Across the Olympic Website: Thursday 4th January, 2007 appeared like being a pleasing sufficient day for a motorbike journey across the space the place preparations had been moving into full swing for the London 2012 Olympics to see how issues had been going within the space. So I wrapped up heat and put my folding bike on the practice to make my option to Stratford.
A lot of the central space of the positioning was already closed off to the general public, however I used to be in a position to cycle to varied components of the perimeter and take images, although I used to be disillusioned to search out giant areas the place nothing was but going down already fenced off. From Stratford I went round in an anti-clockwise path and on My London Diary you may learn a reasonably lengthy piece about the place I went and my opinions about what was occurring.
It was changing into increasingly clear that lots of those that lived and labored in and across the space had been being very shabbily handled, with nothing being allowed to face in the best way of the Olympic juggernaut. Individuals had been being lied to, guarantees being made after which deserted.
In all probability the worst case of this was with the 430 residents of the Clays Lane Housing Co-Operative who had been first promised they’d be rehoused in situations “nearly as good as, if not higher than” their current property however had been later advised “at the very least nearly as good as in as far as within reason practicable.”
The tenants there had already suffered from their cooperative property with its robust group being transferred in opposition to their needs to Peabody Housing following an adversarial Housing Company inquiry, dropping their mutual standing. After their eviction beneath the Olympic Obligatory Buy Order (CPO) they had been dispersed and plenty of discovered they had been having to pay a lot greater rents and dwelling in worse situations in locations that lacked any of the sensation of group of Clays Lane.
I’d hoped to go to the Eastway Cycle Circuit and the Bully Fen nature Reserve, however each had been fenced off, as had been among the footpaths I had hoped to cycle down, leading to some pretty prolonged detours. Among the closures claimed to be “short-term” – however some had been nonetheless closed ten years later.
I commented “Parliament smooths the best way for the Olympic Supply Authority on the expense of individuals and atmosphere, enabling them to slough off the inconvenience of democracy and justice. The state of affairs for among the native individuals – significantly these dwelling in Clays Lane – can solely be described as Kafkaesque.”
I rode down Marshgate Lane and went onto the Greenway after which returned and went on to Hackney Wick, pausing to eat my sandwich lunch in a sheltered suntrap by the lock on the Hertford Union Canal earlier than using on the Greenway, turning again the place this was blocked and coming again to the Lea Navigation towpath and on to Stratford Excessive Avenue.
From right here I used to be in a position to go alongside a brief size of footpath subsequent to the Waterworks River earlier than returning to the Greenway on the opposite aspect of the Excessive Avenue, previous some extra areas lined by the CPO.
By now the sunshine was starting to fade, however I rode on to Canning City and took a short look (and a few reasonably darkish photos) of the Pura meals web site then being demolished earlier than using over the Decrease Lea Crossing to the station for the Jubilee Line again to Waterloo.
Many extra photos start a brief scroll down the January 2007 web page of My London Diary.
Flickr – Fb – My London Diary – Hull Photographs – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photographs
All images on this web page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to purchase prints or licence to breed.
Tags: bike journey, Bow Again Rivers, Bow Creek, Bully Fen, Canning City, Clays Lane, CPO, Eastway Cycle Circuit, Geenwy, Lea Navigation, London, London 2012, London Photographs, Marshgate Lane, Olympic web site, peter Marshall, Pudding Mill River, Pura Meals, Stratford, Stratford Excessive Avenue, Stratford Marsh, tow path
You’ll be able to depart a response, or trackback from your individual web site.
