Rambler’s rest
Putney to Westminster
When I started this walk people began to ask me where I would finish. I could have chosen Waterloo station as the destination of the train I take to London, but I was looking for somewhere more personally significant. I chose Westminster for my family connections.
A fine October day, with blue skies and wispy clouds, warm sunshine and cooler breezes, some of my favourite autumn weather. As my journey is easy to follow along the riverside, flat and around 10km I have plenty of time to saunter. As John Muir instructed I take my time to cover the holy earth (the saint terre). Although there is little traffic on the river, there is activity beside it. Gravel from a huge river barge scooped up into a great mound bankside, tidy houseboats occupy the banks, and there are even wildlife habitat barges off the park and the crows flying back and forth. The landing helicopter startles me, coming Bond-like along the river to settle at the Thames-side heliport. Cars enter a refuse and recycling area with their rubbish. Building sites have their own temporary hot food vans parked outside for hi-vis workers to grab a cuppa.
I am looking forward to visiting St Mary’s church at Battersea. I’ve seen this Georgian gem from the train going over the river to Imperial Wharf, and even painted the scene from the Chelsea side, but never visited. It’s a location that belongs in paintings, and Turner who lived across the water, thought so too. Holy ground with a welcome café van and seats to rest in the sun by the river.
Battersea Park is a treat. On a weekday morning in October there are few visitors but it deserves many. A tree-shaded riverside walk, a hidden English Garden, fountains, little cafes and more delights still to discover. I stop to eat a snack under the eyes of the golden buddha in the Peace Pagoda.
The Thames Path turns inland on the south side and I cross the river over Chelsea bridge and stay water-side for the rest of the journey. Across the water the re-purposed Battersea Power Station cuts an iconic silhouette, although its power halls are now full of apartments.
The tide is running out, leaving mud flats with birds picking morsels from the departing waters. There are gulls, crows, ducks, and herons at work. Mud larks, human, are also down on the shore looking for treasure. My favourite Thames find is the Battersea shield, a glorious Iron Age decorated shield that you can visit in the British Museum. I want to see if I can find anything or at least see the river from water level. Most steps down from the embankment are gated, and difficult to climb over but I find an open gate leading down some green steps to the water level. I enter a a different space down here, London rises like the sides of a canyon but the river runs on and the birds pick over the mud for scraps. Among the stones are shards of pottery, ageless, worn smooth by the water, there a pieces of brick round as pebbles, clouded glass, chalk eggs. Among these there are clay pipes, dress pins, buttons and other sundry treasures of two thousand years.
Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament reach up above the trees but I turn left into Smith Square where I know the basement café will be open in St John’s church. I have visited before in search of family history. Once this area was on the edge of one of London’s most notorious slums, called The Devil’s Acre by Charles Dickens. My people came from Wales around 1820 and stayed in the area, marrying neighbours from Norfolk, Leeds, Suffolk, Yorkshire and Shropshire, all drawn to the great magnet. My great-great-great grandfather, James Felton bought the license for a pub called the Ramblers Rest in Rochester Terrace, Westminster in 1867. That’s probably where my great-grandparents met. The pub is long gone, the space is a school playground now. But it seems appropriate to end my saunter at a place where the rambler could once rest.
