Capital Ring/Green Chain


Capital Ring and Green Chain Walk signs in Oxleas Wood
The Capital Ring is a 126 km signed orbital walking trail encircling Inner London. Despite running deep inside one of the world's biggest cities, most of it is off-road and surprisingly green, taking advantage of the city's rich endowment of public parks and green spaces, nature reserves, commons, woodlands, waterways, reservoirs and urban footpaths. The surroundings vary from historic town centres, post-industrial canal-sides and classic Victorian parks to deer-grazed grasslands, ancient woodlands and even the occasional field.

The Green Chain Walk is London's oldest-established signed green trail, actually an 80 km network connecting the surprisingly large number of green spaces in southeast London. It links several points on the south bank of the river Thames with Crystal Palace and Chislehurst, with additional branches from Nunhead and Dulwich to Crystal Palace.

Both trails are now Walk London strategic walking routes supported by Transport for London and are exceptionally well-connected to public transport, all of it within TfL's zonal fares system.

As the Capital Ring and the Green Chain share the same paths for a substantial distance between Charlton and Crystal Palace, I've decided to treat them together. Unlike the Capital Ring, the Green Chain isn't a single trail and there are numerous options for completing it: I've suggested a series of linear day walks that cover the whole trail with minimum duplication, plus a few useful links and extensions of my own devising.

The Capital Ring route includes:
  • Richmond Park: a Royal Park and one of London's two National Nature Reserves
  • Lee Valley Park,  the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Wandle Valley Park
  • Numerous important Green Chain spaces including Avery Hill and Pippenhall Meadows, Beckenham Place Park, Crystal Palace Park, Eltham Middle Park and Oxleas Woods
  • Streatham, Tooting Bec, Wandsworth and Wimbledon Commons
  • Abney Park Cemetery, Finsbury Park, Horsendon Hill and Highgate Woods
  • Eltham Palace, Syon House and Harrow School
  • The Parkland Walk disused railway line and the Greenway sewer
  • The Welsh Harp Reservoir and the Royal Victoria Docks
  • Two contrasting stretches of the river Thames at Woolwich and Richmond
  • The rivers Beverley Brook, Brent, Crane, Dollis Brook, Lea, Pool, Quaggy, Ravensbourne and Wandle
  • The Grand Union Canal, New River and River Lee Navigation
...and numerous other lesser known but fascinating green spaces, nature reserves and heritage sites.

Highlights on other parts of the Green Chain Walk include the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site including Greenwich Park and adjoining Blackheath, plus Chislehurst Common, Dulwich Park and Picture Gallery, the Horniman Museum and Gardens, Lesnes Abbey and surrounding woodlands, Mottingham Woodlands, Nunhead Cemetery, several Thamesmead parks and lakes and the river Wogebourne. My suggested extensions take in Hall Place at Bexley, the river Shuttle, Southwark Park and the National Trust woodlands at Petts Wood.

Capital Ring sections

Green Chain Walk sections

I've numbered these sections with the initial D to avoid confusion with the official sections. The way these correspond is included in the introduction to each post.

As Inner London Ramblers now provide free downloadable guides to both trails, I haven't included detailed route descriptions here except for sections of my own devising or where the official description is unclear. But in addition to the background information given in the posts themelves, I've provided PDF information sheets listing distances, connections and features of interest.

More about the Capital Ring


Starting on the south bank of the Thames by the foot tunnel and ferry terminal at Woolwich, the trail soon joins the Green Chain Walk near the Thames Barrier and runs clockwise via Woolwich Common, Eltham and Penge to the end of the Green Chain at Crystal Palace Park. The Ring then continues via Streatham, Balham, Wimbledon Park, Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park to Richmond. It crosses the Thames via Richmond Lock footbridge.

The Ring follows the Grand Union Canal and the Brent valley via Hanwell and Greenford, then runs via Harrow-on-the-Hill, Hendon, Hampstead Garden Suburb and East Finchley to Highgate. It follows the Parkland Walk to Finsbury Park, then the New River to Stoke Newington before picking up the River Lea Navigation to Hackney Wick and Stratford. It then follows the Greenway sewer to West Ham and Beckton, rounds the Royal Victoria Docks and completes its circuit using the foot tunnel from North Woolwich.

The trail is signed on the ground using a logo with a stylised depiction of the Elizabeth Tower ('Big Ben') within a circle, shown on waymark posts and occasional fingerposts giving distances to key points. Generally the standard of signage is good but there are occasional missing or vandalised waymarks so I don't recommend you rely on them.

The Ring passes through 18 London boroughs – Barnet, Brent, Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Hackney, Haringey, Harrow, Hounslow. Islington, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (very briefly), Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Richmond upon Thames and Wandsworth.

At its closest to central London on Stoke Newington Church Street, it's 6.4 km from Charing Cross as the crow flies. At its furthest, on London Road, Harrow, it’s 16.2 km from Charing Cross.

As well as the Grand Union Canal Walk, Green Chain Walk, Greenway, Lea Valley Walk, New River Path and Parkland Walk, the Ring crosses or uses sections of numerous other trails including the Better Haringey Trail, Beverley Brook Walk, Brent River Walk, Dollis Valley Greenwalk, Green London Way, Greenwich Meridian Trail, Jubilee Greenway, River Crane Walk, Tamsin Trail, Thames Path National Trail, Wandle Trail and Waterlink Way.

Ring walkers will find they are almost never more than a very short walk away from a bus stop with frequent services or a London Underground, London Overground, National Rail or Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station or London Trams stop, so it’s very easy to divide the route into shorter or longer sections to suit individual abilities and preferences. All the stations are in TfL’s Fare Zones 2, 3 or 4 except for one in Zone 5 so Oyster cards, contactless payments and Freedom Passes can easily be used.

The Capital Ring originated in the early 1990s as a project of the London Walking Forum, a pioneering partnership of local councils, countryside management agencies and voluntary organisations like the Ramblers that set out to promote walking in London at a time when the city had no unified government. It was envisaged as a sister route to the Forum's flagship project, the London Loop outer orbital trail, and the first sections opened in 1997.

Following the creation of the Greater London Authority in 2000, the Ring became one of the initial six strategic walking routes supported by Transport for London and the Mayor of London. The first complete guidebook was published in 2003 although signing was only completed in the mid-2000s.

The Ramblers' longstanding connection with the Ring was reinvogorated in 2019 when Inner London Ramblers began working more closely with Transport for London to support it. As well as providing improved information, the Ramblers coordinates a team of footpath guardians, the Ring Rangers, who monitor the trail and ensure that it's properly maintained an improved. More information is on the Inner London Ramblers site, along with news of closures, diversions and path changes: I recommend you check this resource before setting out on a walk.

More about the Green Chain Walk

The Green Chain Walk isn’t a single linear walk but a complex network of trails through the boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark. Its layout is best understood with the help of the overview map below but, briefly, it includes branches from three points beside the river Thames, at Charlton, Thamesmead and Erith, that converge in Oxleas Wood, then split again to offer alternative routes to Eltham Middle Park via Eltham Palace or New Eltham. Continuing to Mottingham, the trail splits once more, with alternative routes to Beckenham Place Park via Elmstead Woods or Grove Park, merging again to reach Crystal Palace Park. There are several additional links, and further branches from Elmstead Woods to Chislehurst, Greenwich to Eltham Middle Park and Nunhead or Dulwich to Crystal Palace Park.

An overview of the Green Chain network from the Inner London Ramblers website.

The combined length of all the components is around 80 km, linking together around 18.2 square km of protected green spaces. The longest ‘end to end’ linear walk using the network, from Nunhead to Erith Riverside via Crystal Palace Park, Beckenham Place Park, Elmstead Woods, Mottingham, Eltham Middle Park, New Eltham, Oxleas Wood and Lesnes Abbey Wood, is around 42 km. The Capital Ring shares Green Chain paths for around 26 km from Maryon Park, Charlton to Crystal Palace station.

My posts propose a way of walking the entire network as a series of linear day walks with minimal retracing of steps. I’ve suggested a few additional sections linking to stations and other trails, including the whole of the Shuttle Riverway from Avery Hill to Bexley, which was originally intended to be part of the Green Chain; a connection from Chislehurst to the London Loop at Petts Wood; and further links from the riverside at Woolwich to Plumstead Common and from Rotherhithe to Nunhead.

The trail is signed using a logo based on the letters GC stylised as links in a chain, sometimes accompanied by an illustration of a path threading from green space to housing. These appear on substantial fingerposts giving destinations and distances at main junctions, smaller fingerposts in many other places, waymarks on wooden posts and metal plaques attached to lampposts and other street furniture. Tactile information boards with overview maps are installed at key sites along the way. Overall, the Green Chain is the most thoroughly signed of all the London trails, though the signs aren’t entirely immune from wear and tear and vandalism, so written guides are still strongly recommended. The Greenwich branch remains largely unsigned so you will certainly need a written guide.

Besides the Capital Ring, the Shuttle Riverway and the unofficial Green London Way, with which it also shares numerous paths, the Green Chain connects with the Cray Riverway, Greenwich Meridian Trail, King Charles III England Coast Path, London Loop, Ridgeway (Thamesmead), Thames Path National Trail, Waterlink Way and various short nature trails and circular walks.

It's very easy to divide the walks into shorter or longer sections to suit individual abilities and preferences, as you’re almost never more than a very short walk away from a bus stop with frequent services or a station. Though the London Underground doesn’t venture this way, you’ll find numerous National Rail stations served by Southeastern, Southern and Thameslink. Parts of the route are also served by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), Elizabeth Line, London Overground and London Trams. The trail is entirely within TfL’s Fare Zones 2-6, so Oyster cards, contactless payments and Freedom Passes are valid throughout.

The Green Chain Walk originated in 1970s initiatives by the Greater London Council (GLC), which then had strategic responsibility for the whole of London, to improve the provision and use of green space, primarily for recreational reasons but increasingly from a nature conservation and biodiversity perspective too. In response to this, four neighbouring southeast London boroughs covering the part of the capital historically in Kent – Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham – formed a joint working party to protect, improve and promote their particularly rich endowment of green space, also involving the voluntary sector and other stakeholders and with the support of the GLC and since defunct government agency the Countryside Commission. They came up with the idea of a ‘green chain’ of parks and open spaces linked by signed walking trails.

The original route network launched in 1977, promoted by onsite signing and free leaflets available from libraries and other council outlets. Linking Charlton, Thamesmead and Erith with Crystal Palace and Chislehurst, it was devised largely by Roger Warhurst, then an officer at Greenwich council, with input from working party members. A branch from Greenwich town centre and riverside was planned but remained unsigned.

The Green Chain was a novel and innovative concept at a time when signed walking trails in the UK ran almost entirely through rural areas and often through quite challenging terrain. It became a model and inspiration for many similar initiatives in London and elsewhere, and its contribution to the development of urban walking can’t be underestimated.

After the abolition of the GLC in 1985, the four boroughs continued to work together to maintain and promote the network, with a jointly funded officer based at Greenwich. The arrangement laid the foundation for the London Walking Forum, in which Roger Warhurst was also involved. This was a similar partnership covering the whole of London, responsible for the creation of the Capital Ring, which could be considered a direct extension of the Green Chain, and the London Loop in the 1990s.

Following the the establishment of the Mayor’s office and Greater London Authority (GLA) in 2000, which restored unified strategic governance to the city, the Green Chain Walk was adopted as one of the initial six ‘strategic walks’ supported by Transport for London. In 2010, the network was extended westwards when Southwark borough joined the consortium, adding the Nunhead and Dulwich branches.

The austerity of the 2010s left its mark: two of the councils withdrew funding in 2015 and the Green Chain officer was made redundant. But TfL continued to recognise the trail and in the early 2020s supported its reinvigoration by volunteers. Following their increased involvement in the Loop and Ring, Inner London Ramblers resurveyed the Green Chain and in 2023 published an updated series of online guides, including a full description of the long-proposed Greenwich branch. They also established a team of voluntary wardens.

More information is on the Inner London Ramblers site, along with news of closures, diversions and path changes: I recommend you check this resource before setting out on a walk.


Capital Ring and Green Chain guides


Aurum Press publishes the official Capital Ring guidebook by prominent London walking writer Colin Saunders. The most recently updated edition of this was appeared in July 2020.

The book sets something of a gold standard in urban walking guides for its readability, the clarity of its descriptions and the wealth of useful information, and remains an essential purchase for London walkers, Inevitably, though, it doesn't have room to go into as much background information as my blogs, and the extracts from Ordnance Survey Explorer mapping aren't always the most helpful in urban areas.

Inner London Ramblers provides excellent free downloadable guides to both the Capital Ring and the Green Chain Walk, recently checked and updated by volunteers, alongside news of current closures, diversions and other route changes and details of volunteer path guardian schemes. The guides include a usually reliable current route description, decent maps based on OpenStreetMap and some background information on features along the way, though necessarily much less than you'll find here, and without as much detail on alternative routes and links. The news of route changes is a particulary useful feature.

The Ramblers guides have superseded the previous online guides provided by Transport for London, though the TfL website now includes links to digital mapping for both the Capital Ring and Green Chain Walk available through the Go Jauntly smartphone app. If you have still have saved copies of the old PDFs with Legible London-style mapping, I strongly recommend you ignore these and use the Ramblers guides instead.

Various free printed leaflets and, later, a paid-for folder of Green Chain route cards were once available, but these are long out of print and long out of date too so I wouldn't advise using them if you happen across them.

Also of interest is The Green London Way by Bob Gilbert. This actually describes a different, unofficial trail around Inner London that predates the Capital Ring, but inevitably much of the route follows a similar course, and also includes a loop through southeast London making extensive use of the Green Chain. The book is a masterclass in writing a walking guide that was a major inspiration to me when I encountered the first edition in 1991, and a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in London and its history, particularly its legacy of social and political struggles and campaigns to preserve open space, even if you never set foot on the route itself. Many of the sites along the Ring and some of those on the Green Chain are covered in evocative detail.

I'll be adding a bit more about the Green London Way to this page at a later stage.

5 comments:

Ann Starr said...

Hi Des, having completed the London Countryway in 2017 and the London Loop in 2018, we are now walking the Capital Ring. We have got into the habit of printing your 'commentary' and taking it with us so that we can read the history of the interesting buildings and open spaces while we are actually there. We are just about to 'do' Crystal Palace to Wimbledon Park and I notice that after Boston Manor there are no links to the descriptions and commentaries. Are these lurking somewhere with broken links or have you not finish walking the Capital Ring yet?

Unknown said...

Anyone know how to let whoever know about complete lack of signs at top of Horsenden Hill on Greenford/South Kenton section of Capital Ring? We went up via diversion (which was sign posted) came down a different way and arrived where we started at bottom of hill
Tessa

Des de Moor said...

Ann: thanks for your comment and I'm glad you're finding my commentaries helpful and interesting. I'm afraid though that the reason there aren't currently links beyond Boston Manor is that I haven't found time to research and write them up yet. I've been very busy with other stuff over the past few months and the rest of this year too looks quite busy -- I'm about halfway through writing up Boston Manor to South Kenton but can't make any promises as to a publication date. In the meantime I'd refer you to Colin Saunders' book.

Tessa: yes I recall the route wasn't very well signed when I last walked over Horsenden Hill. Local authorities are responsible for the signing so you need to contact the London Borough of Ealing on that one. While I'd strongly encourage you to report it, it may not be addressed immediately due to budgets. As mentioned above, I strongly advise people use a written description and/or map to walk the Ring and don't rely on the signing as there are several places where signs are missing or vandalised.

London City of Science said...

You might like to know that from today there is a fully updated set of free pdfs describing the Capital Ring available from the Inner London Ramblers web site at:
http://innerlondonramblers.org.uk/capital-ring

These pdfs have been produced with the support of Will Norman of Transport for London. Currently TfL does not have the resources to undertake such work. The revision and checking of the guidance has all been done by volunteers.

By the way, with reference to the comment above by Unknown, another outcome of this Ramblers initiative has been to arrange the reinstatement of the missing signpost at the top of Horsenden Hill. Getting to grips with improving all the waymarking is a challenge which our project is gradually getting to grips with.

We post news items from time to time reporting issues that may affect walkers on the Ring. Please let us know of any problems you discover.

Des de Moor said...

LCS: Thanks for this. I was aware of the Ramblers' Ring Rangers and Loop Leaders project and am delighted to see these updated descriptions, and with much better maps than TfL's handouts, derived from OpenStreetMap I see. I've just started working on this site again and as soon as I have time I'll update all the relevant pages.