Apparently this section was planned in detail as far back as 1976(!), but for various reasons the signposts weren't installed so it never officially opened. It's an unfortunate omission because Section 12 would have provided a key ambulatory link from Eltham into the heart of Maritime Greenwich. But hurrah because the Inner London Ramblers, custodians ofthe Green Chain walk, have now produced detailed guidance for walking it including full directions and a map. It's still not waymarked so don't expect to find any evidence of Section 12 in real life, but with fourteen pages to guide you you're not going to get lost. I didn't, and what particularly impressed me about this five mile walk is that two miles of it I'd never thought to walk before.
WALK LONDON Green Chain Walk[section 12] Eltham Palace to Greenwich(5 miles)
It's best to walk section 12 from east to west because that delivers a better finale, and because the written directions describe the route that way. This means starting on a mucky lane just below Eltham Palace, not especially close to transport links, where the new walk bears off from existing section 6 (and Capital Ring section 2). I recognised it well enough. This is smallholding country, hence the horse manure on the tarmac and the two long-horned goats who watched over my departure. Take the paved path which isn't signed for the Green Chain and prepare to discover what became of Eltham Palace's deer park.
It became a 1930s housing estate, plainly, which after the war was augmented with a recreation ground called Queenscroft Park. Its finest features were a mini boating lake and paddling pool, much beloved, but both alas since drained. All you'll see now is a sinuous depression with grass where the water used to be, a whorl of decorative concrete rubble walls and a footbridge sailing pointlessly over the top. Olympic dosh has since provided a playground, outdoor gym and basketball court because recreational needs move on. The Green Chain guidance warns you not to try to exit via the corner of the park because there isn't a gate, although those who do make that error will find the railings have been conveniently wrenched apart.
Eltham Green would have looked a lot more sylvan before the South Circular barged through depositing a large elongated roundabout at the foot of Eltham Hill. This road junction's still known as the Yorkshire Grey after the roadhouse pub erected at the sharp end in the 1920s, although the building's since been repurposed as a drive-through McDonalds. Public toilets are available, the Green Chain guidance helpfully advises. It also suggests you cross what's left of the green at an angle across the grass, because this section's not averse to stepping off metalled paths onto potentially muddy surfaces... as I was about to find out to my cost.
A sharp architectural divide approaches as we pass from interwar suburbia to a hypermodern estate. This is Kidbrooke Village - thousands of Berkeley Homes sequentially replacing a notorious council estate and which still aren't finished yet. The first peripheral street is lined by narrow three-storey brick townhouses, intriguingly identikit, and are soon forgotten after the Chain enters Sutcliffe Park. This squarish greenspace has changed dramatically since the route was drawn up, having been fully re-landscaped in the 1990s to create a wetland habitat out of the culverted River Quaggy. The idea was to create drainage reservoirs to hold potential floodwater, should it rain a lot, which has proved prescient because when I turned up the central bowl looked like this.
The Green Chain is supposed to cross this particular footbridge but it had been submerged, as had all the park's other bridges and boardwalks. I assume the narrow stream meandering alongside the wetland perimeter was the path I was supposed to be following, but instead I was left to traverse a squishy grassy bank which soon left my jeans looking embarrassingly splattered. Seasoned local dogwalkers clearly knew to remain on the outer circuit. Eventually I crossed into the rather drier Cator Park (which, if you're the one who wrote the guidance, you don't need to do quite so far up Tudway Road because there's a closer break in the fence).
Kidbrooke Village's warped priorities are laid bare on its directional signs which list the Sales and Marketing Suite at the top of the list and the station at the bottom. The heart of the neighbourhood should be rather more pleasant once construction's complete but for now you get to weave through a zone of upcoming highrise, naked liftshafts and hoardings explaining how much nicer it'll be in 2030. The Chain is aiming for a fortressy footbridge on the far side, which first crosses the station platforms and then delivers you into a subway beneath the roaring A2. Although the pictorial heritage depicted in its tiles might look municipally mid-80s, it climaxes with a geometric representation of the Millennium Dome.
If you've ever wondered where the National Maritime Museum stores its overflow it's here in the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre, a clump of brick sheds with a sideline in artefact conservation. These buildings are all that remain of RAF Kidbrooke, and their contents can be regularly viewed on a series of pre-bookable tours. The next stretch of path reminded me of the backside of Beckton, shielded by trees from significant traffic, and is also where I passed one of those e-unicycles TfL announcements are always going on about. Kidbrooke Green was substantially greener, and less of a scrappy sidelined parklet, before the Rochester Way Relief Road carved through it. Up ahead, like it or not, we get to cross it again.
Beyond the concrete chasm is a finely-rendered 1930s shopping parade with a super-abundance of kebab shops, one such a pupil magnet that it has a queue of Thomas Tallis schoolboys even at 11am. These are the last shops on the walk, so we're told, other than the Morrisons Daily at the BP garage up the hill. To get there follow Brook Lane which traces the line of a farm track and passes the site of a medieval church abandoned after the Black Death, not that you'd guess from the current line of council flats. Impressively that's the final bit of road walking - which is amazing given there are still two miles to go - as the next alleyway delivers us to an off-piste treasure hidden off the bottom of Blackheath.
This is Morden College, a retirement home for "poor merchants" founded by the philanthropist Sir John Morden in 1695. Not only is it old it's also very large because you're about to spend at least five minutes following a fenced-off path around and partially through its grounds. What you'll see, mainly at a distance, is an attractive cluster of 200+ retirement flats with quite an architectural pedigree. The oldest of its buildings surrounds a central quadrangle and was reputedly designed by Christopher Wren; its newest, a day centre, is the latest recipient of the Stirling Prize. The grounds are also lovingly maintained, with one bank alongside the path already alive with snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses and a carpet of small yellow flowers, which is damned impressive for the start of February. The college's strapline is 'Interesting People Living Life to the Full', and looking admiringly through the railings I bet they do.
Which brings us to the southeastern corner of Blackheath, at first a gentle climb until the vista suddenly opens out. Again there's much architecture to enjoy - not least The Paragon, an arc of classic Georgian villas lovingly restored following wartime damage, but also the odd block of 1960s Modernist apartments. A broad all-weather path bears off from South Row past the duckpond and continues arrow-straight across the manorial waste, perfect for our purposes. Dodge the bikes and dogs, cross the intervening roads with care, inhale the sense of space. And when you eventually reach a new-ish granite circle, lightly benched, turn right to aim for the gates to Greenwich Park and top class UNESCO territory.
We'll be following The Grand Axis, a symmetrical alignment which ultimately extends from All Saints on Blackheath to St Anne's at Limehouse, although a lot of this particular section gets used for parking cars. Keep going through the Park and you'll eventually reach the famous Observatory, or at least initially the outlying Astronomy building (whose cafe promotes itself as selling "seasonal toasted flatbreads" and "carbon neutral coffee"). Entering the Observatory proper currently costs £18, but at least admiring the stupendous panorama across the Thames remains free. At present however the best vista is fenced off while the viewing platform is upgraded to something less erodable, and the Green Chain blurb suggests you might enjoy diverting to One Tree Hill instead, even after works are completed in the spring.
A sharp descent, a tree-lined avenue, a ship in a bottle, all these are overfamiliar to regular Greenwich visitors. But the Green Chain has to reach the river somehow and chooses the most direct route between the National Maritime Museum and Queen's House, skipping through the latter's classical colonnade. You could (and quite frankly should) pause here for some sightseeing, pausing again across the road amid the splendours of the Old Royal Naval College. Other Green Chain sections reach the Thames in places like Charlton, Thamesmead and Erith but this walk truly hits the World Heritage jackpot before terminating alongside the Cutty Sark outside the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Section 12 is quite the missing link.
If you thought you'd already walked the entire Green Chain, the emergence of this super section ought to make you think again. If you've duly ticked off the Capital Ring and London Loop then be aware the Green Chain awaits your presence and this Greenwich connection might be a great way to start. And for those of us who really have now walked everything, even this, be aware that a brand new official London walking route called the Green Link Walk is due to be launched sometime in the spring. It'll connect the edge of Epping Forest to Peckham via Hackney Downs and the Millennium Bridge, and appears to be an evolution of the tentative Five Boroughs Walkproposed in 2021. Walking shoes on, they're taking it seriously at last.
