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London LOOP

Last week I started a trip on the London LOOP from Erith to Fulwell.

It is a route that brings you through a variety of forest, field, suburb, small town and industrial areas. It a bit difficult to navigate, but with the book (2017, Colin Saunders), sign posting and a GPS on my phone I managed - although with many errors and diversions.

The book gives you step by step directions and many interesting informationa bout the area you walk through. I can't remember directions for 20 km and I don't want to walk with my nose in a book, so I mainly used it for planning.

The sign posting is good, but lacking in places. Many times I had no idea where the route was, but had to relay on the GPS.

GPS: I used OutdoorActive and route which covered the entire route. Many places the GPS-route and the Sign-route differed and in each case I had to select which one to use. Mostly I went with the sign-route, but the GPS was always my Plan B.

I stayed the whole week in Peckham and went by public transport to the days start point and back from the days end point (= next days start point). The advantage of this plan over a traditional walk from point to point is that I had flexibility to decide when I was tired and return next day. Some days I miscalculated and stopped - only to find that the nearest bus stop was a mile away. I learned to check for transportation (Google Maps) when I started getting tired :-)

I plan to finish the route before I turn 75 and then I will take the Capital Ring.

It is highly recommended for people who wants to see London from a new POV. Not only do you get to see wonderful natural areas, but (depending on where you stay) also nw areas of London it self. E.g. I had never been to Peckham before, now I got to shop ( I stayed in an apartment) and use local transport.

Posted by
12103 posts

Fascinating, I.p. Thanks for sharing. Looks like something to plan a trip around!

Posted by
744 posts

So glad you are enjoying the LOOP! We did it over 2023 and loved seeing places in London we never would have otherwise. Some of the sections are better than others but they're all interesting.

We used this guide, which is more recent (2021): https://trailblazer-guides.com/book/london-loop

It's true it's not always well marked so I had a gpx file saved in Google maps on my phone as a back-up. Since you're so close to London you don't need to worry about not having service to load the maps (generally).

Capital Ring is great as well, we did it over 2020-2021 (lockdowns interrupted our progress). For that we just used the guidance on the TFL website.