Evening Walk - Spring Flowers and City Views: Brockwell Park (Herne Hill Circular)

Length: 3.8 km (2.4 mi)

Ascent: 70m

Net Walking Time: 1 hour

 

Meet at Herne Hill station (Railton Road side) at 18.22.

 

From Central London, either take the 18.12 Orpington train from Victoria (18.19 Brixton), arriving Herne Hill at 18.21, or the Thameslink service to Sutton (17.57 St. Pancras via stations to Blackfriars (18.06), then Elephant 18.10 and Loughborough Junction 18.16), arriving 18.19. 

From Outer London: either take the 17.54 train from Orpington (arrives 18.22) or the 17.46 from Sutton (arrives 18.11).  

Return trains: 4 per hour in every direction.

 

This is a short meandering route through a small but well-kept urban park in Southeast London on raised ground within the valleys shaped by one of London’s Hidden Rivers, The Effra, and a couple of its tributaries. Created from the purchase of the existing private gardens of the Brockwell Hall estate and some smaller neighbouring properties, it is noted for its 19^th century layout as a gracious public park, a clocktower, water garden, and walled garden, as much as for the Art Deco Brockwell Lido. Brockwell Hall has served as a café since the opening of the park in 1892 (but will be shut for the evening).  

 

The Park ought to be open to “…15 minutes before sunset.”, i.e.: to 19.15 hours at least…

 

Tea: Bullfinch Brewery Tap Room Arch 886-887, Rosendale Road. Open to 22.00 hours.

Plus, plenty of options near the station, see the walk directions for details.

 

For walk directions, map, height profile, and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.39

Tring to Berkhamsted via Tom's Hill

Length 15.5 km (9.6 miles) 4/10

I was planning another Kent walk for today but suspect it will be too damp underfoot, so how about this attractive spin on a classic Chilterns walk. The Golden Valley after Little Gaddesden is nice, the finish in Berkhamsted has good refreshment options, and this route avoids possible gloop around the Bridgewater Monument.

Travel: 1009 from Euston (Harrow & Wealdstone 1021) arriving at Tring 1051. There are 4 return trains an hour from Berkhamsted but they are not evenly spaced - approx 19, 25, 49, 55. Get a return to Tring.

Lunch: the Bridgewater Arms (tel 01442 842408) in the village of Little Gaddesden usually goes down well; it is open seven days a week and and food is served all day (November 2022) weekdays from 12 noon until 9 pm. It has comfortable internal dining areas and a very pleasant beer garden.

Near the pub is a village store, where provisions can be purchased for picnickers. A good picnic spot is the churchyard of the church in Little Gaddesden, some 400 metres or so from the pub.

Tea: Just before the railway station you come to the Crystal Palace pub on the canal, which reopened (December 2021) following refurbishment after a lengthy period of closure. Heading south-east along the canal towpath you come to the The Boat (nice outdoor veranda) and Rising Sun canalside pubs. In the centre of Berkhamsted there are further pubs and a number of tea shops.

Finally, the Berkhamsted Railway Station Cafe, in addition to serving hot drinks, doubles up as a wine shop.

Longer walk option: you could start by heading out to Ivinghoe Beacon following walk 2.5 and pick up today's route from Little Gaddesden, making a Tring greatest hits walk of about 19 km/12 miles.

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Sunday Walk – The River Crane Walk

SWC Walk 376 (variation) – Hatton Cross to Twickenham or Richmond

Length: About 10 km (6.2 miles) to Twickenham, 15 km (9.3 miles) to Richmond. Toughness: 1/10

Take a Piccadilly line tube to arrive at Hatton Cross (TfL Zone 5/6) by noon. It's a 45 minute journey from Leicester Square; if necessary, use the TfL Journey Planner from your local station. Meet upstairs in the ticket hall.

If you finish at Twickenham (Zone 5) there are four mainline trains an hour to Waterloo, at xx:03, xx:23, xx:32 & xx:53. These all call at Richmond (Zone 4) around five minutes later, and this station is also the terminus for a branch of the District line and Overground trains to Stratford.

NB. British Summer Time begins this Sunday. While we all welcome an extra hour's daylight in the evenings, some of us will complain at the loss of an hour in bed this morning. Since there's no great pressure to get to a lunch pub or tearoom at a certain time, I'll try to mollify these grumblers with this one-off experiment of an Afternoon Walk starting at the crack of noon.

This walk's author tells me that the River Crane Walk made an ideal lockdown outing: from Twickenham station you could go out and back along a thickly-wooded stretch of this urban tributary of the Thames and soon imagine yourself in a much more rural environment. Noting that its northernmost point isn't far from a tube station has led me to try out this linear version of the walk, with an attractive stretch of the Thames Path as an optional extension.

As it wasn't really designed as a club walk there aren't any designated lunch and tea places as such. I suggest having a break at the first refreshment place you'll come across (a café with picnic benches in Kneller Park), although it's only 20 minutes before Twickenham station. If you want something more substantial it's not much further to the town centre where you'll find plenty of eateries. There are also some appealing riverside pubs both here and at Richmond if you do the Thames Path extension (the first of which really is called “The Barmy Arms”, no doubt the spiritual home of England supporters abroad).

Remember that there's no walk leader. The L=swc.376 page has a couple of maps showing the main walk route, plus the short link route from Hatton Cross (both also available on GPS, though might be some doubt at a few places where the river is out of sight). You shouldn't have any difficulty finding your way to the Thames if you want to carry on to Richmond. The SWC page lists the main features en route; you might also like to check out the notes and directions in this pdf document produced by Inner London Ramblers, since part of the River Crane Walk overlaps with Section 9 of the LOOP.

Sunday Walk - A place and a walk like no other: Canvey Island (Benfleet Circular)

Length: 23.2 km (14.5 mi) [much shorter walk possible, see below]

Ascent/Descent: 40m

Net Walking Time: 4 ¾ hours

Toughness: 2/10 

 

Take the 09.45 Shoeburyness train from Fenchurch Street (09.50 Limehouse, 09.56 West Ham, 10.02 Barking), arrives Benfleet 10.38. 

Return trains: xx.10 and xx.40 (fast) and xx.18 and xx.48 (not so fast), all to Fenchurch Street. 

 

A flat walk, that starts and finishes with a busy road stretch, features a fair amount of hard surface paths and some A-road noise near the end, and passes – in succession – a golf course, a static caravan park, an ex-landfill site, housing estates, another caravan park, a sewage plant, an LNG terminal, an oil product terminal, an oil refinery, the site of a never-finished oil refinery, another oil terminal and another – larger – landfill site?????? And yet, and yet…

This is one not just for the Industrial Romantic, or for fans of the Pub Rock legends Dr. Feelgood, or for students of the lives of the ex-East End White Working Classes.Without navigational challenges (as all you do is: walk to the seawall and follow it) you experience an ever-changing scenery of tidal creeks and mud flats, river marshes, salt marshes, flood barriers, sluices and sandbanks, get views of the Benfleet Downs, of Hadleigh Castle & Country Park, the Essex cliffs, Southend with its Pier, the North Sea and the busy river traffic, of ships big and small, boatyards, yacht clubs and marinas, pass sandy beaches and enclosed pools on the foreshore, jetties, extensive seawall murals telling Canvey Island stories and – post lunch – long tranquil stretches past grassy marshes with abundant birdlife.

Still a walk like no other. 

Shorter Walk: Canvey Island is linked to Benfleet station by many regular buses, enabling you to start or finish the walk at almost any point along the way (in the first half of the walk), as bus stops are often just a short distance from the walk route. For a route map of the bus network, you should check here: http://www.plusbus.info/benfleet.

The most logical shortcut to a bus stop, right after the late lunch stop, is described in the directions. It results in a 14.6 km/9.1 mi walk (rated 1/10). 

 

Lunch: The Labworth Beach Café (9.7 km/6.0 mi, food to 15.00), in its modernist building with panoramic views of the Thames estuary; The Lobster Smack (13.2 km/8.2 mi, food all day) is the oldest surviving building on Canvey and a classic pub which has so much history it even features in the Dickens novel ‘Great Expectations’. 

Tea: Three pubs and two sub-continental restaurants on High Street, just past the station (see pdf for details). 

 

For summary, map, height profile, photos, walk directions pdf and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.258

Saturday Walk - Oxshott to Ashtead (or Epsom)

Length: 12.1 miles or 19.5 km (with options to shorten in the instructions). 3 out of 10

The walk links together several surviving and diverse heaths and commons in metropolitan Surrey.  The most scenic section of the walk follows as the route descends through Winterbottom Wood to take in a section of the River Mole, heading North, then climbs up to the Ledges with views down to the river. 

In the afternoon you take a convoluted route around Ashtead Common and Epsom Common, with options for taking a more direct route to Ashtead station. 

Late in the walk you have an option to go to Epsom or Ashtead stations.

Trains: Get the 0936  Guildford train from Waterloo (Clapham 0945, Wimbledon 0952,) arriving 1013.  Frequent return trains from Ashtead to either Waterloo or Victoria. Buy a day return to Effingham Junction, which is where the two lines meet .

Lunch: The recommended lunch stop is the Star (8 miles/13.1 km into the walk).

Tea: In Ashtead, the Woodman is recommended and in Epsom, the Cricketeers Inn is suggested.

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