From the café in the Stables Courtyard right by the grand Osterley House, you leave the park in a northerly direction to cross the M4 and a field into Norwood Green, where the fine bluebell wood of the Tentelow Woodland is passed through, before you cross the Grand Junction Canal and walk through the Glade Lane Canalside Park to join the towpath along the canal. Pass the famous Three Bridges site, an engineering feat of its time where railway, canal and road intersect, and walk along the former Hanwell Insane Asylum (now Ealing Hospital) and past the Hanwell Flight of Locks to the junction with the River Brent.
Turn left upstream along the river and through a large riverside hay meadow to the picturesque, grand Wharncliffe Viaduct, which carries the Great Western Main Line 20m above the Brent Valley. Another small park lies between the river and Hanwell Station with its vintage (and heated) waiting room.
Walk Options: A Circular Walk (returning to Osterley Station from Osterley House) is 5.9 kilometres long.
Tea: plenty of options, both on the Hanwell and the Osterley ending. See the walk directions for details.
For walk directions, map, height profile, and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.50
1 comment:
5 off the tube, and some of those were quite a bit delayed, so we started 15 minutes late. 1 other was even much further behind and cut out the initial loop through the fringes of Osterley Park and bumped into us at the House, but from the other direction.
A surprising number of buttercup-filled pastures we passed on the initial loop around the park, and chestnut trees and haw/blackthorns were in full flower, while loads of cattle and calves could be seen in another field. The bluebells in the park were in good condition and it was also notable that plenty of new trees have been planted in the last couple of years.
On across the M4 and some fields, then through Tentelow Woodland with fine bluebell displays.
The multi-year landscaping works in the canalside park have surprisingly still not been finished (but what can be seen looks promising), but the canalside walk then was very pleasant, what with hardly anyone else about this late. Light was getting more sparse as it was approaching 21.00 hours, and we skipped any attempt to go to The Fox (kitchen closes at 9) and walked along the newly refreshed path along the Brent to Uxbridge Road to pay a visit to The Viaduct (Fuller's).
Fine meals for most and a couple of drinks also for most, then on we went to finish the route through the river meadows and to the viaduct, which - with a crescent moon and the Big Town-light refractions - was quite eerie a site. 22.33 train.
w=warm-and-sunny n=6
Post a Comment