Backup Only

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, 10 November 2022

Evening Walk - Mitcham Common in the Dark

Length: 4.7 km
Ascent: negligible
Net Walking Time: 1 hour and a bit

Take the 18.11 Dorking (Main) train from Victoria (Heart of Battersea 18.18, Balham 18.23), arrives Mitcham Junction at 18.33, and then wait for 4 minutes, because… 
You can also take a Thameslink train via Elephant (St. Pancras 17.57, …, Blackfriars 18.06, Elephant 18.10, stations via Herne Hill), that arrives at 18.37. 
Return trains are 7 per hour to either Victoria, Waterloo (via Wimbledon) or Thameslink stations. 
Mitcham Junction is in Zone 4, and also a Tram Stop on the Wimbledon to East Croydon line. 
 
This walk worked quite well 3 years ago, in the light. Let’s check it out in the dark…Bring a head torch! 
 
Mitcham Common is an ancient common in south London and a medium sized open, a mix of grassland, trees, small ponds, and low man-made hills.” 
 
Eat/Drink: several options, most convenient are the Crown of Mitcham (Indian and Chinese, just beyond the station, a Bollywood Night may be on) and The Ravensbury (Indian and Pan-Asian, 10 mins from the end).  


For walk directions, map and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.18

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Tried to join u at the end but the crown was empty and the ravensbury seemed a bit too upmarket for us :)

Thomas G said...

Well Andrew, you may have been there waaayyyy before we got anyway near there...

All other known walkers (actual and attempting) today were travelling down on the Thameslink train from Farringdon, Blackfriars or Elephant & Castle. Unfortunately, one of the trains immediately in front of the posted train was stricken and blocking the route somewhere around City Thameslink (a passenger alarm had been activated, I think), so after endless waits and frantic sms between suspected walk attendees, the 2 Elephant punters tried to get onto the much delayed train, knowing that 3 others were already on it. To no avail. It was so grotesquely overcrowded, in 27 years in London I haven't seen worse. Small consolation: that train was then short stopped at Streatham anyway and 3 of us only got to MJ on the next one anyway, eventually arriving 49 minutes behind schedule.
The other 2 had stayed on the original train but gave up upon the short stopping at Streatham and returned home they way they came. So, n=3 plus maybe the webmaster + 1 ???

We had an uneventful but nice time on the walk (compared to the journey to it), under some Serious Moonlight, which meant that - with the High Priestess of moon walking amongst us - headtorches were kind of 'Verboten' and used only very sparingly.
We did dine at The Ravensbury which is not posh at all (the footie was on the tellie) but served really good Indian dishes, we thought. The (delayed) 22.04 was the train that we did catch back to London.
w=warm-for-the-time-of-year