The Battersea end of the Nine Elms nightmare: is there an uglier road in London?

Look what they've done to our road, ma! Look what they've done to Queenstown Road.  This long final strip of Queenstown Road, from Battersea Park roundabout up to Chelsea Bridge, was always a sort of runway or ramp, a diving board from which south London likely lads and lasses launched themselves into the monied worlds of the King's Road, Chelsea, Westminster and beyond.

Mods, rockers, boy racers used that half-mile of tarmac as their catwalk or drag strip. Bikers would meet at the tea hut on the south side of the bridge en route for their Friday night runs out to Heston Services and back.  That bridge, with its Christmas tree lighting,  was always a potent symbol of the gap between north and south London. Posh and arty on the north side, industrial and a bit rough on the other.

Now, it's getting bland on both sides.  The money-zombies have taken it for themselves. They've taken over the Queenstown bit, the whole length of the bit that faces dear sweet Battersea Park. And soon the road that continues on the north side will be overshadowed by the Chelsea Barracks re-development. The views into Battersea Park are still there, but that knockout close-up view of the great looming power station has gone completely.

Look at this photo - how on earth has this happened? People joked about how absurd the old
Observer/QVC building, Marco Polo House, was. This place - occupied briefly by the supposed rival for Sky TV, BSB (later BSkyB as Murdoch added its scalp to his knapsack) - was a veritable cathedral of restraint and good taste compared to what we see now.

Looking north towards the bridge from the Battersea Park roundabout, it seems that three or four bulky, mass-market holiday cruise liners have backed up against the road. Those horrible blunted curves. Wrap-around balconies in some dismal white stone-look material.

It seems they have used every available inch to shove their bulbous bodies as close as possible to each other and to the public realm, the street.

Are these the "affordable" bits of this monster development? Or are the people paying their £850,000 plus happy to stroll around their balconied decks, looking straight across at another block which is identically ugly to the one they live in?

Tell me, please, I really don't get it.

With a little help from Saint Boris, Battersea Park recovers slowly from its encounter with FormulaE

We have a new name for one of these huge concrete blocks, used as crash barriers at Battersea Park for the formula E races, but also good as anti-suicide bomber-truck barriers and so on. Maybe we should call all such blocks "Boris" from now on.

They promised the park would be back to normal on July 2, but cycling back through from Chelsea Bridge earlier today I can tell you it's far from the pleasant ride it used to be.

Hitting the park off Chelsea Bridge  road, the first thing you encounter is a loads of guys in hi-vis jackets looking protective towards fleets of massive low-loader trucks, lined up all the way down the north side of the park.

These trucks are gradually taking away the big concrete crash barriers that lined both sides of the whole track during the electric car racing last weekend.

It seems they can only get about six blocks on each twelve-wheel low loader, so that's a hell of a lot of truck miles.

Passing the Millennium sports stadium area, I come across another low-loader which is bearing a special load: five of the blocks, plus a sixth block named "Mayor of London".

Ah, now I understand.  He that cycleth thru the valleys of the shadows of Yslyngton hath passed this way, and lo, we are blessed, we should kiss the ready-mix and prostrate ourselves upon the Virgin soils so liberally sprinkled across these fair fields.

Look what they've done to our park, ma!

Building the safety cage around the Battersea Park FormulaE circuit - doesn't seem to leave much room for the cars….

For the past three weeks, large swathes of Battersea Park have been closed to the public as preparations continue for this weekend's electric car racing.

On a quick visit yesterday, it was clear that the Formula E track has been created around the perimeter road by building a compete, linear cage of steel, with the occasional bridge and makeshift seating areas.

It's really tricky to get into the park now, people are waiting all round to turn you away, sending you off down paths that lead nowhere. In theory you can still cross the park but in practice it's just too much hassle.

The sports areas at the eastern end of the park are still working, but the rest of the place is unusually quiet for this time of year, with only the most determined dog walkers and sunbathers bothering to break through the various cordons. Once you get in, of course, it's nice - but then you have to find a way out as well.

You wonder how long it will take to dismantle and remove all this fencing, the huge concrete block barriers that line the course, the caging and seating. The published target is to have everything cleared away and back to normal by July 3 (Thursday). Let's wait and see.

Then again, how many more HGV trips will be required - sort of cancelling out the point of the emission-free race cars…? At least locals will be able to get in to watch the events free if they want. Well, that's if they can get hold of  one of the 1,000 tickets given to the council. Normal ticket prices range form £8 to £224.

So, you have to hope Wandsworth Council has made an enormous profit out of this, having deprived its population of full enjoyment of one of its finest open spaces for at least three weeks.

Formula E car racing for Battersea Park - but why not send it to SE19?

Attempting to cycle through Battersea Park a week or two back, was puzzled to find way impeded by huge teams of men and machines resurfacing the wide road that rings the park.

They were going at it with such vigour, and with such precision, that it made one wonder: why here, on this park road, which is banned to normal traffic and is perfectly adequate for the runners and cyclists and skaters who normally use it. Surely there were plenty of potholed roads in the borough of Wandsworth  that were  much more in need of re-surfacing?

This wide, verdant road circling Battersea
 Park is soon to host some much speedier
 action. Come June, the runners, skaters and
 cyclists who flock here will be ousted by
 140mph Formula E electric racing cars

A letter in the Evening Standard brought sudden enlightenment: Wandsworth council has given permission for the PArk to be used for the finals of the Formula E Motor racing season, at the end of June 2015.

The letter-writer was complaining about the impact on  local residents and park users, as well as London's pollution levels.

I immediately prepared myself to go into full righteous indignation and anger mode: how dare this Tory council yet again put the interests of its corporate buddies above those of its own  residents, and the environment of a large area of south west London?

Psyching myself up to unleash a verbal onslaught on the petrol heads of Wandsworth,  I looked up Formula E and felt a bit stupid. This (as you will probably know or  have guessed) is a sort of Formula 1 but for cars powered by electricity.

So there you go - Wandsworth is backing an initiative which should raise the profile of "green" electric vehicles, and pocketing a fair wad of cash at the same time.

But again, it's not so simple. As the letter writer pointed out, the big race will involve hundreds of (non-electric-powered) trucks, vans and cars making thousands of journeys into and out of the park to prepare the circuit and the viewing areas.

The park itself will be closed to the public for at least two full days.

On race day, there will be 30,000 spectators making their way to the park along roads already badly overused and compromised by all the roadworks contingent on the Nine Elms  re-development.

Locals who love this park are already used to finding it wholly or partly closed down for various events. Several big city financial organisations book the whole park for their summer sports days and running events; large tracts of the park are often closed off for film companies. Each year the whole park is sealed off to all except ticket holders for the big firework display.

So, nothing new, but just another, even more annoying thing for those of us who simply want to stroll through this lovely peoples' park without the risk of being flattened by a 140mph electric racing car.  And what about the Buddhist monks and devotees trying to make their way to the Peace Pagoda on the north side of the park? Presumably they don't make the wailing noise of their petrol-fuelled brothers. The race is scheduled for 27 or 28 June, potentially one of the best weekends of the summer.

Back in the 60s, world-famous GP drivers used
 to thunder past the remains of Crystal Palace
 and the BBC TV transmitter. Why not
restore this track for Formula E?

Also - I wonder if the Formula E People considered holding the race at  another south London location, more given to sports of all types and in dire need of revival? I mean Crystal Palace, which still has a twisty little racing track that up until the mid-1960s was a regular location for all types of car and motor cycle racing events. It must be about the same size as the Battersea PArk track, but it has the advantage of going around a large and distinctly under-used National Sports Centre, which would not be disrupted by such an event as it has full access via bridges. It's actually a better, more scenic track, specifically designed for this sort of sport, and it is not (as is the case at Battersea) almost entirely lined by avenues of mature plane trees.

As a kid I was often taken there by my sister and her successive boyfriends; I remember clearly seeking all the stars of the era (Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, amongst others) throwing what looked like family saloons around this cute little track at unbelievable speeds. Then they did the same thing even faster in their formula 2 Lotuses and Coopers.

That track certainly would need re-surfacing and probably widening as well - but given the collapse of the latest Crystal Palace regeneration proposals, surely this could have been an opportunity to revive the fast-disintegrating facilities of this famous site?

Oh the horror! Roundabout succumbs to Nine Elms ravages

Watch out, Nine Elms Disease is coming your way.

It's spreading fast, its viral spores shunted around at speed by massive concrete mixer-trucks that rush up and down Silverthorne Road, spilling a little of their load as they go. If you're a cyclist, you are quite likely to get one of their little pebbles shot into your eye from under the fat tyre of a speeding car.

I'm astonished the council (Lambeth or Wandsworth?) hasn't stepped in to do something about the destruction of the road surfaces, particularly at the junction of Silverthorne and Wandsworth Road and down by the one-way junction of Silverthorne and Queenstown Roads.

This is where the trucks - which have just feasted on fresh ready-mixed concrete from the massive silos of McALpine's London Concrete Ltd - storm off in a cloud of dust to dump the material at some building site or other.

But the latest horror is the speed with which it has destroyed that perfectly harmless old floral roundabout hub at the south-east entrance to Battersea Park.

It's hard top cycle through any of this area at the moment because the air is so full of dust. When they were destroying the old MArco Polo House, it felt like sharp bits of marble were shredding the linings of your throat and lungs. Now it's the powdery cement dust sieved over everything by those speeding dumper-trucks and mixer-lorries.

God help us, residents of SW8, 4, and 11. God help us one and all.