The London LOOP. Part IX:Uxbridge Lock to Moor Park (All Wet West of Watford and Wembley).

After three walks in glorious sunshine we were returning, not just to Uxbridge, but to more typical weather. It's the way it goes on the London LOOP. For most of the summer TADS has, understandably, taken precedence but here's an interesting development. This stage of the LOOP had as many walkers on it as the last TADS trek out to Rochester. Perhaps when we finally reach Purfleet, the LOOP's end point we'll be in double figures. Hey, why stop at that? I imagined a scenario in which every single Londoner circles the city eternally using their psychic powers to levitate St.Paul's Cathedral and destroy capitalism.

It was one of those days, a rainy one, where talking bullshit and stopping often in pubs helped us plough on when it got a bit cold, a bit wet, and finally a bit dark. If that sounds like it was no fun at all, though, that couldn't be further from the truth. We're hardy souls these days and although I, personally, prefer sunny beer gardens, shorts, and ice creams to ponchos, umbrellas, and sore nipples we all realise that in to each life, and indeed almost every walk, a little rain must fall.

And so it proved. I'd taken the Overground, Jubilee, and Metropolitan lines to Uxbridge's Charles Holden designed Art Deco tube station where I met up with Adam, Shep, Neil, Belinda, Eamon, and Pam and we headed through the thriving town centre to an arcade which hosted an Internet cafe where scenes from the recent hit TV series The Bodyguard were filmed and, more pressingly for me, a proper ol' greasy spoon cafe.

Granny Satchwill (or Granny's as the locals were calling it) served us up tea, Diet Coke, bubble'n'squeak, veggie breakfasts, and, in my case, a rather delicious cheese omelette'n'chips with four slices of generously buttered white bread. I was a bit concerned that I'd not dressed appropriately for the wet weather (the BBC Weather website had suggested a few spots of drizzle but nothing worse) but I certainly wasn't worried that I'd go hungry. Not with Granny Satchwill on the case.

Before we could join the LOOP properly, Bee was keen on showing us a couple of local landmarks and we were happy to oblige. The Hillingdon Civic Centre, designed by Andrew Derbyshire, planned in 1970, built from 1973 to 1976, and formally opened in 1979, is one of Britain's most celebrated examples of neo-vernacular architecture and still looked resplendent covered in drizzle, all sloping rooftops and 'homely' bricks.

Nearby Randalls, a closed down former department store, made good use of Art Deco lettering and geometric angles. Designed by William Eves it's been used as a location for Only Fools and Horses, given a Grade II listing, and even, in the past, been accused of displaying adverts sympathetic to Nazism. It's now the last word in faded glamour.

Past a hairdressers that used to be home to the award winning barber Adam Cripps, we reached Neil, Bee, and Eamon's past haunt The Crown & Treaty. The Treaty, as they had it, used to be THE place in Uxbridge for a live band and an indie DJ but its history goes back a lot further than that.

Situated on the road between Oxford and London it was, apparently, the logical place for the Commissioners of Charles I and Parliamentarians to meet in 1645 to try and negotiate a treaty that would have ended the English Civil War, hence the name of the pub that the building was converted into around 150 years later. The fact that the TWENTY day long meeting was fruitless seemingly forgotten.

It's here we picked up both the LOOP proper and the Grand Union Canal. Office blocks fashioned into maritime shapes flaunted their wealth to the owners of more modest narrowboats and patrons of The Swan & Bottle pub which would have looked inviting on a sunny day but (a) it wasn't a sunny day and (b) we'd hardly done any walking yet. We'd not earned a pub stop.

Flour has been milled in this area for thousands of years with the waters of the Colne river which, along with Frays River to the west, flanks the Grand Union Canal as it heads northwards in a confusion of waterways that only gets more confusing, more watery, and more beautiful as you follow the towpath along.

Narrowboats were gaily painted and named after mothers, daughters, and lovers while others looked more like submarines or floating portacabins. Wheelbarrows-a-plenty lined the sides of the canal, the inevitable brass marker posts told us how far we were from Braunston, and the smell of wood burners and bonfires evoked an almost Proustian nostalgia in former festival goers. 

We passed beneath the A40, negotiated a slippery pack horse bridge to the other side of the canal, and strolled on towards the typically pretty white cottage at Denham Lock. I'd both walked this stretch before in the rain, and had run two half-marathons along it, but this time I was both taking more in and was in the company of a man who proved to be something of a local expert. I got the impression Eamon had walked this way many many more times than me and he certainly knew his local history.

Denham Lock is the deepest lock along the whole of the Grand Union Canal and it's quite high up too. It needs to be to clear the Frays which passes, picturesquely, beneath the canal here. Wooden tables and a bird feeder look out at the view.

We soon reached Frays Valley Nature Reserve with its broad, and placid, lakes home to a selection of waterfowl, yachts, and elusive fishermen. We saw their rods. We saw their tents. But we did not see them. Gravel was once quarried here, as elsewhere in the Colne Valley, but now the pits have returned to their natural state.

It's a muddy stretch that affords plentiful views of towering pylons (always a good photo op I think) and an impressive railway bridge (ditto) before opening up near a marina packed with boats and eventually, crossing the canal again, the Horse and Barge pub. Eamon confirmed there would be a better opportunity for a pit stop very soon so we gave the Horse and Barge a swerve only to see that a children's party was happening in the garden. Fun if it's your own, or your friends', kids maybe - but stranger's kids. No, we'll continue on.

Past an abandoned blue barge that looked almost wilfully attractive in its ruinous state, a Wimbledon FC 'I CAN TASTE ONIONS' sticker (one was also spotted in Nonsuch Park earlier in the LOOP), more pylons (and, thus, more photos), more lakes, and a slightly bizarre wooden gnome sculpture peering out gingerly from behind a tree to the side of the towpath.

Eventually we reached the Coy Carp. Yes, coy. Not koi. The truth of the matter with carp is not so much that they're coy or shy but so heavily fished have they been they are now vulnerable to extinction. The Coy Carp pub, however, seemed to be doing okay despite its rather careworn outside aspect. It had a lovely big garden looking out at various waterways and, like all the pubs we'd be visiting on this stretch, at least two thirds of it had been given over to dining.

Never mind, I had a lovely pint of London Pride (which seemed an appropriate drink to be quaffing on the day the news of Rockney innovator Chas Hodges passed away reached us) and allowed my damp jumper and trousers to dry out. A bit.

Upon our egress from the Coy Carp pub we finally left the canal and the three rivers (Colne and Frays had briefly been joined by the Misbourne) behind, although we took a quick glance at the canoe slalom course and reflected on what a millrace might be (it's the current of water that turns the water wheel) and just how deadly the 'dreaded marine worm' may be (very deadly should you happen to be a wooden ship but possibly of little concern for those of us of a less nautical bent).

We now passed through open fields occasionally populated by hungry horses and a US Army vehicle. It was hard to believe that this barren, sparsely populated, and somewhat wild area was actually part of London but if there's one thing the LOOP has taught us it's that London is not the crowded urban environment many imagine but, instead, has very many different faces. Vistas reminiscent of, but less muddy than, Happy Valley near Coulsdon rolled in front of us as the skies began to darken, the temperature plummeted, and Adam, Pam, and Shep fed those hungry horses.

It was hoying down by the time we reached our next pub, and more was to follow. The Rose & Crown was an unpretentious little boozer, if you leave aside my aforementioned gripes about the largest tables of these places being given over to diners, so I took another London Pride (Gertcha!) and we sat amiably chatting for forty-five minutes or so before heading back out into 'the weather'.

Through Bishop's Wood Country Park which the guidebook told us was "a string of once-coppiced woodlands, now renowned for the richness of their plant life" but we were unable to appreciate in the rain and on to a windy, tricky to follow path, that was more overgrown, and saw more fallen trees, than any stretch of the LOOP so far. In fact it reminded me a little of a 2017 TADS adventure near Bayham Abbey, just with less animal skeletons. Across a patch of long grass we spotted our third, and final, pub of the day. The large, imposing, and yet welcoming looking Ye Olde Greene Man.

My fear that a pub which looked like a country retreat for the wealthy and well dressed of Rickmansworth may turn a septet of soiled wayfarers away proved, thankfully, unfounded. In fact Ye Olde Greene Man proved a delightful, and friendly, place to water our insides and dry out our exteriors. The London Pride was off but they had more Doom Bar than Sainsbury's so I put my beer on the sideboard, here, and we proceeded to talk of walks future and present, politics, music, and gossip. The usual stuff.

By the time we left, past the more unassuming Prince of Wales pub (so unassuming, in fact, that they'd put up a neon OPEN sign in the window, presumably to remind people it was a pub not a haunted house), we were very much in the twilight and soon, the dark proper. Neil Bacchus, no stranger to a prank or a wind-up, jumped out from behind a tree in an attempt, moderately successful, to frighten Pam and myself and we soon found ourselves on the edge of a gated community that seemed to be justifying its exclusivity, or snobbishness, by calling itself the Moor Park Conservation Area.

Some of the houses were tasteful, others less so. All looked expensive. I imagined Watford footballers like Troy Deeney to live there but Adam, three pints to the good, gave voice to his inner Trot as he speculated, not quietly, on the soulless and meaningless existences the inhabitants of these gilded prisons had. I suspect, in many cases, he was right but I'd not like to paint them all with such a broad brush. Certainly the area lacked any atmosphere, any kind of street life, and, seemingly, any kind of human interaction and it seems a shame that people see one of the benefits of enormous wealth to be the ability to shut themselves off from the world instead of a greater incentive to engage with it.

Ah well, soon the houses started to look ever so slightly less expensive and, eventually, even some flats appeared opposite a small row of shops and restaurants (no pubs, but we'd done okay on that score during our afternoon's jaunt) which included our final resting place. The Shemul was a friendly, unpretentious, Bangladeshi place where the after dinner mints were more chocolatey than normal and the hot towels hotter than standard. The food, too, was great. I had chilli paneer and porata, we shared poppadums (whatever next?), and, on perusal of the drinks menu I noticed they had Shep's all time favourite lager, Bangla.

So many times he's asked for it, so many times he'd been greeted with disappointment. I was in the toilet when he made this discovery and I was sorry to miss his little face light up with joy. To mark the occasion each and every one of us (including Eamon who doesn't like Bangla and Bee who doesn't even like beer much) had one. There's only six in the photo because Adam, and he missed out here, had decided to head back home as we entered The Shemul.

With no pubs on the 'strip' the friendly restaurant staff were happy to let us stay on for another drink, and shook our hands on departure, which, combined with the food and the other aforesaid little touches, resulted in me posting a very positive Trip Advisor review for the place.

At Moor Park station, on the other 'arm' of the Metropolitan line, we all got the tube together. The Uxbridge contingent changed at Harrow-on-the-Hill to return to from whence we'd come. Pam, Shep, and I (after being joined by scores of jubilant Anthony Joshua fans at Wembley) changed to the Jubilee at Finchley Road. Shep hopped off at Waterloo for a trip to Whistle Stop and the train to Basingstoke, Pam at London Bridge for her bus, and I stayed on until Canada Water where I caught my last train of the day back to Honor Oak Park before returning home to post a Facebook tribute to Chas Hodges.

I was tired and I was wet but I was happy. It'd been another interesting, fun, and varied day on the LOOP. Next time we start at Moor Park and pass through Oxhey Woods, Hatch End, and Harrow Weald Common before rocking up in Elstree. The weather may be no better but at least, hopefully, I shall be dressed for it. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.