This walk has a part urban and suburban, part semi-natural feel to it as it follows one of South West London’s Thames tributaries, the Beverley Brook, from its source at the southern edge of the London Clay basin just within Greater London to the Thames at Barn Elms, west of Putney.
The Brook initially flows through largely built-up suburbia in Worcester Park and Motspur Park, then into the slightly greener New Malden, before following the fringes of Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park and flowing through Barnes Common and Lower Putney Common, i.e. some of South London’s most varied and beautiful countryside.
While large parts of the brook are now culverted or built over, a substantial part of it flows in the open in parks and through commons, often in natural or re-naturalised meanders, providing for more diverse flora and fauna and natural flows.
Train stations and bus stops on or just off route enable many shorter versions. Check the webpage or the pdf for details.
Disclaimer: the route has some overlap with SWC 391 - Wimbledon to Putney.
2 comments:
Pedants' Corner: In Wimbledon, where we used to paddle in it as kids, just before where the traffic rushes past on the Kingston by-pass, it's called just "Beverley Brook", without the "the".
4 walkers off the train in initially well chilly conditions but already with blazing sunshine. The brook showed some encouraging amounts of flow straight from the off (i.e. where it emerges from a culvert) and I was pleased to see that there are plans to liberate it from its culvert lower down in Cuddington Recreation Ground and re-establish meanders and flood retention ponds (sometime next year).
On then down into the very suburban Worcester and Motspur Park areas and eventually across the 8 lane (with slipways) A3.
As we crossed the Beeline Way from New Malden station, a familiar face was spotted down below, the author of the other (older) walk that traces the lower Beverley Brook.
We enjoyed the next, more green and natural stretches, through Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park (some deer were spotted far away to the left).
The Stag's Head seemed closed when we tried the door, but they opened immediately and then served very good beer and pretty decent pizze. Some footie was on the screen and there was time for a 2nd pint before the food arrived. Bliss.
The other walk author made his excuses and departed to Barnes Station while we entered that part of purgatory that is the 2 level crossings west of that station (Richmond and Hounslow lines). It does take a while to get through, I can tell you!
Not long then via Barnes Common and to the Thames (at high tide) to Putney (one turned right here to the mainline station) and across the railway bridge to Fulham (just after 4 this). Only that the remaining 3 of us went to The Eight Bells before taking the tube.
A very fine winter's day of walking, with the not so interesting parts of this route compensated by the scenic bits. Other fauna: herons, egrets, mandarin ducks, all kinds of other ducks, many tweeting birds in the trees plus the unavoidable parakeets, the latter in untold numbers.
Mud situation: not bad at all.
n=5 w=sunny
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