London LOOP Section 19 – Chingford to Chigwell Boxing Day 2010

Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge

It is Boxing Day. After yesterday’s limbering up exercise we are ready to start the next section of our Loop adventure. Bettys’ car is still at Chigwell, where we left it on Christmas Day. Bouyed up by the success of our first day out, we feel ready, even if our muscles are perhaps a little stiff.

From Romford to Chingford is a pretty straight forward drive and we arrive there with some snow still lying on the ground. Our biggest worry is that with temperatures rising above freezing by day, but falling by night, will it be slippery underfoot and will we find ourselves playing “instant horizontal” again?

With snow on the ground we and many other Boxing Day walkers are moving in a gingerly fashion, probably more focussed on the ground than on directions or waymarkers. Well that sound like a good excuse for us being unable to locate Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge! Initially we spend time poking around the back of Royal Forest pub. Had we read the instructions we would realise that we are actually looking for a “white timber framed Elizabethan building”. The Royal Forest pub is much more likely to have been built during the reign of a much later Queen Elizabeth.

Eventually we find the lodge, a rather more modest building than I was expecting. The timbers are painted white (as I believe they would have been back in the reign of ‘Good Queen Bess’), so that from a distance it doesn’t look at all timber framed.
It is in fact just one of 3 royal hunting lodges that once existed in Epping Forest.

Back in Tudor times the royal court’s had a predilection for venison, wild boar and other ‘wild meats’. Venison, from forests all over England, would have been a major source of this royal meat. Henry VIII’s court (probably in excess of 800 people) got through over 2,000 deer in a single year. Hunting lodges such as this one were therefore not just a base for the King or Queen and their court to go hunting from, but a commercial focus for providing venison for the King’s or Queen’s table throughout the year.

Reunited with the route we cross Ranger Road and follow the well-worn track alongside the road. Horses make good use of this path even on snowy Boxing Days, with the surface mud and snow well churned for the walker to enjoy. I’m not sure when the writers of the Loop Directions came by here, but the “grass verge” is nowhere to be seen in December.

The large oaks along here are worthy of consideration and were probably young trees when the Tudor gamekeepers were busy culling suitable deer for the royal table.

At the top of The Warren are some excellent old pollarded oak trees. These would have been trees ‘lopped’ at head height to encourage a flush of new growth. The poles that developed in this crown would have been cut every 10 or 15 years as a source of charcoal or timber. The two or three hundred year old specimen in the photograph (taken in January) was probably last pollarded over 100 years ago, when the practice was largely stopped. Today the ancient practice of pollarding continues, but this specimen would probably die from ‘shock’ if it were to be re-pollarded.

Beyond The Warren the topography flattens out, adjacent to The Warren Wood public house. Here traffic on the Epping New Road dares the walker to risk a crossing. We make it to the other side and pass to the right of Trinity Cottages, doubtlessly named because there are three of them. Beyond the road the path rises up through an area of grassland before passing through woodland with a smattering of scots pine trees. Eventually this gives way to a beautifully manicured cricket pitch.

Trinity Cottages

Close inspection of the cricket square (preferable when some fast bowler is not chucking a ball down the wicket) will reveal ‘fairy rings’. These are circular areas of stunted or excessive grass growth caused by the presence of underground fungi. In the late summer/autumn a ring of toadstools will pop up as though by magic.

The Warren Wood public house marks the point at which we cross yet another busy road. Here a sign reveals that we are at Buckhurst Hill. In fact the centre of Buckhurst Hill is a mile or so down the other side of the hill. As directed we turn left down Roebuck Green, walking on the verge to the left of the road. This is a difficult choice after heavy snow. Thick snow makes for hard walking, but this is preferable to walking on a slippery road and the threat of skidding cars. We come to what looks like a charming country cottage on the right side of the road. Almost oddly out of place here on the edge of the great metropolis, with its white wooden shutters and sash windows.

Passing to the left of this house we enter a cul-de-sac, which has a secret path at the far end, on the left. This leads onto a green lane, which drops downhill towards the River Roding. Green lanes would once have been important drove routes or similar, but are now mere relics in the modern motorcar age. Time permitting we could deviate in either direction walking along this green lane. To the left is North Farm, a field managed by the Corporation of London for the benefit of wildlife. Here we are informed that Lotti, Delight and other beautifully named highland cattle graze happily on the grass and keep any invasive woody plants in check. To the right is Linders Field, managed as a remnant of the ancient woodland that once covered the whole of Epping Forest.

The green lane eventually gives way to a large field at the end, at the bottom of which we find the Central Line and a rather functional, if somewhat unglamorous footbridge.

Beyond the footbridge the world changes considerably. I suspect the house prices are much lower on this side of the tracks as we enter a relatively modern estate of houses. The most worrying aspect of the roads this side of the tracks are that they are covered in a sheet of ice. With no mince-pies in my backpack to break my fall I have to pick my way carefully from one ice-free tarmac island to another. A few hundred yards and some fifteen terrifying minutes later, a relatively ice-free Green Walk takes us across the busy Loughton Way and continues down to Bradwell Road and the Roding Recreation Area.

Roding Recreation Area is one of those deserts of close cropped turf so beloved by local authorities. The wildlife value of these Italian Rye Grass monocultures is minimal. They are of course designed for the purpose of playing football. On most Saturdays of the year you will hear shouts of “take the f***** out” or “f****** cross it.” At other times fathers are playing on the short turf with their sons. In these enlightened times why do councils insist on spending a small fortune cutting all the grass in these areas? Why not leave a little to grow longer, for children to have a bit of variety and discover nature in?

A short distance further on and we come to a lake dug in the 1970’s. The lake was the result of a gravel pit dug to provide material for the M11. Inevitably the hole left behind filled with water to provide an excellent addition to the recreation ground and a place for waterfowl to gather. Skirting to the right of the lake we leave the starkness of the Roding Recreation Area as we tread carefully across the ice encrusted concrete footbridge over the River Roding. The other side reveals a much more interesting landscape as we turn left on the far bank and pick our way along a muddy track into Roding Valley Meadows Nature Reserve.

This 160 acre reserve is managed by Essex Wildlife Trust as an area of traditionally managed river valley. In fact it is the largest such area in Essex, with most such spaces long since drained and improved for agriculture or leisure pursuits. An ancient green lane used to run from Epping Forest to Romford Market across the reserve. The remains of this can still be seen today. Roding Valley Meadow Nature Reserve on Boxing Day is not the most alluring landscape, especially when temperatures are hovering around zero. However, return in the summer and you will find few richer areas for wildlife in the whole of Essex. Sedge Warbler, Reed Bunting and Whitethroat can be seen in spring and summer. In late summer, flocks of finches and other seed-eating birds feed on the seed heads of thistle and teasel. Somehow ten miles of traditionally managed hedgerows are packed into the reserve, many of which require volunteer labour to cut and layer them in the traditional way.

It has been proposed that the London Loop be rerouted to follow the River Roding northeast through the nature reserve to Chigwell Lane. This should make for a fascinating end to this section. The section we follow to Chigwell and our awaiting car is less attractive as we pass the David Lloyd Sports Centre and the Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College before the long grind to Chigwell along the B170. I suppose it is inevitable that there will be some less interesting sections along the LOOP. However, we are already sufficiently impressed by what we have seen that walking the remaining sections is now inevitable.