Capital Ring 8 Osterley Lock to Hanwell June 2018

We walked here on the hottest day of the year and were delighted by the English landscape, with birds and abundant summer plants and a cricket match at the end of the day. A hot day with temperatures hitting 24. I was late meeting Robert and Helen at the Boston Manor tube station start because the Piccadilly Line was crowded with travellers for Heathrow. They gave me a beautifully chosen birthday prezzie of a novel about a river by Ester Kinsky. We retraced our steps to the Grand Union canal, a heron perched a large weir. Coots, swans and ducks swam on the canal. There were many canal boats with flower and even solar panels on their roofs. Elthorn Waterside is grassed in now and we would see small trees there. We walked along to the Hanwell flight of locks. Our path tracked the river Brent for the rest of the day. The undergrowth next to the river was abundant and looked like Middle Earth. The huge beautiful Wharnecliffe viaduct built by Brunel in 1838 dominates the valley. The small bricks used in construction reminded Robert and I of N India Moghul architecture. We had excellent ice cream in Hanwell close to the church. A maze, set up to celebrate the Millenium is still growing. Bitterns field, a huge open a wild meadow only mown once a year had with gentle afternoon light on it. Perivale park contained several local cricket matches were taking place with British Indian teams. The Wembley dome dominated the horizon. Crossing the busy, busy A40 on a footbridge, was a low point of the walk. I enjoyed seeing Ealing hospital, where I worked in 1986. Then I used to take the Tube to Boston Manor and bike to the hospital. Our last 2 miles were on tarmac through 1950’s suburbia and we enjoyed seeing the roses in bloom. We ended the day with beer and crisps in a large pub next to the railway station. Highlights had been the Brunel viaduct and it was surprising how english the walk was. We came home by the central line. I have never been this far out on the central line. Danny Dorling wrote a fine small book imaging the people who might live at each stop on the central line. As a social geographer the book had a broad scope. good: Brunel viaduct, ice-cream in Hanwell Bad: journey out to Boston Manor surprising: luxuriant over growth by the paths References “River” by Esther Kinsky 2017 “The 32 Stops”, Danny Dorling Penguin 2013

Capital Ring 12 Highgate to Stoke Newington

Capital Ring 6 Wimbledon Park to Richmond

I met Robert and Helen at Wimbledon Park station, on a lovely day for doing the next 7 miles. We-like started along streets with houses, then across a park with a Capability Brown vista. The main part of the walk was across Richmond Park, with a huge sense of space and openness, the city of 7 million people does not feel close. 

We saw deer, 15 antlered males sitting underneath a tree and later on a female herd of 25 and the juvenile males had tiny first year antlers.  We saw a kestrel and woodpecker. The trees were magnificent huge oaks, beeches and weeping birches. At Richmond there was a huge plane tree the largest in London.

We ended our park crossing at Pembroke lodge, a fine 18 century house with nice gardens, sadly only open that day for wedding guests. We walked down into Petersfield, pausing at the 13 c church with ancient gravestones, including one for captain Vancouver who died aged 40. Since Robert is from Vancouver this was a nice link to his origins. We walked past fields with black and white cows and ended the walk with views of the elegant grey stone bridge at Richmond.  An abnormally high tide at Richmond had just washed away the Sunday riverside drinkers. We drank in a riverside pub and walked through Richmond to the station passing a lovely square with old houses around it. There is a fine 19 c theatre and the modern Orange Tree theatre. Richmond station has lovely wrought iron features. We took the modern north London line Overground to Highbury and Islington. I walked home feeling tired and virtuous.

7.0 miles

Aug 21 2016

Capital Ring 7: Richmond to Osterley Lock

Many architectural styles and a rural Grand union canal

3.8 miles

Aug 5 2017

 We went by Overground train from Highbury & Islington to Richmond.  We walked back down through the town to the river where we ended our last walk in Aug 2016.  Richmond theatre is a fine Victorian building. Beside the river we squinted through a meridian marker from the time Kew had the meridian. Richmond bridge, is a huge old cast iron bridge and we passed fine old buildings now in Brunel University. Isleworth has a collection of interesting old and new buildings, an old school, the blue school was being renovated by Polish builders. We walked along the riverside pub The Town Wharf pub, indicating older uses. A small Victorian street gave onto the Apprentices pub by the Thames, used for celebrating the end of apprenticeship. On the river people paddled standing on surf boards and scullers rowed upstream. The small Dukes river was named after the Duke of Northumberland in 1605. Syon park has a beautiful 18^th century house with a glass house where Helen and Robert had celebrated a huge Indian wedding. We had coffee and cake in the garden centre. Brentford lock basin is now 21st century with modern houses and a plaza. The modern GSK building is canalside with an interesting yellow and red metal arc shaped sculpture in the grounds.  The grand Union canal felt rural with overgrown summery plants, a pair of swans also coots and moorhens.  We left the canal at Boston Manor and walked through suburbia, sheltering from a torrential summer rain storm over a beer in a pub. We picked our way along the damp streets to Boston Manor station and took the Tube home.

This was a short walk but had a huge range of architecture from Elizabethan in Richmond to 21 st centruy at Brentford. In contrast the walk along the Grand Union canal felt very rural.  Once again London surprises with its range of styles and sights.

Good seeing rather old pubs in Isleworth and building in Richmond, modern sculpture at GSK building.

Bad rain at the end of the day

Surprising how rural the Grand Canal was close to Brentford,  seeing the Duke river, also Brent river.

Capital Ring 2012

I decided to walk the capital ring route as my own mark of being a Londoner in The Olympic Year. It is a 78 miles route which loops round London going through parks and woods with Charing Cross as a central point about 10 miles away.

I started the walk with my 25 yr godson Alastair and we may do the whole walk together or i might link up with different friends for the different sections. I shall walk about 10 miles per section and i hope to enjoy the parks and architecture of different parts of London.   

The Capital Ring 1 April 1 Woolwich to New Eltham: Light, history and renewal

This 8 mile walk was suffused with a sense of new beginning. It was fun to be starting a new walk and spring was evident everywhere, in the fresh new leaves on the trees and the rustlings of small animals in the undergrowth.  The view of the Thames here is impressive, it is a quarter of a mile wide at this point and was reflecting the light. We looked upstream at the futurist domes of the Thames barrier and beyond to Canary Wharf. Opposite us the planes took off from my favourite airport, London City, favourite because of its size and speed and the wonderful views one gets of the City as one lands there.  Charlton Park seemed like a manicured space with mown lawns, mature trees and people playing football in the sun. The route wound through the woods of Shooters Hill and Oxleas woods. Underneath the triangular Severndrooge Tower, a dilapidated monument to a long forgotten battle in India we had a fantastic views out over south London to the north Downs.  We ended our walk in New Eltham where the streets were pink with cherry blossom and we replenished ourselves with fish and chips.  The Shard dominated the beginning and end of our journey. It rises straight out of London Bridge station and reflects the light in interesting angles. There was also another link to an older time on the river. The building work at London b ridge was enclosed in a huge Canaletto (1720) picture of the river full of barges and boatmen, very different to the nautical quietness on the river now.  We ended our day in The George pub, a balconied Southwark pub several centuries old. I sensed  London’s ongoing renewal , there were modern new waterside flats, a military hospital had been converted into private apartments and Woolwich has been improved with a fine new station in nautical white and blue.