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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday 18 September 2016

Sunday Walk 2 – the Wandle valley in south London

New Walk – Mitcham Junction to Colliers Wood
Length: 14¾ km (9.2 miles). Toughness: 1/10

10:52 Epsom train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 10:59, Balham 11:03), arriving Mitcham Junction (TfL Zone 4) at 11:13. If it's more convenient you can also arrive by tram (every 7-8 minutes on route 3, taking 12 minutes from Wimbledon or 15 minutes from East Croydon), but be aware that tram and train journeys are charged separately.

At the end of the walk Colliers Wood is on the Northern line (Zone 3). There are many places along the way where you can drop out earlier; conversely, fans of Wandsworth's one-way system could extend the walk by 6 km to the end of the Wandle Trail.

I was planning to save this shortish London walk for a gloomy winter's day but it's Open House London weekend and you might be tempted to break off and explore some of the capital's less heralded buildings near this walk's route: Carshalton Water Tower, Morden Cottage, etc.

The walk itself goes past a large area being transformed into a new nature reserve and then swings round to head north on the Wandle Trail, a riverside path taking in some attractive parkland and more local nature reserves. The suggested lunch stop is The Sun in Carshalton, with tea at the National Trust's Potting Shed café in Morden Hall Park.

You'll need to print the walk directions and maps from this temporary New Walk page.
T=swc.273

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Hope, Carshalton, is just 5 minutes from The Sun. Community owned, award winning back to basics pub http://www.hopecarshalton.co.uk/

Anonymous said...

Train cancelled. Anyone getting the next one?

Anonymous said...

Decided to go home as I don't know how to contact the group, if there is one doing this walk, and don't fancy a solo walk today. Can we have a meeting point at stations for when trains are cancelled as its difficult to leave a comment using the mobile and not everyone has a mobile or internet connection.

Sean said...

Another walk marred by Southern's train crew declining to show up for duty, but at the appointed time eight walkers had already made their way to Mitcham Junction on earlier trains, trams, etc. That seemed enough to be going on with so off we went; in the course of the day we came across five others who'd done most if not all of the walk, though none had actually spotted the walk author's suggestion that anyone on a later train could start the walk at the next station down the line (Hackbridge), where I reckon we would have met them. So overall n=13 on a w=mild-but-cloudy day.

There seemed to be some incredulity that anyone had concocted a walk between these two locations and I suspect one or two had turned up to see if the whole enterprise was some mistimed April Fool's joke, but as the day went on I think these (admittedly low) expectations were just about exceeded. On the morning leg we got to visit a fine Arts & Crafts church and a couple of unusual buildings, courtesy of Open House London. Half the group had lunch at The Sun which was pricey but arrived promptly and was well received, though it was *such* a shame to miss the jolly sing-song apparently taking place at The Hope which we later heard about from one of our number who had detoured there.

The afternoon leg features some nice stretches alongside the River Wandle, with someone remarking that we saw more interesting birds than on many of our country walks: even the distant flash of a kingfisher darting up this much-improved river. Some dropped out after tea in the National Trust's Morden Hall Park café but the rest made it to the downbeat surroundings of Colliers Wood for a tube back at 5.30pm: quite a long day out for a 9-mile walk.