“It’s a pleasant day, I’m 35, what else am I supposed to do?”
Inaccessible to all but fisherfolk for 150 years, Walthamstow Wetlands has finally opened to some fanfare and much quacking after £8m of improvements. My first view of this enormous new open space, spanning 211 hectares, is via the Maynard Entrance on Forest Road, a ten-minute walk from Blackhorse Road tube station. This entrance gives you access to the northern reservoirs which are some of the largest and least picturesque on the site. Lockwood Reservoir is a great expanse of water, which you climb an embankment to get to. Up top, you can see clear views for miles and walking around the perimeter of this would take at least twenty minutes or so. To the south you can spot the clusters of skyscrapers at Canary Wharf as well as the city, giving a perspective on the landscape of London as much more than just urban sprawl. As an internationally important site for birds, I expected to see more but in attendance were swans, coots and moorhens in abundance as well as ubiquitous gulls and a few herons.
The landscape undergoes something of a transformation once you cross Forest road and into the sites’ main entrance. Here you can walk to the renovated Engine House which just a few years back was a partially derelict building. Now it’s a stunning visitor centre with a brand new 24-metre tower housing 54 swift nest boxes as well as space for bats and a café serving your standard “how much?!” cups of coffee and snacks. That said, the Wetlands is free to visit and is open 7 days a week so I’ve no business complaining and they don’t have security strip-searching for contraband snacks.
The Engine House
The central reservoirs really show off the beauty of the site, with two hectares of new reedbeds planted which helps encourage lots of wildlife playing hide and seek. In making the site accessible to visitors, many tiny jetties have been installed to sit on, stand on and fish from. It’s easy to get lost amongst the foliage and listen out for the bird song alongside the occasional whine of a police siren. If you are after genuine serenity, you’ll need reminding that the site is close to Tottenham, on the edges of Walthamstow and still very much in an industrial area of London. Richmond Park it ain’t, but there’s something enchanting in the Wetlands where nature abounds amid pylons and chimneys puffing out the pollution that is making our air toxic. This is a surprisingly peaceful patch of London though, especially when you experience the full size of the site.
Pylons and birds
Aside from the obvious birds I can recognise, don’t ask me what specific brand of bird you’ll spot because that’s where I fall down. When I was at uni in Exeter, I regularly went to areas laden with fowl and lived with a naturalist who knew her birds. All that knowledge is now lost to time but the Wetlands may yet bring some of it back. When I thought “bird over there with long beak” was a cormorant, I was entirely wrong. As a 35 year-old, it’s entirely appropriate to learn about birds, especially when a nationally recognised reserve has just opened on my doorstep. It’s not like I’m going to go clubbing.
So, the wetlands. It lives up to its name, being extravagantly wet. And it being east London, there’s an Andrea Arnold-esque beauty in how industrial lands combine with nature to create something surprisingly peaceful. Another win for Walthamstow and a marvellous new amenity for the people.
