Great Urban Run

Went for a last long run of the year (about 22km) yesterday through (of course) East London. Went up through Homerton and Lower Clapton, east to the canals by the football pitches of Hackney Marshes, down the Lea (aka Lee) River, south past the Olympic Stadium (in progress), down through Three Mills and past the House Mill into the Bow Locks, with Canary Wharf shimmering in the low winter sun beyond, like the emerald city. Then to Limehouse Cut, around the Limehouse Basin, and back up the canal through Mile End park and into Victoria park. The run has a bit of everything bad and good about the East End: neighborhood shops, council estates, new schools, row houses in various states of gentrification, crack houses, Georgian canals, 300+ years of buildings, from those old mills to repurposed Victorian industrial warehouses to 21st-centry work/live buildings on the waterfront. It has industrial decay as a backdrop for moor hens, geese, heron, swans, mallards, and the old boys fishing for carp. It has hand-cranked locks, tidy canal boats, derelict barges, kayakers, rowers, and yachts. A bit of sunshine, often rain, always mud, yesterday ice. Keep the pristine wooded nature trails, there's nothing like a great city run.