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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.

Thursday, 6 April 2023

Evening Walk - Some heights in Northwest London: Harrow-on-the-Hill

Length: 5.0 km (3.1 mi)
Ascent: 160m
Net Walking Time: 1 ½ hour 

Meet at Northwick Park (Metropolitan Line, Zone 4) at 18.40. (18.17 or 18.22 Metropolitan Line trains from Baker Street).  
Alternatively, start from South Kenton station (Zone 4) at the same time, the routes converge after a few minutes. For that, either take the 18.14 Watford Junction train from Euston (calling, amongst others, at South Hampstead, Queens Park, Kensal Green, Willesden Junction, Wembley Central), arriving South Kenton at 18.40, or the Bakerloo Line (takes 35 minutes from Oxford Circus, for example). 
 
Return trains from Harrow (Zone 5): frequent and fast trains and tubes (Chiltern Trains services to Marylebone in about 15 minutes; Met Line to Baker Street in about 17 minutes, then on to Algate).
 
This is a short excursion in Northwest London through a park and then the playing fields of Harrow School, one of the country's leading ‘public’, i.e.: fee-paying independent schools, up onto the hill that’s dominated by the school buildings, its chapel and Harrow’s church. You walk down from the hill through the hanging cemetery and skirt around the hill to re-ascend through residential streets to the High Street, lined by historic school buildings and tea options. The walk finishes with a descent along a wood and across a grassy open space down to ‘modern’ Harrow and its busy station.
 
Tea: plenty of options en-route in Harrow, plus some good ones on the High Street just past the station.
 
For walk directions, map, height profile, and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.40

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

A good walk poster always checks whether any major event could interfere with the transport to and from the walk, i.e.: track works, diversions, sport events. I didn't.
Thus the tubes were chokka to Wembley Park, as Ingerland were playing Brazil.
We survived it.

n=6 walkers under w=blue-skies-with-some-passing-clouds.
The once mud-prone path along the hospital has had an engineered gravel path installed since I last walked this, and there was little else to cause dirty shoes or troosers.
Some construction works in Harrow School necessitated a minor diversion (which looks permanent), and on we went, up the Hill. There were glorious views from the 'ridge', back to London and to Wembley Stadium, then - on the other side - out West.
We voted for a quick refuelling stop at The Castle, then went back up onto the 'ridge'.
Sunset was mid-way through its proceedings as we descended for a last time, and there were just enough clouds for it to be a nice one. 2 then followed the route to the station, while 4 diverted to the Kingsfield Arms, for its 'Indian Gastro Kitchen'. And how nice it was!
Departure was then timed in such a way that we got a Chiltern train direct to Marylebone, rather than a Met Line train stopping at Wembley Park and picking up hordes of football hooligans there (oh no, it was a woman's game, so of course there were no hooligans anyway...).