Peckham Healthy Ride to the Quaggy River, Lewisham

Usual easy-paced ride, this one mostly quiet roads with a few path sections through parks. Some gentle hills, nothing extreme.
Inspiration comes from the last Waterlink way ride that made me curious about another tributary of the Ravensbourne, the one with the easy-to-remember-name, the Quaggy River. The Quaggy meets the Ravensbourne down by Lewisham station where all the new development is taking place. So a great opportunity to open up this built-in water feature to improve the look of the development. Well what we will see is yet another example of unimaginative planning/building with the confluence being covered over.
The ride will follow the Quaggy, mostly hidden behind buildings in a sad concrete culvert. At Manor Park the river emerges, but is still hidden away to start with, although at the south end of the park you can get close on natural banks. Hopefully have time for a brief stop at the ArtsCafe (http://www.lewishamartscafe.uk/) in Manor Park. Then on to Manor House Gardens where the Quaggy is kept in a channel, behind railings. What a contrast to the Ravensbourne in Brookmill Park which we will have seen earlier in the ride. Lots of information about the Quaggy on the web site of QWAG (Quaggy Waterways Action Group, https://qwag.org.uk/river-quaggy/) an active organization whose “goal is to demonstrate, using the Quaggy, that rivers can be major assets to an urban environment – bringing natural beauty, educational facilities and wildlife value into urban landscapes and urban lives.”
Route is at https://goo.gl/svHy65. gpx file at http://healthyrider.weebly.com/next-ride.html. Outward leg goes via Brookmill Park, return leg goes past the Lewisham Leisure Centre, Brockley Station and Nunhead. 16.5km, just over 10 miles.