Ten years ago, when Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park fully opened, I showed you this graphic showing all the pedestrian entrances into the park. It wasn't an official list, simply those I'd spotted, numbered in an anti-clockwise direction starting from Westfield.
The greens were already open that first weekend but not yet the reds. Within a few weeks more of the reds turned green, knitting the park into the community, and within a couple of years most of the rest followed. Number 21 proved particularly stubborn, that's the Greenway connection from Stratford High Street, delayed until summer 2019 by interminable works for Crossrail and Thames Water. Number 4, off the Waterden Road bridge, was only unlocked when a separate zigzag path was opened in summer 2020. But number 22 has never reopened, even ten years on, so I've been back to see what the current chances are.
22) From Stratford High Street via Blaker Road:This used to be my favourite way into the Bow Back Rivers, following a path beside theCity Mill River past a cluster of presciently 20th century flats and then ducking into a skew subway underneath the Greenway. And OK the tunnel was pretty grim but it emerged into a quietwatersideoasis blessed with moorhens and dragonflies, as I may once have mentioned on Radio 4. But it was sealed off in 2007, along with the rest of the pre-Olympic Park, and has never been de-padlocked.
It's pretty rank at the far end today. As a longstanding dead end it gets used for considerable dumping, which at present includes a damp sofa, a litter-filled supermarket trolley, half a leather chair, some kind of extractor fan and multiple cans and bottles. It gets worse as you approach the foot of the slope, the path first becoming muddy then fully underwater, I suspect due to excess rainfall rather than river ingress. The spiky railings across the subway entrance are meant to deter homeless sleepers or lager swillers, although the padlocked gate remains ajar and the darkness still suggests something malevolent could be inside.
I suspect this access point is shut for good, condemning this dead end to an increasingly dismal future. The moorhens building a nest in the river alongside didn't seem to mind.
But the City Mill River route was given a new lease of life in 2012 when it was modified as one of the four main entrance points for the Games. This sloped down from Stratford High Street on the other side of the Greenway, passing the far side of the blocked off subway before returning to the riverside. It then plunged underneath the DLR and mainline railway and wham, straight into the foot of the park facing the Stadium. I last walked this way returning home after the very last event of the Paralympics, and I don't think it's been open to the public since.
This path's still there and entirely feasible to use, except the southern end is part of the future Bridgewater neighbourhood footprint so fully sealed off and just a bit overgrown. As for the northern end, the waterside footpaths in the Park deliberately filter towards it but it's grimly railinged off, always has been, just after ducking beneath Sidings Street. The wire in the first set of railings is currently pushed back far enough to allow crouching access, and a discarded condom suggests the area's sometimes inhabited, but a second set of railings is more resolute in holding things back.
I've long suspected this access point will eventually reopen when the Bridgewater neighbourhood is complete because it can't remain a dead end forever, although I've scoured the latest planning application and I can't find any evidence that's actually the case. I hope the residents of Development Parcel F don't scupper that hope, preferring to live up a private backwater rather than alongside a 24 hour footpath, and I fear I may have to wait several more years to find out.
