Classic Urban River Walk along the River Shuttle in South London (4K)
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- Опубликовано: 11 фев 2023
- Join me on a beguiling journey along the River Shuttle in South London. This classic urban river walk offers us a glimpse into the secret world of this magical tributary of the River Cray. From tranquil parks and green spaces, woodland, suburbia and pylons, this video captures the essence of this iconic walk. Experience the magic and adventure of this urban river walk.
The River Shuttle rises on Avery Hill and flows through Sidcup and Bexley for approximately 5-and-a-half miles before making its confluence with the River Cray beside the A2 Rochester Way near the Holiday Inn. Along the way it flows through Parish Wood, Holloak Wood Park, Willersley Park, and Bexley Woods. The Shuttle Riverway Path is a walking trail that follows the course of the river. Our walk begins near the entrance to the Charlton Athletic Training Ground on the edge of Avery Hill Park.
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I used to play in the river Shuttle as a child with friends who lived in Love Lane, Bexley. There was a gravel island that we all called "Banana Island" because of its shape. About 10 or 15 kids could play on the island at once.
wonderful stuff Diana - we should add Banana Island to the Open Street Map
@@JohnRogersWalks John have you done The river Cray? The five arches bridge in Footscray meadows is wonderful with its waterfall. We used to play there in the summer. It would be such a great video for you to do if you have not already.
Enjoyed every step of this walk. England is so enchanting. Love the landscape. The beauty of the rivers ~ brooks~creeks. Especially the lovely trees. Full moon topped it off so well. I can't express just how much I enjoy your enthusiasm, rumour and knowledge. Thank you Mr. John Rogers. Blessings from Eastern Tennessee. USA🍃🌾🌿🙋
Always a pleasure to join you an a tranquil walk, discovering somewhere I've never been and learning things I didn't know. A welcome 26 minutes' respite from the cares of the world. Thank you, John.
Love the way you see beauty in ostensibly unpromising situations. Even poetic about the A2 😄
Used to live by the Cray. Ran at the bottom of my garden and you could walk down and paddle in it until zThames Water built a concrete channel.
I think the idea of creating a river deity is a very good one, both for us and for the river. Such a brilliant moon at the confluence
It's a pleasure to come back to videos like this - after seeing it for the first time in 2023, it's so beautiful to revisit a river walk in London's south suburbs, with another excellently named watercourse and the whimsical emrbroidered post boxes, especially now that it's high summer in Vancouver, Canada.
I loved this walk - still one of my favourites
I'm pleased you took up my suggestion to walk The Shuttle. Equally pleased that you enjoyed it too. When you entered Bexley Woods you were about 100m from my house.
I look forward to seeing you walk The Cray - a much longer river from Orpington to Crayford Marshes........then there's the River Darenth ............😃
thanks again Roy - my favourite walk of the year so far
Great to see you exploring my area!. I live in Avery Hill just down the road from the Uni and know the river Shuttle very well. It is particularly picturesque as it passes through Bexley Woods.
It was such a great walk
Stunning!!
I have just 5 more words to say:
CRAY! CRAY! CRAY! CRAY! CRAY!
Fond farewells,
Barty
Thank you so much for a glimpse of the beautiful River Cray 😍😍😍
Been watching all your walks as I grew up in Sidcup and often visited London. My dad was a bank messenger back before the internet made the job obsolete and he often took us for walks around the less seen parts of London. This video is especially meaningful for me as we lived near the river shuttle for most of my formative years and it went behind my parents house after I had moved to Norwich. Real nostalgia vibes recognising all the places in this video. Love your work.
Shuttle, Quaggy.. insane name territory; love it.
very true Daniel
Looking forward to watching this tomorrow. As it’s bed time for me. God bless uncle Stan
Wonderful....the ending was, with the full Moon illuminating all surroundings and the River together conjuring a Ghostly experience of a long lost piece of History.
It always amazes me how few people I meet on my walks, with millions of people living in London, where is everybody? Home watching TV? I love being on my own with nature, it just seems a shame that not more people explore our beautiful city.
Your videos are always a therapeutic delight, John
Many thanks akwalek
I think you said it. You love the sunset. What a beautiful walk. Especially the Moon and the glistening water. We live in New England where there are tons of rivers. I wonder if that's not part of the reason England settled this land. Your attitude makes your walks so much more exciting and unpredictable. Love your videos.
Thank you John loved the video I was brought up in Blackfen went to hurstmere school walked part of the shuttle every day played football in Marlborough park good memories. Now I live in Oregon USA this video brought we’re I grew up a little closer across the pond will definitely walk the shuttle next time we’re back in England
I love that image Andy - from the Shuttle to Oregon
I really appreciate your reason for not starting walks earlier/worrying about time.
That was such a 'chill-out' video to watch and enjoy John - and a perfect way to start the week ahead. Many thanks for your ongoing superb work. 👍🏻
So glad to hear that Barry
I've literally just finished watching the last bit of last week's Q + A video and given up on this week. Thought you were going to drop it tomorrow. Just got time to watch it tonight - Great.
Many thanks E J - sorry it's late, took an age to upload for some reason
To add to the many contributions about the Cray. I once worked at Burroughs Wellcome, Dartford. 1969/1975. The Darenth flowed through the works. The wharf was still there for unloading whatever they needed brought in.
From my office window I could watch, at high tide only, tiny tugs slowly haul barges of wheat to the flour mill through the many bends of the Cray, and which sat near the Cray’s confluence with the Darenth. This quay could also be seen from the railway.
All gone now, no BW works, no flour mill.
Brilliant love these river walks John Rogers can’t get enough of them thanks for sharing until next time .
Thanks Brian
16:38 I'm surprised you didn't mention the river deity playing with his/her football! Lovely walk, I'm working near Avery Hill at present and had no idea about this river...
Another highly enjoyable walk, Jon…really loved your “voyage of discovery” in South London, as you were introduced to the River Shuttle, capped off by the sighting of the egret “shuttling” along the Shuttle, and the fox taking in the river 👍
A beautiful ending. So fun. How funny when we say something we are so sure of than life plays a joke on us.A very good chuckle. So important to be able to laugh at our funny mistakes. You wouldn't have seen the fox, beautiful noise from the freeway and the moon. Great water glistening. Thanks so much. Blessings
There are a group of ladies who do the "yarn bombing" in Ladywell. Really creative and always brings a smile to my face. Great job with the video, as usual.
That’s a wonderful name for the activity ‘yarn bombing’
Just love your enthusiasm for these river walks.
Love the bare trees. Amazing to see an egret !
Great walk. Brought back a lot of memories. . Thanks John.
Thank you so very much for your videos. They are a weekly highlight.
thank you very much for your generosity JA
Thanks for another cracking trip along a magical river 😊
Hi John must say I have enjoyed your first book and look forward to your second book.
thanks Asaf
Thank you for a delightful walk along the Shuttle to the Cray - which rises in Orpington, near where I live, and which in turn runs into the Darent, which rises in Westerham, not that far from me. I do hope that you may find time to do stretches of both in the future?
Hurray…been waiting patiently for today’s walk!
sorry to keep you waiting Linda Sue
@@JohnRogersWalks SO worth the wait..beautiful rivers, crocheted sculptures and that moon, that beautiful moon..thank you
My local river👍 my children played in it after school, as did I and my parents 👍
Enjoyable, as ever. If you are intrigued by knitted post post box covers and similar phenomona, come to Hertford and see the regular work of the Secret Society of Yarn Bombers - not just for Christmas!
Looking forward to the River Cray walk!
Lovely walk following the river Shuttle and alot of green spaces on the way.I love your enthusiasm for the river walks!!
I lived in Albany park near Sidcup for a while, but I've never heard of the river shuttle! Further down the cray river goes through an area called 5 arches, that's worth exploring as long as it's not changed since I was there! And one of those pylons used to sit in the middle of the road, and the road widened where it was and you drove round it!
thanks, john, i really do enjoy the river jaunts! haha and, of course, pouring a libation to the genius loci is always required 😉
Ha, yes I felt obliged to celebrate this walk appropriately
I do a slightly different version of that walk. It’s probably too late to tell you this now but the bit where you went wrong could have been avoided altogether as you only had to cross the road after Marlborough Park. There’s a footpath that skirts the golf course behind houses that leads to the next stretch of Shuttle.
Never mind, it was a thrill to see you in my neck of the woods.
A tiny little path at the end of some garages off Dene Ave perhaps? The path goes through the most extraordinary little bluebell woods to rejoin the Shuttle walk. Know it well. Lovely secret suburban treasure.! 😊
@@64petee ssshhhh don't tell everyone. 😄
Liked the video, great to see the Shuttle recognised, but not south London, south east London.
Some lovely photography and filming in this one John! This area is part of my dad's youthful stomping ground, so of special interest.. I wonder if anyone will ever open a pub called The Stink Pipe & Pylon? A lovely walk, this one, well worth getting on a train for. Thanks John! 🌟👍
Thanks William. A pub under that name really has to open - just imagine how good the sign painting would be
Thank you John. I'm holed up at home with covid in a bit of discomfort, your vid has given me some much needed respite.
sorry to hear that you're ill, so glad the video helped and you're feeling better soon
Thank you so much for the lovely video and knowledge ❤️
Another lovely time tableless walk John. Know some may have mentioned your start and end times, however I love not knowing exactly when you have completed your stroll and enjoy the bright day/dusk/night contrasts. All so very relaxing and stressfree.
thanks very much Eden
I could watch your videos all day long. Great content and very interesting!
Awesome to wake up to this one, thank you John. Another of my old stomping grounds. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, and the introduction to the Shuttle. Wonderful way to start a Monday.
Such a great area Steve - my favourite walk of the year so far
Great video John not checked in for a while, still loving the walks and in particular south London suburbia at its finest 👍
So so glad that you got to visit the delightful Shuttle and enjoy the ambience of the parks and suburbs of that part of Kent.
I too suggested in a comment on your Quaggy walk that you had to discover the Shuttle sometime. Do it again sometime with a longer day. Bexley Woods are gorgeous and you should aim to finish at the Cray in Hall Place after all the madness of the A2. Its just over the road from the confluence you reached. You'll be glad you did!
Thanks again John.
Another great video... 😊
Thanks Pete - I did find your comment when I went back - such a great walk
Wonderful John ! Thankyou.
Lots of nice parks.
That is Eltham and Bexley for you. Beautiful part of London.
It was wonderful to see the egret fishing in the river, I hope that is a sign of the river's health.
Terrific walk, John! Cheers!
Prodigious...👍👍
19.27. Howard Avenue/Albany Road. One of my playgrounds in the 1960s. One year workmen erected a very strange contraption beside the river. There was a grassed area both sides of the river. A cylindrical steel thingy with doors into it. Ooooer…My juvenile curiosity made me ask the men. It was a compression/decompression chamber! Scareeee.
Workers were doing something in the sewer running BELOW the Shuttle. Needed to compress the atmosphere in the sewer tube in order to prevent flooding. So they had to compress and decompress just like a surfacing scuba-diver.
Great video! Great info, great tour! Thank you!
Was at Beeston marina notts last year John and this egret was in a backwater feeding on minnows we was stood two foot away watching it , it didn't give a dam we was watching it then I noticed it was ringed so later I googled it and it was part of a breeding program but the ones local to me see you and you can't get close , great vid again 👍
Thanks for a fab River Shuttle Shuffle John 🙏. Magic as always 👌
Just watched you on my Mrs' Instagram live..she's the one that mentioned Ian Rush 😂...
Only through watching your videos you've made me realise how fascinated by waterways of any description I've always been, I can't walk over a bridge or a brook without having a nosey. There's something magical or mystical about meandering waterways...loved that thought when do streams become brooks and brooks become rivers etc 🤔
YNWA John...see what I did there 😂
Loved this one as it was through suburbia but in the main across green spaces with the river remaining in view most of the way.
Interesting liminality in time and location. Thanks John :D
Lovely! This really made me think of the walks I take here Maryland/Virginia which are very suburban as well. These types of walks have a charm/power them - maybe the contrast of a bit of nature against the highways and the planned communities but without all the more built-up/closed -in urban landscape? Maybe things breathe a bit more?
The river Shuttle is a new one to me, must admit I'd never heard of it before. Thank you for this walk John, take care 💕🇦🇺
my pleasure Liz - it has me wondering how many more rivers there are in London that I've never heard of
Another great video John, cheers. There was magic along the walk, as there always is. But particularly prominent in this video. There must be something to completing a walk in darkness, something about it feeling finished. It might feel a bit strange to end it in daylight. Could end up feeling incomplete :)
Lovely walk John, thank you for taking us all along with you.
My pleasure Reaper
In 1930s John they had a crowd of 70 000 plus at valley my dad once told me they were massive once caught a train overground n these lads were talking dutch on the train I got talkin to em turns out they were season ticket holders at the valley n made the trip every game as their dad's had years ago , crazy UTB
Strangely like so many things , South London has so few opportunities for football fans to follow a reasonable team .
Of course the Arsenal , originally got their name from Woolwich Arsenal armaments factory . Just down the road from where I was born .
But it didn't take them long to cross the river , to set up home on the other side .
Leaving Charlton to reap the rewards as regards attendance numbers .
Actually the Who played to a capacity crowd there some years ago .
I can't remember who scored , but I seem to remember that it went into extra time .
Thank you John! A lovely walk!
'Sam' + 'goalkeeper' + Charlton Athletic' must mean the unforgettable Sam Bartram, no reserve he, but Charlton's keeper in their great days (1946-53).
I was born in Restons Crescent which you spotlight. A few years agoI tried to follow the start of the Shuttle from the north of Avery Hill Par
Am I allowed a follow-up to this?
The whole area now ringed by Restons Crescent was Crown property until 1950, when the LCC bought it up for housing development. (Crown Woods Way just across Bexley Road). I remember a combine harvester at work in the field that now has the shopping parade fronting Bexley Road. Bluebell woods everywhere.
The old London-Kent border ran north-south, where you picked out the current Greenwich-Bexley boundary.
Although I cycled everywhere as a kid, I never really investigated the territory immediately on the ‘other’ side, i.e. beyond the ring of the crescent itself.
Rumour has it that the Shuttle’s source is in dense undergrowth at the north end of Avery Hill Park. A few years ago I couldn’t fight my way through to see anything like a source to prove the point; only a distance further south, where you picked out the dry gulley.
Thanks for a trip home. (Haven’t lived there for 59 years!)
Too strange! Only this very afternoon I fell into a conversation with a group of old boys watching the football and we spoke of Sam Bartram! How many days a week/month/year does that happen!?
A coincidence theory perhaps!
But also I wanted to say that I recognised your plight to find the source of the Shuttle very well. I too undertook that mission a couple of years back whilst living in New Eltham. I understand there are at least 2 possible options in that area of the upper park. The other is a little higher to the right. But within private land so... Good luck!
Either way they converge in a tree lined ditch that runs directly towards Sparrow Lane where shortly after John picked up the river...
Great to see the place through someone else's eyes wasn't it! 😊
@@64petee Delighted to read your reply.
I remember spotting one map of Eltham that actually pinpointed the supposed Shuttle source, sadly not Google maps. It was close to the southern end of Butterfly Lane. But I didn’t come armed with an axe and other necessities!
Sam Bartram - the cry went up ‘back to Sammy!’ every time Charlton needed to clear - and that was often. If the opposition scored, he’d walk out to the edge of the area - no doubt to miss the comments made.
All a long time ago. That was c. 1949; I’m 83 now.
That's terrific info. Thanks Bruce.
I'm a native of Deptford Creek, but spent my early years in and around the Quaggy and later since all over the Ravensbourne and its various children. I even went to Ravensbourne College of Art bitd...!
My family/s are half Charlton and half West Ham.
With a sprinkle of old boys (now mostly deceased) that are Arsenal from Woolwich days!
I went to Charlton many times during the 70s into 80s and now go to West Ham as well as Charlton whenever the opportunity arises.
Difficult times for both atm...!
I too am looking forward to John discovering the Cray and his video tale to tell.
But I'm not sure I want to be still 'hacking through the undergrowth' when I'm 80 years old!
Not in a figurative sense that is... 😊
I only hope that I'm still not
Lovely walk of a hidden gem I walk along regularly
Hey from Australia John! You cannot do better than walk the tracks of Lake Macquarie NSW and its history. Formily from Clapton Park estate London i enjoy many of these walks...London may have lost its Grace but will never lose its Charm.
Yeah, London's lost a lot in 60 years.
Thanks John I've lived in Dartford all of my life and travel to Sidcup for work. I've always wondered what the river that joined the Cray at Bexley was called.
Close associations with this one...my mum was born in Eltham & I was born in Bexleyheath! Lovely stuff sir!
Well John, another fantastic magical journey especially the final destination with the roar of the traffic and the full moon. I used to back on to the shuttle back in the 80s a king fisher was often spotted darting along the bank from our garden. Although tamed now the shuttle would frequently flood during heavy rain. Yes you must do a trip along the Cray. Although it's only 9 miles long it's steeped in history. Don't think one show would be enough time .
I enjoyed this walk very much. Thank you.
Love it especially as its my neck of the woods 👍
Another delightful journey John. I walked part of the Lea on Friday and thought of you.
Brilliant to see so many stink pipes on one walk. Probably explains the whiff on route
Great video , used to walk along in Bexley . Regards mark
One of the joys of these videos is seeing how utterly different London housing schemes compare to the rest of the UK.
Great stuff, never knew that part of London was so interesting.
really good. I love these sort of 'hidden'' walks co's they make me wonder what is coming next. Likes the spooky ending as well. Thanks John.
Another brilliant walk!- I heard an item as I was channel hopping driving down the M1 about walking as meditation- the steps, the act of walking being the purpose rather than getting from A - B. You're doing both and sharing the experience :) The only issue is that the post box toppers made in crochet not knitted 🤣
That's very true Helen - I find walking very meditative.
Great video John! Thanks!
Thanks Tom
A lovely river walk on a beautiful day in a pretty suburban realm , Thanks John ,I learn so much about South London ,take care my friend 😎
thanks very much Leslie
The neighborhoods look pretty clean and looked after compared to some nowadays...
I imagine when it was named it was once a river and perhaps it has shrunk with all the development. I love your idea of following it though and you’ve inspired me to do the same here in Vermont follow the waters! I love a fellow Walker I really agreed with yours and Ian Sinclair’s talk at the bookshop mentioning how cyclists tend to own the road and there you have an accident with a cyclist so sad. Much more interesting to be on foot, See more, do more, talk more, film more.
Fantastic once again John, but I always find myself worrying about how you are going to get home 😅
Loved the walk!
Thanks Timothy
Little egret they are becoming more common as is the parrots you can hear in the background ....and the the postbox toppers are crocheted
nice John!! thanks for this!!!!
My pleasure Greg
Yay groovy xxx
14:43 min. When the trees turn green again in spring, it must be beautiful there 😃
Sangam the meeting of two rivers, very important in Hinduism. Went to a place called Omkarwashwar .
John Rogers - the Bob Ross of psychogeography!
Love that Chapman - thanks
The walk, even if you start it two hours earlier, is still "the walk". Mr Sinclair is bound only by his own solitary literary musings. You, by your own choice, have your ISO settings and (grateful and appreciative) viewers to consider. Is a stinkpipe / pylon combo still a stinkpipe / pylon combo if you miss it in the dark?😉
Hi, this is fabulous. I'm sure I saw you in Avery Hill park. The air ambulance landed in the park to attend the accident you referred to.
Ah yes very possible, the helicopter was flying overhead when I was in the park
I remember that motorway stretch while walking The London Loop. A lovely pie n mash shop is close by.
I liked the football caught by the river!
There always seems to be one