Riverside path

 

As a local resident, a councillor and a historian I was particularly happy on 17^th September. This was a great day for Greenwich because - at last - the riverside path was opened around the Dome site, and the route between Deptford Creek and Thames Barrier completed.

 This section of riverside path has been closed to the public for 120 years, ever since the gas works was built in the  1880s. Before that, in the 1870s, Greenwich Vestry (Greenwich Council’s predecessor) had fought a long, hard battle in the High Court to keep it open. Nothing changes - it is only because Greenwich Council went back to the High Court in the 1990s that so much of the path is open today – and thanks to hard work by English Partnerships, it is now open right round the tip of the Peninsula..

 I know that Greenwich Cyclists will be celebrating the new route -  but I do hope the path will mainly be used by pedestrians, both locals and all the tourists we see walking down from North Greenwich Station, guide books in hand. I hope they will look at the new art work alongside Alcatel’s factory and that the future will see more fun events like last years’ ‘Hysterical Walk’.

Some really exciting new vistas will be opened up to us – across the River is the whole of Blackwall Reach with tales of the days when ‘Blackwall fashion’ were the most important words in  world shipbuilding.  We will be able to see where HMS Warrior – now preserved in dry dock at Portsmouth – was built,  as well as the monument to the departure of the Virginia Settlers as they went off to found America,  and London’s only real lighthouse – today an art gallery.  On this side of the River people will be able to see all the work by the Environment Agency towards improving the foreshore and its ecology, the new pier and structures put in place for the Millennium.

 The path was formally opened by the Mayor – but the real ceremony was performed by the children of the Millennium School who lined up on their bicycles to be the first through the new section. They were followed by stream of guests on foot – walking, chatting, looking at the river.  It has taken a lot of hard work to get this path open – the community groups who have kept on reminding us all about it,  the council staff who have done such a lot of hard work as well as English Partnerships, who were ultimately responsible for opening it up.  Thank you to everyone – the best thanks though will be to see visitors and locals using the path, seeing the river.