I printed this put up seventeen years in the past on My London Diary, following an organised stroll across the Olympic Web site by locals whereas London was making its sadly profitable bid to host the 2012 video games. I’ve corrected the capitalisation however in any other case it stays as written. Going across the space some ten years after the video games there may be nothing I might wish to change within the piece, although the legacy has turned out even worse than we feared again then, with so many damaged guarantees.
Olympic web site? – Stratford and Temple Mills, 23 Jan, 2005
I first received to know the decrease Lea (or Lee) valley round twenty-five years in the past, when lots of the conventional industries, many based mostly across the Lea Navigation, had or had been simply ending. Components of it had been nearly a darkish continent, with the Bow Again Rivers machete nation. Secateurs grew to become a vital photograph accent, and along with a heavy responsibility tripod swung with abandon hacked a path alongside streams overgrown with bramble, nettles and bushes.
Since then, issues have modified, with correct paths, nature trails, signposts and extra, though it stays an space of relative peace and quiet. All this might quickly change. You’ll be able to hardly transfer in or round London with out the virtually steady reminder of the 2012 Olympic bid. Giant sums are being spent to persuade us it’s a good factor, regardless of concurrent claims that over 70% of Londoners already help it.
For this specific space of London it’s going to imply dramatic adjustments, and regardless of the good intentions of the builders (and I’ve learn them) these will most likely be environmentally disastrous. Improvement on this scale nearly at all times is. Even the proponents acknowledge short-term issues, whereas native environmentalists level out the massaging and misrepresentation in components of their planning, in addition to the failure to make sure a correct post-games future for the realm. Whereas among the proposals make sense for the realm, the short-term priorities of the video games will lead to many that don’t.
I’m not towards the Olympics as such; in some methods they could possibly be a superb factor for the nation, though the entire motion has been allowed to get critically out of hand. I’m cynical sufficient to know that a lot of the passion for London 2012 comes from firms who’re already making critical cash from the promotion and can make much more ought to they occur, and life like sufficient to know that any native opposition to them can solely implement very minor adjustments to their influence. Such native views are more likely to carry much more weight on developments within the space ought to the London bid fail.
Sunday I cycled from Stratford to Temple Mills to hitch a stroll across the northern a part of the location, organised by No To London 2012, a coalition of East London neighborhood teams and social justice campaigners. A bunch of simply over twenty of us spent an pleasing couple of hours wanting on the space and the influence the Olympic developments would have. it was a possibility that IOC delegates usually are not more likely to have, with their view of those specific areas anticipated to be with a pair of binoculars from a distant tower block.
We stood to begin with on part of Hackney Marshes, watching the native footballers play on an space marked for an unlimited coach park, questioning how lengthy it will take for it to be returned to leisure use, earlier than making our manner south throughout the A12 to the Eastway Cycle Circuit, now a well-used leisure space which may even be dramatically modified, changing into in the long run half of a bigger Velopark, and on to the just lately established Bully Level Nature Reserve on the southwest of the location between the Channelsea River and the River Lea, a viewpoint over the foremost land-forming at the moment going down as part of the Channel Tunnel Rail Hyperlink works and the longer term growth of Stratford Metropolis.
Returning to Eastway, we climbed over a barrier onto Enviornment Area. Till a number of years again this was a cricket floor, however travellers occupied it and the pavilion was burnt down. It was then used as a landfill web site, elevating the general floor degree round twenty toes. On the opposite facet of Eastway we walked by Wick Area, web site of huge tree-planting by Hackney. The brand new path we walked by, designed and made by a kind of on the stroll, was nice if muddy.
On the finish of the stroll I went again to the bench in Wick Area, within the centre of a positive row of airplane timber working parallel to the Lea Navigation and sat right down to eat my lunch. In entrance of me a grassy fire-break path stretched into the gap, marred solely barely by dimly seen lorries at its finish on the elevated roadway. As I sat there, the unmistakable low-slung red-brown form of a fox strode slowly throughout the trail 100 yards away.
I made my manner again to Stratford by Leyton, returning to have a look at a few of my reminiscences – St Josephs Cemetery and the close by crossroads on Langthorne Highway, the stump of Claremont Highway after which a number of photos across the centre of Stratford itself.
You’ll be able to see extra photos from the stroll and my cycle rides from and to Stratford Station earlier than and after the stroll http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2005/01/jan3.htm with the unique posting. All photos had been made with a Nikon D70, with among the panoramas stitched collectively from a number of photographs.
You’ll be able to see these and extra photos from the realm on my Lea Valley site, Some are additionally in my e-book Earlier than The Olympics, first printed in 2010, ISBN: 978-1-909363-00-7 nonetheless obtainable from Blurb each as an costly paperback or as a PDF.
Tags: allotments, Enviornment Area, Earlier than the Olympics, Carpenters Highway lock, Channelsea River, neighborhood teams, Eastway Cycle Circuit, Hackney Marshes, London, London 2012, London Images, No to London 2012, Previous River Lea, Olympic promoting, Olympic bid, Olympic web site, peter Marshall, Stratford, Stratford Marsh, Stratford station, Temple Mills, Stroll, Wick Area
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