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WALK 2

Dagenham’s open spaces

Start	Dagenham Civic Centre (TQ 495 868)
Finish	Dagenham East tube (TQ 502 850)
Distance	6 miles (9km)
Time	3hrs
Maps	OS Explorer 162/174, Landranger 177
Refreshments	Cross Keys pub near the finish, cafés at Dagenham East
Public transport	For the Civic Centre, take bus 5, 103, 175 or 499 from Romford station or bus 103 from Dagenham East tube
Parking	Central Park Pavilion, Rainham Road North, RM10 7EJ (TQ 499 865)
Local group	Friends of Beam Parklands www.beamparklands.co.uk

If this seems an unlikely title for a walk, look again. You will journey past an Olympic wood, through two country parks, a nature reserve and flood meadows, and enjoy some of the rarest trees in Britain. There’s even a pretty little churchyard near the finish.

River Rom

With the grand main entrance to the Civic Centre beside you on your left, walk forwards to reach and enter the Peace & Memorial Garden, and turn right on leaving. Go round the back of the fire station and keep the temporary fencing around Ambassadors Wood to your left.

Ambassadors Wood has some mature trees but many more saplings – principally of oak, hornbeam, silver birch and field maple – planted in 2013 by some of the ‘London Ambassadors’ who helped visitors to the 2012 Olympic Games.

Beyond the second section of wood, go ahead to Central Park Pavilion, walk through its car park, where car drivers will start the walk, and continue on a surfaced track to a signboard at the entrance to Eastbrookend Country Park.

Take the path ahead, later going over a crossing path, to come out to Dagenham Road (1), which you cross at a pelican crossing and immediately re-enter the park. Turn left to the wooden Millennium Visitor Centre, and from its wind turbine take the gravel track which curves to the left past a wooden post ‘N’. The visitor centre hosts a display about local wildlife. Through a squeeze gate, turn right on to footpath 19, which becomes a minor road at stables. About 100 metres from the stables, enter The Chase Local Nature Reserve at a gap in the fence on the right.

Go left by the next fence as it gets close to the River Rom, no more than a stream. Over to your right, beyond the fence, is Black Poplar Wood, its six female black poplars – the natural glory of Dagenham – on proud display. Continue near the river (at a confluence, renamed the Beam) until you see a footbridge to your left (2), then turn right, go through a fence at a metal gate, and head towards a chimney. You soon pick up a sketchy gravel path heading a little left which leads, past a pond, to a narrow path by the railway and a footbridge. Go over the footbridge to the other side of the tracks, where you enter the Beam Valley Country Park. Turn left for 60 metres, then right on to a surfaced path and stay on this, the willow-fringed river always over to your left, all the way to Rainham Road South, crossed at a pelican crossing.

Here (3) are the Beam Parklands, both a park and a flood relief system. In periods of flood, much of it is deliberately inundated and cannot be crossed – your only alternative then is to walk the mile to Dagenham East tube along the road, or catch bus 103. However, this is rare, and you can enter the Parklands just to your left. The path goes between the river and stretches of the derelict Romford Canal.

The Romford Canal was first mooted in 1809 but building only began in 1875, when many canals had long fallen victim to railways. It was never completed or opened.

Some 500 metres from the road turn right over the canal and then left on a grass path, which bends to cross just below the slightly higher ground to your right that housed Dagenham Hospital until 1989. Turn left on a gravel path when you meet it, cross a footbridge, and turn right on the embankment (4) of the Wantz Stream.

Dagenham churchyard

The gravel path ends mysteriously a few metres from a bench – go to the bench and turn right on a surfaced path. Follow this to a pelican crossing at Ballards Road (B178) and go ahead down Church Lane, which turns right in 150 metres. Enter the churchyard, known as ‘God’s Little Acre’ (in fact it is two), of St Peter and St Paul Church, and wander through it to the church, which forms an attractive group with the Cross Keys pub and the war memorial. Turn right here along Exeter Road, turn right on footpath 29, and at the end of Dewey Road turn left for Dagenham East tube.

BLACK POPLAR, Populus nigra

Like most species of poplar (and other common British trees such as the willow and the holly), the black poplar is a dioecious tree: some trees are male, others female, and therefore they need to be close to each other to pollinate and hence reproduce.

Female black poplars are less common in Britain than male black polars; there are as few as 600, although there are 10 times as many males. The six black poplars in Dagenham are all females, with no male trees for many miles (although there are some on the Lea, in Walks 5 and 6). They are therefore an isolated population that will grow no further, although cuttings from them were planted in South Norwood Country Park in the 1990s.

Look for the yellow-green catkins (those of the male are red), which appear in the early spring. Its triangular leaves help distinguish it from the more common white poplar, which has five-lobed leaves.

It may look as though the Dagenham trees are in danger of falling, as their trunks are at an angle. However, this degree of lean is a characteristic of the species. Equally typical are the ‘bosses’ or burrs on the trunk, which is grey-brown and deeply furrowed.