of the perimeter fence. Come back later in the summer and totally ignore the signs, I say. Balfour Street has some cute flowerbeds and stonking cherry trees draped with blossom, courtesy of more Heygate infill, and Chatham Street pointedly does not. What it did have on my visit were large crowds of mourners waiting for a coffin to emerge from number 67, a mortal jolt confirming that the most memorable part of an urban walk is often the people rather than the places. And then - don't look too shocked - an actual walk through an actual park.
This is Salisbury Row, an irregular park covering the footprint of 100-or-so blitzed homes once deemed slums. It has humps and bumps, a decent playground and pleasant benches, plus the joy of hosting two minutes of the official Green Link Walk. Alas just when it looks like we're going to get all the way to the far side the signs divert to the road at the edge, past the cafe, before ducking past a long row of garages and through an alley underneath Eugene Cotter House. If you were genuinely trying to link as much green as possible you'd have continued to Beckway Street, but maybe that didn't have enough drop kerbs, I don't know. Whatever, best steel yourself for threading through a multitude of council flats intermingled with terraced holdouts, a few streets back from the Old Kent Road, including a community centre so oldschool it still displays a Courage cockerel.
I confess to blinking somewhat when I realised we'd be walking past the back of the AylesburyEstate, the somewhat notorious 1960s rehousing scheme, whose massive slab blocks now exist in a state of council-aided decay. You're not getting herons and meadows on this walk, sorry, but brutalist walkways, peeling windows and disused garages. I wasn't complaining, I love a concrete bulwark I don't have to live in, but this won't be what anyone on the GLW will be expecting when they set out. Rest assured several adjacent streets are older and some aren't even council, plus there's the benefit of another proper greenspace called Surrey Square Park. I merrily followed the signs through the gate whereas had I followed the written instructions they would again have skirted round the edge in the traditionally tedious manner, and it is perhaps just as well that the walk perks up after decanted Ravenstone.
Hurrah it's Burgess Park, one of south London's largest, a postwar coalescence of former residential streets and industrial land. The GLW could have been out of here in ten minutes had it taken the shortcut footbridge across the lake but no, it doubles that by taking a dogleg diversion almost as far as the butterfly mural. The outward leg offers sweeping green vistas - the first since Walthamstow Marshes ten miles ago - plus probably a lot of dogs, joggers and pushchairs. The return leg follows the disused Surrey Canal which was filled in 50 years ago, and which also explains the gorgeous steel lattice footbridge that now pointlessly spans the path. It's also Cycleway 35 so expect to pass a lot of bikes as you head up a long avenue of trees as far as the wildflower meadow. Greenwise this is the paragraph that finally makes up for the previous seven.
To finish off we're following the Surrey Canal's Peckham arm, a kilometre-long cut dug in the 1820s to double down on commercial opportunities. It too is now a paved path ideal for off-piste walking and cycling, but in this case it meanders somewhat in a way the canal never did. The best bits are the two perfectly preserved 1870s bridges where the trail ducks underneath the road alongside a raised section of actual cobbled towpath. I've blogged all this before, should you crave more detail, but again this is top notch walking territory. What I didn't see last time was the carpet of celandines near the allotments nor, on the very final stretch, two hoodied forms attached at groin level enjoying oral sex in the shrubbery. That was a first for a strategic walk I can tell you.
The end of the canal comes at the former dock basin where you'll now find Peckham's sports centre and elevated library, plus streetfood options, plus the very last green sign because the Green Link Walk terminates here. Personally I'd have carried it on to Peckham Rye Common or Nunhead Cemetery, there to link up with the Green Chain, assuming I could have found a decent backstreet route dodging Rye Lane. Personally I'd have routed a lot of it differently, as aforementioned, in an attempt to thread green spaces properly as opposed to just grazing them. But don't let me discourage you from tackling the capital's newest strategic walk, all 16 over-pavemented miles of it, because the soul of London is more about making links than chasing the green.
