A guidebook to the Lea Valley Walk, a 50-mile long-distance path from Luton to the Thames, following the River Lea from its source near Leagrave to East India Dock. The walk offers level, waymarked walking for all abilities and takes around 3–6 days. The route is presented in nine stages between 2 and 13 kms (1-8 miles) in length with an alternative finish at Limehouse and optional tour of the Olympic Park. 1:50,000 OS maps included for each stage The walk offers traffic-free walking passing through Lee Valley Regional Park, Hartfield, Waltham Abbey, and the Olympic Park Railway stations make each stage accessible Detailed information on public transport, refreshments, and accommodation for each route stage Facilities table to help you plan your itinerary
Packed with surprising and fascinating information, London's Lost Rivers uncovers a very different side to London - showing how waterways shaped our principal city and exploring the legacy they leave today. With individual maps to show the course of each river and over 100 colour photographs, it's essential browsing for any Londoner and the perfect gift for anyone who loves exploring the past... 'An amazing book' -- BBC Radio London 'Talling's highly visual, fact-packed, waffle-free account is the freshest take we've yet seen. A must-buy for anyone who enjoys the "hidden" side of London -- Londonist 'A fascinating and stylish guide to exploring the capital's forgotten brooks, waterways, canals and ditches ... it's a terrific book' - Walk 'Pocket-sized, beautifully designed, illustrated and informative - in short a joy to read, handle and use' -- ***** Reader review 'Delightful, informative and beautifully produced' -- ***** Reader review 'A small gem. A really great book. I can't put it down' -- ***** Reader review 'Fascinating from start to finish' -- ***** Reader review ************************************************************************************************ From the sources of the Fleet in Hampstead's ponds to the mouth of the Effra in Vauxhall, via the meander of the Westbourne through 'Knight's Bridge' and the Tyburn's curve along Marylebone Lane, London's Lost Rivers unearths the hidden waterways that flow beneath the streets of the capital. Paul Talling investigates how these rivers shaped the city - forming borough boundaries and transport networks, fashionable spas and stagnant slums - and how they all eventually gave way to railways, roads and sewers. Armed with his camera, he traces their routes and reveals their often overlooked remains: riverside pubs on the Old Kent Road, healing wells in King's Cross, 'stink pipes' in Hammersmith and gurgling gutters on streets across the city. Packed with maps and over 100 colour photographs, London's Lost Rivers uncovers the watery history of the city's most famous sights, bringing to life the very different London that lies beneath our feet.
Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.
This guidebook presents 25 varied walks exploring London's green and open spaces. Covering both the city centre and the Greater London area, it takes in royal parks, heaths, forests, canals and rivers, including Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, the World Heritage site of Kew Gardens and Wimbledon Common. Walks range from 4 to 14 miles and most can be accessed by public transport. Alongside detailed route descriptions and OS mapping, the book features practical information on parking, public transport and refreshments. Each walk showcases a particular species of wildlife that you might encounter, and there is fascinating background information the history and conservation of the capital's wild spaces. London is a city of 8 million people and 8 million trees, and its vast open spaces are home to 13,000 species of wildlife. This book is an ideal companion to exploring a greener, more gentle side to the city.
The Capital Ring is a 78-mile (125 km) walking route encircling inner London that links the astonishing number of islands of green space - parks, woodlands, abandoned railway lines, towpaths and nature reserves - which still survive in the very heart of the city. The Ring takes in many of London's leading attractions - for example, the Thames Barrier, Eltham Palace and Richmond Park - as well as overlooked gems such as Oxleas Meadows, the Parkland Walk and Abbey Mills Pumping Station, and gives a close-up view of the ever-changing Olympic Park. This guide divides the route into 15 sections, each starting and finishing at a public transport point, and is packed with a vast amount of information.
______________________________ The huge word-of-mouth bestseller – completely updated for 2019 THE LONDON THAT TOURISTS DON’T SEE Look beyond Big Ben and past the skyscrapers of the Square Mile, and you will find another London. This is the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories. Welcome to DERELICT LONDON: a realm whose secrets are all around us, visible to anyone who cares to look . . . Paul Talling – our best-loved investigator of London’s underbelly – has spent over fifteen years uncovering the stories of this hidden world. Now, he brings together 100 of his favourite abandoned places from across the capital: many of them more magnificent, more beautiful and more evocative than you can imagine. Covering everything from the overgrown stands of Leyton Stadium to the windswept alleys of the Aylesbury Estate, DERELICT LONDON reveals a side of the city you never knew existed. It will change the way you see London. ______________________________ PRAISE FOR THE DERELICT LONDON PROJECT ‘Fascinating images showing some of London’s eeriest derelict sites show another side to the busy, built-up capital.’ Daily Mail ‘Talling has managed to show another side to the capital, one of abandoned buildings that somehow retain a sense of beauty.’ Metro ‘Excellent . . . As much as it is an inadvertent vision of how London might look after a catastrophe, DERELICT LONDON is valuable as a document of the one going on right in front of us.’ New Statesman ‘From the iconic empty shell of Battersea Power Station to the buried ‘ghost’ stations of the London Underground, the city is peppered with decaying buildings. Paul Talling knows these places better than anyone in the capital.’ Daily Express ‘[London has an] unusual (and deplorable) number of abandoned buildings. Paul Talling’s surprise bestseller, DERELICT LONDON, is their shabby Pevsner.’ Daily Telegraph ______________________________
A guidebook to walking the Pilgrims’ Way, a 230 km (138 mile) historic pilgrimage route to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, home of the shrine of the martyred archbishop, St Thomas Becket. With relatively easy walking on ancient pathways, it can be comfortably completed in under a fortnight. The route is presented in 15 stages ranging between 7 and 22 kms (5-14 miles) and is described from both Winchester in Hampshire (138 miles) and London’s Southwark Cathedral (90 miles), with an optional link to Rochester. 1:50,000 OS mapping for each stage Detailed information on accommodation, public transport, and refreshments for each stage Information on the historical background of the pilgrimage, historical figures, and local points of interest GPX files available to download Facilities table to help you plan your itinerary
'A remarkable book; surprisingly gripping and often very moving ... at once disorientating and illuminating.' - Robert Macfarlane We shape ourselves, and are shaped in return, by the walls that contain us. Buildings affect how we sleep, work, socialise and even breathe. They can isolate and endanger us but they can also heal us. We project our hopes and fears onto buildings, while they absorb our histories. In Living With Buildings, Iain Sinclair embarks on a series of expeditions - through London, Marseille, Mexico and the Outer Hebrides. A father and his daughter, who has a rare syndrome, visit the estate where they once lived. Developers clink champagne glasses as residents are 'decanted' from their homes. A box sculpted from whalebone, thought to contain healing properties, is returned to its origins with unexpected consequences. Part investigation, part travelogue, Living With Buildings brings the spaces we inhabit to life as never before.
"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."
The River Lea runs from Hertfordshire down to the Thames in East London. Once a busy commercial waterway, it is now a nature reserve and leisure area. From the grand site of the 2012 Olympic Games it passes industrial estates, sports centres, new build homes and council estates. Escape from the city; the reinvention of social spaces; the attraction of water; the meeting of different cultures; the persistence of nature. Adventures in Lea Valley collects a decade's worth of photographs from Davaid Campany and Polly Braden, telling the story of this changing land.
