Sport & Fitness

Paddington to Hayes: 14 miles (3.5 hours)

Paddington to Hayes
14 miles (3.5 hours)
Around Little Venice and Paddington (1), the Grand Union is a bit of a disaster for bikes: boat-owners, justifiably annoyed with cyclists whizzing past only inches from their homes, have erected knobbly barriers to prevent you riding on the towpath. It gets a bit more promising from the junction with the Harrow Road – a nice, wide, paved towpath, surrounded by playgrounds in the shadow of the Trellick Tower (2). Soon, on your right, is Kensal Green Cemetery (3), and on your left Wormwood Scrubs Park (4). You wind through North Acton before you get to the best bit, where the canal crosses over the top of the North Circular (A406) at Park Royal (5) – you can actually see an eight-lane highway pass under the water. Around the same point you start to see floating riverside offerings sent from the Hindu temple at Neasden (6). From here on it’s all parks – Sudbury Golf Course (7) is on your right, although the towpath gets a little scruffier from around Greenford onwards. You’re also reminded that, only about 70 years ago, it really was all fields around here, and there are still remnants of the canal’s relationship with light-industry in Southall and Hayes (Taylor Woodrow, Nestlé, EMI). It gets much prettier around Cowley and Uxbridge (Bulls Bridge, Stockers Lock) (8) but, if you’re knackered, you can always lug your bike back on the train from Hayes & Harlington or West Drayton back to Paddington. Feature continues

Bow to Tottenham: 7 miles (one hour)

Bow to Tottenham
7 miles (one hour)
Hmm: Stratford, Bow, Leyton, Hackney, Clapton, Walthamstow, Stamford Hill, Tottenham Hale, Edmonton… On paper this sounds like a white-knuckle cycle ride through the grimmest estates in north-east London, an assault course through burned-out cars and psychotic gangs of hooded youth. And it is, until you discover the River Lea. Also spelt, rather bafflingly, as the River Lee, or the Lee Navigation, it enters the Thames as a proper river called Bow Creek but the cycle path starts, rather unpromisingly, in Bow, where the river has mutated into what looks like a canal. There are grim views of the A12 and some skanky junkyards until you go under the DLR line and enter a semi-rural vista. You get to a junction: the right path is a picturesque but scary tributary that takes you to Carpenter’s Road (with a vertigo-inducing ten-foot drop into the canal) (1); avoid that path and instead take the left-hand turn, which takes you across a small bridge to Old Ford Lock (which has a handy drinking-water tap).

Here it gets seriously bucolic: huge skies and lush greenery, punctuated only by the odd high-rise and the occasional burst of graffiti. Go on for half a mile and you reach a second junction: here you can cross the bridge and turn left onto the Hertford Union Canal. This will take you under the A102(M) Crossroute and past the Top O’ The Morning pub (129 Cadogan Terrace, E9 5HP) and link you up with the Regent’s Canal, right near the Rose Gate entrance of Victoria Park. Otherwise, continue up the River Lea, hugging the lower end of Hackney Marsh (2). Urbanity re-emerges at Clapton, where you’ll find two canalside pubs: the Princess of Wales (146 Lea Bridge Rd, E5 9RB) and the Ship Aground (144 Lea Bridge Rd, E5 9RB). Take the small tunnel under the Lea Bridge Road, follow the bend and you reach another junction. You can cross an iron bridge into the pretty nature reserve that is Walthamstow Marshes (3), where you’ll find cows, geese, ducks etc, with a bucolic route to Coppermill Lane and St James’s Street.

Carry on along the west side of the River Lea and you cling to the post-industrial debris of Clapton, passing an old cockney boozer called the Anchor & Hope (15 High Hill Ferry, E5 9HG), two pleasant Stamford Hill parks (Springfield and Markfield) and a shingle track. Soon you’re at Tottenham Hale, where you pass under Forest Road and continue past a network of huge reservoirs. Go past Tottenham Lock and Stonebridge Lock and soon you could almost be in Norfolk – all greenery and gaily-painted barges. Only the enormous network of electricity pylons remind you that you’re still in London.