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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 6 January 2019

Sunday Walk – Capital Ring §6: Wimbledon Park to Richmond

Section 6 of the Capital Ring – Wimbledon Park to Richmond
Length: About 11½ km (7 miles). Toughness: 2/10 T=ldp.23

Take a District line tube to arrive at Wimbledon Park by 11:00 and meet in the booking hall. It's a 15-minute journey from Earl's Court, with tubes every five minutes. You could also take a train to Wimbledon and go back one stop on the tube. The Wimbledon stations are in TFL Zone 3.

At the end of the walk there are frequent trains, tubes and Overground from Richmond (Zone 4). London-bound trains are terminating at Clapham Junction on this line today, but you can change there for other services to Waterloo or Victoria.

On several Saturdays in 2017 DAC posted sections of the London Loop for SWC walkers, just one of several waymarked walking routes in the capital which seem ideal for Sunday walkers in winter: not too long with a short journey time, so no need for an early start or the prospect of finishing in the dark. As a trial, here's a section of the Capital Ring with a high proportion of green spaces (Wimbledon Park, Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park, Petersham Meadows) and not too much in the way of road links. It's well described and nicely presented on the Transport for London website.

For lunch you'll reach the Pembroke Lodge cafeteria in Richmond Park at around 1pm, but it's not much further into Richmond if you want to do the whole walk in one go. And if seven miles isn't enough, you could easily do an extra hour or so's walking along the Thames Path, either to Kew Bridge or (in the other direction, on the other bank: a street map would help) to Twickenham or Strawberry Hill.

As always, there will be no leader for this walk. You'll need to download the directions from this TfL Walking page.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unable to come this weekend, but definitely recommend this walk. Sometimes muddy through Wimbledon Common, I did this walk about a week ago and it was fine. Plenty of lunch options in Richmond. There's a café by the windmill, on the common, but that's only half an hour into the walk, so you may want to walk right through.

Anonymous said...

IF COMING BY TUBE. PLEASE ALLOW EXTRA TIME:

TFL Notice:
DISTRICT LINE: Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 January, no service between Aldgate East and East Ham. Replacement buses operate.

Replacement buses operateService A: Tower Hill - Aldgate and Aldgate East - Whitechapel - Stepney Green - Mile End - Bow Road - Bromley-by-Bow - Canning Town (For Jubilee line and DLR) - BarkingService B: Canning Town (For Jubilee line and DLR) - Plaistow - Upton Park - East Ham - Barking.

Anonymous said...

Well I didn't do this but just looked at the tfl directions and they seem excellent with a very nice map and notes- well doen tfl

PeteB said...

Ten met up in the tube entrance hall (inc two newcomers) and we picked up two others en route so n=12 in all who trundled round this pleasant parkland walk in w=cloudy-and-mild weather. The paths were supernaturally dry for this time of year, good for walking but if this high pressure weather system continues for much longer then you wonder what will be the impact on vegetation and insects as spring approaches?

The best part of the walk is through Richmond Park and a large herd of red deer were obligingly close for photographs, seemingly oblivious to the groups of people approaching them.

A very good lunch was served at the Pembroke Lodge cafeteria and as it was so mild eating at an outside table
with good views over London was perfectly comfortable. There is a huge amount of seating both inside and outside so getting a seat should not be a problem.

After lunch two walkers got a bit lost after missing an enclosed path. The rest of us quickly reached Richmond with all going on to the station (no Tube or Overground to-day!) whilst I lingered for a coffee. An excellent convivial but short day out and I hope the two newcomers were encouraged to come on other SWC walking adventures