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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 5 November 2017

Exploring the London heights - Totteridge Circular

SWC 228 Totteridge Circular (Main walk)

Length 14.1km (8.8m); toughness 2/10

Take the High Barnet branch of the Northern Underground Line and assemble at Totteridge and Whetstone (Zone 4) - the penultimate stop- at 10.30am

This walk was done in April this year to appreciate the spring flowers but it makes a fine autumn outing as it explores an attracive stretch of the green belt that will come under increasing pressure as the demand for housing in the South East continues to grow.

Although close to London this is a proper rural walk with some fine views. 

See the walks page here for further information about the walk, options to shorten or lengthen the walk and the lunch and refreshment options. Click on the pdf tab for full walk instructions.

An ideal day out for those who do not want to stray too far out of London now the longer nights are here.

T=SWC.228




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi can the editor / poster of this lovely walk please help me out? would be grateful to know about what time would the lunch pub be reached seeing as the walk begins at 10.30? hoping to link up with someone who wants to do the second part of the walk..
Thank you!

Walker said...

12.45 or so

Walker said...

I honestly can’t imagine this bit of green belt being built on. It very nearly was in the 1930s and was saved by the villagers buying the rights to the manor of Totteridge. This makes it greenbelt royalty.

Anonymous said...

Where will you stop for lunch?

Walker said...

n=12 on this walk, who set off smartly to avoid a large party of Ramblers doing the same walk. We showed them a clean (or possibly dirty) pair of heels...

It was a w=glorious-sunny-start-to-the-day-though-with-more-cloud-later. There was a keen wind, but this walk generally seemed not to be exposed to it. This walk can be very muddy later in the winter (I created it so I can say this) but today the paths were (with a few minor exceptions) delightfully firm. There were good amounts of autumn colour. Perhaps rather too many metal kissing gates (I think the Belmont Estate bought a job lot of them by mistake and decided to scatter them liberally around the landscape as a kind of performance art) but in general very pleasant scenery.

About half the group decided to do the short cut in the morning and so arrived at the lunch pub at just after midday to find it blissfully empty. Most opted for the magnificent-sized roasts, which came quickly: the veggie cottage pie was nice too. We left the pub about 1pm and by 2.30pm were approaching the end of the walk, but none opted for the longer options. (The Ramblers, we understand, were made of sterner stuff and were aiming for Cockfosters). Six of us had tea at the cosy Waiting Room tea room by the station.