The Lea Valley nature reserve is a crack in the city where nature pushes through the ruins of technological experiments. The ossified spine of a dead aqueduct. Abandoned filter beds. Beneath the topsoil of the football pitches rubble from the Blitz fizzes in asbestos. All this watched over by moribund pylons facing their own eventual replacement.
This landscape is soundtracked by the rattle of freight trains, passenger trains, heavy machinery from works units along the Lea Bridge road and bleeping forklifts in the distant warehouse behind new Spitalfields. The sky is scarred with jet trails. Cranes swing over the Olympic stadia.
As you walk here you get a sense of a world that's getting faster and more rhythmic in its process of birth and decay. This mix sums it up for me.
