Walthamstow Wetlands: A Vision of the Future

It was drizzling when I got off the Tube, and I didn’t have a coat. I turned up my jacket collar and hoped for the best. As I walked along the pavement, away from Blackhorse Road Station I reminded myself that, given where I was going, a bit of additional water was probably quite fitting.

My destination was Walthamstow Wetlands, a large expanse of ten reservoirs in north-west London that provide around 3.5 million people with drinking water. I was heading there because the Wetlands also happen to be an enormous urban nature reserve. Spreading over 211-hectares, the Wetlands are an incredible example of how urban and natural landscapes can blur, and crucially they also show how human infrastructure does not have to exist at the expense of nature.

I stepped off the pavement – my feet pretty soggy by now from all the puddles I had encountered – and followed the pathway into one of the Wetlands four entrances. Moving past the café and visitor centre, I set out into the heart of the reserve, and spent a very happy hour or so following the various paths that loop and twist around the reservoirs.

What I was immediately struck by was the way the balance of noise changed. Whenever I am in London, I am always searching for the sounds of birdsong amidst everything else. You can hear birds, but you have to listen hard for their calls beneath the noise of the city. Here – and this was what felt strange to me – I was still in the city, but for the first time I heard birdsong above everything else, strong enough to rise above the sounds of cars and trains.

There were plenty of birds about to make this happen, in the water and at its edges; coots, Egyptian geese, greylag geese, tufted ducks – the tufts that give them their name making them look as though they had greasy, slicked-back hairdos. A few of these I knew by sight already, most I had to look up afterwards in the visitor centre.

As well as the waterfowl around the reservoirs, there were also plenty of spaces in the reserve where clusters of trees and tangles of scrub meant that song and hedgerow birds could thrive; chaffinches sidled along branches, there were redwings about as well. Just as there was a variety of birdlife, so there was plenty of variety in what people were doing in the reserve: I saw people fishing, birdwatching, walking, jogging, or just sitting.

Partly because of the threatening rain, and partly because the warm weather meant there were a fair few midges hanging around, I moved at a brisk pace. There was to me something really exciting about my surroundings; the way I could look and take in cormorants knifing above the water’s surface, joining in motion with the passing of overground trains and the city skyline beyond. Perhaps I am naïve (or just still not used to cities) but this view was almost futuristic to me, even as it was clearly rooted in reality.

What I saw seemed to offer a vision of how, were we to rethink our cities, vital natural spaces can exist alongside and within human infrastructure. Cities do not just equate to bricks and mortar, cement and concrete. If we act cleverly, generously and openly in construction of urban infrastructure, we can include nature and wildlife within it. Of course, this may seem very obvious to some people reading this, but to me the Wetlands really opened my eyes to how this can and is happening.

By now the sun was out and there was no threat of rain. Small islands – one speckled with flowering gorse – were in the middle of the reservoirs to each side of me. I watched as a heron flew to one, where in the trees cormorants sat like pirates in crows nests. The air was still alive with birdsong, as well as songbirds and waterfowl I heard the screech of green parakeets and the cackle of magpies.

I finished the large loop I had been walking, walking past an expanse of willows, their drooping greenery a sign of the coming spring. As I sat and had a coffee at the visitor centre (which also gave my damp shoes a chance to dry out) I felt invigorated not just by the walk but by all I had seen and the possibilities it had opened my mind to.

I’ve often been guilty of seeing cities, from a wildlife perspective, as monocultures: expanses of bricks and mortar, cement and concrete. I have not seen them as places where nature can thrive. But Walthamstow Wetlands reminded me that this was not the case. What is more, they show how with the right care and attention vibrant and significant spaces for wildlife can exist within cities. National and local government, such as the likes of Plymouth City Council – who recently hacked down over a hundred trees in the city centre during the middle of the night – should look to places like the Wetlands for inspiration in how public infrastructure can serve both people and nature.

Read more about Walthamstow Wetlands, and find out how to visit here.

Read about the Plymouth Tree Felling here.