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Email: info@southwarkcyclists.org.uk
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Cycling in Southwark
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What a borough. A rough-diamond shaped sort of whereabouts.....that shape, that psycho-geography, that spirit of the place, perfectly reflects the gritty, chaotic, fantastically and wonderfully varied jumble of streets, people, memories and hopes that just about cling together to make The London Borough of Southwark. 212,000 people. 120 nationalities. Two hundred languages. Some of the world’s richest people live, work and play here, and many of the UK’s poorest. Some of London’s glitziest housing, and some of the meanest estates. For a couple of thousand years now the Thames has stopped the roughs of Southwark getting overeasy access to the smoother city on the other side. And this despite one rail bridge (and the sad stumps of a dead one), one road tunnel, several tube train tunnels (including the world’s first under a major river), four road bridges, and a foot bridge that one steady day will famously link the cathedral of a past age to an obsolete power station, that’s rebirthed as a gleaming cathedral for our age of newer art, performance and marketing. It’s 18 miles round the borough boundary. If Tate Modern’s circumscribed chimney is at midnight, then the thatched (bewigged wooden O) Globe theatre is a few minutes later, Tower Bridge is at one o’clock, Rotherhithe Tunnel at two, Greenland Dock (proud but sad remnant of the huge Surrey Docks) is three. (The name is no estate agents conceit, only 150 years ago whalers used to drag back decomposing whales from there and boil them down for blubber on the dockside). Millwall fans play at four (and they’re right, no one loves them because the Bermondsey boys have been booted just into Lewisham. Denizens), at five must be Nunhead Cemetry and all those frozen angels, six is Crystal Palace (where Southwark meets an unlikely mob of neighbours: Lambeth, Lewisham, Croydon and Bromley), seven must be Gipsy Hill (did the railway navvies evict them?), eight is Dulwich, the village, the picture gallery, the park and those laid back London Recumbents, nine’s Herne Hill and the velodrome, ten is another oval at Kennington, eleven is the War Museum (surely now post-imperial) then it’s nearly onto South Bank Cycles before we’re back to the Thames again and the recycled Oxo Tower. Countless thousand of cows here once got turned into little boxes, twice a day the bloodied tides took away the bones and few other bits that couldn’t be cubed. Elephant and Castle (pub or Spanish princess?) roundabouts provide perhaps the worst cycling spot in London. Dulwich and Sydenham Hill golf course is a link on the Green Chain for some deeply rural biking. Denmark and Herne Hills make up one of London’s steepest climbs (but Brockwell Park and lovely lido at the bottom is sadly out of borough, but not character). Between Oxo Tower in the west and St George’s Stairs by South Dock marina in the east are almost 5 miles of Thames Path. The path very well reflects the spirit of both borough and river as it threads east......it first wriggles in and out on the often medieval street pattern and even the river (Clink Street/Southwark Cathedral) is often hard to spot. Once east of Rotherhithe village the sky gets bigger and bigger, and the sweeps of mother Thames much more readable. The incoming tide brings the fresh smell of the sea and bass and Dover sole. Rotherhithe’s peninsula is now as post-industrial as Greenwich’s is, but lacks the latter’s sorry meniscus. But the world doesn’t stop west of Oxo or east of St George’s Stairs or south of Crystal Palace. West are the glitzy culture palaces of the South Bank and London’s biggest bike wheel that rolls almost due north. Evans Bikes in The Cut just south has somehow slipped into Lambeth but is still one of London’s finest bike shops. East is the Pepys Estate and the remnants of Woolwich Dockyard where the navy used to build its ships and whose cattle skulls on the seventeeth century gate posts refer back to carniverous sailors and more beef, bullied this time. ....and beyond is Greenwich and its nine miles of bikeable Thames Path to Bexley...and Dartford where the long bike routes start in earnest....all the way to Whitstable, Margate and round to Dover and beyond. Any few words about cycling in Southwark should surely start with a not overly-cyclecentric view of the borough. And should be a little confusing, jumbled, maddening, tempting and promising. Southwark is all those things. Southwark is both a village somewhere between the bridge of that name and its Blackfriars counterpart, and a London borough. Borough, or The Borough for some reason, round London Bridge is another of the borough’s twenty of so villages with it very own, rather special, covered market that somehow refuses to die is currently undergoing yet another renaissance. Southwark, us locals argue, is the most varied borough in the greatest city in the world. And cycling in Southwark is variegated too. It’s all here. There’s the meandering explores along the Thames Path and the thundering commuting up the Old Kent Road, Camberwell Road and Evenly Street. An average 400 bikes a day cross into Southwark on Evenly Street alone in the average morning rush hour, heading for work in Southwark itself or a over a bridge and into The City. Southwark is a mostly of course an urban ride and best explored at that pace. Between the huge A-roads that all seem to head for the heart of the village, there are backstreets that would take a lifetime to learn. There are surprises everywhere, not just little bits of history or beauty you’ve passed a hundred times before and notice for the first time, but also the delight of the evolving organic city. Things come and go, buildings die, get torn down or done up. Like everywhere, some of these back streets make great bike routes, many don’t. Most are quite safe provided you’re sensible. Some are best avoided. The London Cycle Network, that worthy, segmented, disappointment, has 6 miles (????) of itself in Southwark. And the parks, the Rotherhithe peninsula has Russia Dock Woodland, and much paved off-road stuff, in between the low-rise dormitory suburbia that lead to Surrey Quays and the areas very own shopping mall and car-dominated asphalt Leisure Park. Nearby is Bermondsey’s Southwark Park, one of the first urban parks in the world and slowly emerging from a promising refit and enlarged lake. Even a new band-stand, but all trace of the 30’s lido has been airbrushed away. Nice little new gallery though. Burgess Park is much more Peckham and windswept, the night-fisherman huddle and bevvy in their bivvies. Peckham Rye adjoins Nunhead and Camberwell cemeteries and the cornily named Aquarius golf club over a covered reservoir. (Quentin Tarantino was walking his doberman here about six years ago........). Dulwich Park has a lake, a good cafe, bikes to hire, tennis and the rest, an oasis of affluence with one of the first purpose built public art galleries in the world next door beautifully extended now.....and a rather Etonian boys private school up by the toll-booth. The parks get smaller as we go north..tiny green surprises here and there as old cemeteries...yet more evocation.....Tabard Gardens, Leatherhead Market Square. And in between those pocket-handkerchiefs are the caffs. Huge all-day breakfasts and mugs of coffee (easy on the milk). There’s every kind of cycling imaginable here from the so sad tethered bikes in expensive gyms in at last used railway arches.......to the very hard-core fixed wheel, elbow pushing, you won’t pass me brakeless riders of the 45 degree concrete banking at Herne Hill velodrome. And everything in between. Toddlers loose their stabilisers in the parks. Not enough kids cycle to school. The car-free lifestyle is easy here for biked shopping, commuting, going out, exploring and exercise. But it’s tricky out there on rushy Southwark streets. Motorised vehicles don’t always watch out for you, they overtake and turn right across you path, they u-turn, doors get opened as you pass, potholes appear overnight . But it’s nowhere near as dangerous as non-cyclists believe. Sadly, two cyclists were killed and 18 seriously injured in Southwark in 2000 but the chances of a bad accident are only once in 300 years. And who are Southwark Cyclists? Just another LCC Borough Group of course with 473 paid up LCC members to represent the 25,000 cyclists who live here. LCC wisely based its HQ right here near the caff where the Summer Solstice dawn ride refuels. The group’s a mixed bunch......and all the stronger for that. www.southwarkcyclists.org.uk is helpful and details what we do. An email list provides instant updates. There’s a busy rides programme, monthly meetings all year round, social events, a useful newsletter and a great deal of ongoing work on detailed planning matters..........improving bike parking at stations, working towards a much need improved London Cycle Network, creating off-road routes on old railways line, asking for improved crossings, arranging events on European Car Free Day, persuading Southwark Council, local firm and other organisations to think bike and much more more. The group is run by its members and is of course a sum of its parts. There’s much to do and we always need, and very much welcome, help of any sort. And if you need help or advice just ask. |
Barry Mason |