Under Water

Here’s a walk without the natural – in a way. The book Underground London gave me various ideas for lunchtime walks as far away from Canary Wharf as I could manage. The Woolwich Foot Tunnel was ideal. It opened in 1912, but was refurbished just under a hundred years later.

It had been several years since my wanderings had taken me this far down the DLR. I’d been to the Thames Barrier, and around the Excel, but the most memorable trip, prompted by a passing reference in a newspaper article, was to Gallions Reach. This is one stop short of the end of the Beckton branch of the DLR, and it really did feel as though I was leaving London behind.

It was a hot August day. I stepped into sticky air, and into space. Buildings were few, even roads were few. A sign indicated a shopping centre, but I struck out along the road I guessed led to the river. Dry grass stretched on either side.

Very often large areas were cordoned off by tall wide-mesh fences. In these zones the vegetation grew tall and tangled. Willowherbs were in flower, bees and butterflies busied the dry air. There was little sound. This was a London yet to be – soon the plants would be grubbed out, and buildings begun (assuming the money was still available). Barely a car passed; there was no one on the pavements except me, sweating, walking fast.

The river and the vegetation were separated by a ribbon of concrete; one old man walked a panting dog. The Thames took a touch of the blue of the sky, but the far bank was hazy. Were those trees on the horizon? My route back took me across a flyover that straddled the George V Dock – an aeroplane leaving City Airport seemed within touching distance overhead. As the taste of its fumes filled my mouth, I looked down on the glittering water and the desert-like concrete of the runway. It was a strange and fascinating journey that gave me renewed interest in exploring all corners of East London.

King George V DLR is right next to City Airport, and I felt a similar sense of edgeland as I crossed the station footbridge to head towards the foot tunnel. Many of the stations on the way to this point are set high over the industrial area dominated by sugar factories. In one place I saw houses clustered together under the chimneys of the refinery – echo of the capital/labour relationship as depicted in Victorian novels. As at Gallions Reach, I felt myself in an unpeopled quarter, where the only visible figures were hurrying off among grey buildings.

No doubt I exaggerate, misinterpret and treat the place unfairly. But the feeling of being on the edge of things persisted as I walked down Pier Road. I would not have been amazed by tumbleweed, or a cowboy riding off, his horse striking sparks from the road, as once I’d seen in Trinidad de Cuba.

The foot tunnel entrance is a solitary dome between the ferry terminal and a grand building long boarded up. I crossed the sunny road quickly, and stepped into the lift.

I don’t like lifts much. I’d rather take the stairs, make my way under my own control. But the stairs were blocked off, so I had to go into the faintly uriny chamber.

At the bottom the doors slid open to reveal a blue-white space, cold and echoing. I’m familiar with the Greenwich tunnel, but this one seemed endless, darker and chillier. Noises of other feet reverberated along the sloping concrete floor. Strange straggly growths hung from the ceiling. Perhaps the air really was damp, or perhaps it was my uneasiness that made it so. Either way, I was sure there was a miasma up in the top part of the tunnel cylinder. I was very conscious of the weight of the water and earth overhead.

My feeling about the Thames in London varies. At times, I’d echo “Rivers” by the Mexican poet and environmental activist Homer Aridjis (my translation):

Now they go murkily, in pipes, mumbling,
their currents thick with crap,
bankless, ridiculous, their raging
reined in, cut by cars’ road

At others I’m drawn to Eliot’s (possibly glib) description of it in The Wasteland as “a strong brown god” whose caprice could easily encompass of the narrow, exitless pipe I was in. That would be a kind of reversion to its natural state, as Victor Rodriguez Nunez writes in Thaw: “el agua siempre encuentre su camino” [water always finds its way].

Even as I was thinking this, I realised I was hearing a huge roaring from further along. I kept walking, unnerved, but remaining dry. The sound was immense, and it was coming towards me.

It was two children on scooters. The wave descending was in fact their wheels whizzing down the remains of the white paint along the length of the floor. Their dad was running behind them, but his shouts were drowned out by their delighted rush. Glad to have been made a fool of, I reached the tunnel’s south end. I turned to look back along the white-tailed space, shivered, and ran up the stairs.

I’d originally meant to turn round and go back through the tunnel, but that idea was far from appealing now. I preferred the sun falling on Woolwich, and all the bustle in Powis Street. I turned my back on the inscrutable river with a breath of relief.