Charlie Brown’s

We start at the end of my walk on 9th February and dusk over Ilford. I was heading towards the Pioneer Point Towers – a pair of tall (33 and 25 floors respectively) but skinny modern tower blocks in the centre of Ilford. These had been ever present on the horizon since I had wandered into Little Ilford Park a few hours earlier.

But first, the North Circular Road Flyover, looking moody in the winter sunshine.

Across the street from the shiny new Pioneer Point Towers is this rather charmingly old-school Sainsbury’s supermarket. It reminds me of the one in Debden, near Epping Forest.

The light was now fading, an so for the end of my day I headed into Ilford centre and the station to catch a train home – without running on the stairs, obvs.

The next time I got out to continue the walk was over a month later – a bright spring day at the end of March. I began by wandering through the backstreets of Ilford finding neat rows of suburban semis, a modern Cathotic Church, the Black Stag Archers Club and a Bentley Mulsanne.

Leaving Wanstead Park Road I walked up past Redbridge tube and stopped for a lunch at the Red House pub at the start of Roding Lane South.

After admiring the shop fronts and rather quirky architecture of the Roding Lane Free Church, I walked down onto the Roding Valley Way and alongside the River Roding.

Further up the valley is the rather splendid Roding Lane South Pumping Station – built in the mid 19th century it is no longer in use, but the building itself is listed.

Leaving the Roding Valley Park I head back onto Roding Lane South and walk through the industrial estate up towards the Southend Road and Charlie Brown’s Roundabout – where the North Circular and M11 intersect.

Charlie’s Brown’s Roundabout is named after the pub that once stood on the junction of the North Circular and Southend Road. The pub was run by the son of Charlie Brown – ‘the uncrowned king of Limehouse’.

From Charlie Brown’s it’s a short walk to the suburb of South Woodford and the tube home.