The Capital Ring:Parts IX & X:Greenford to Hendon Park (Elevate Me Later).

Some walks are better than others (and some walks' mothers, no doubt, are better than other walks' mothers) and it has to be said that Saturday's stretch from Greenford to Hendon Park on the Capital Ring was, we all agreed, the least inspiring section of the Ring so far.

That's not to say it was bad, it certainly wasn't, but to say that on this project, so far, we've been spoiled. Richmond Park takes some beating but last month's stretch from Richmond to Greenford took in the delightful Thames riverside of Isleworth, the expansive Syon Park, and the wonderful Fox pub in Hanwell, March's stroll from Grove Park to Streatham took in the parks of Crystal Palace and Beckenham, and the initial leg from Woolwich to Eltham was so much fun we struggled to drag ourselves out of the cosy Park Tavern.

 

 

But that was before Covid swept the planet and before Boris Johnson exacerbated the health crisis with his intentionally negligent handling of it. That was in the before times and even though we may be back out walking again now (and, for the most part, enjoying it very much) the experience is more fraught, more precarious than before. The odds of us being able to continue these walks into the winter and into the early months of next year remain in a very delicate balance. For now they're tenable - just. Further restrictions or limitations being passed into law, though understandable, would probably tip that balance back to where it was between April and June.

It's a strange country we live in. One with a rich and complex history of invention, invasion, colonialism, and immigration. There is much we need to address about ourselves but there is also much we need to be proud about. I'd like to say we deserve better than Boris Johnson and the belief that he's no worse than any of the others but as we voted him in with an eighty seat majority I can only surmise that we've got just the shit we deserve. Politicians have given us the NHS, free museum entry, and freedom of speech. Just because Boris Johnson gives us nothing but lies and blame doesn't mean that's the best we can hope for politicians. To say so makes us sound like beaten wives excusing their abusive spouses.

One thing we definitely can't be proud of in Britain is our failing, mostly privatised yet still heavily subsidised rail network. The last four rail journeys I have taken have involved at least five bus replacement services which would be understandable and acceptable if people weren't being asked to fork out such extortionate prices to use the trains. Most of which goes into the pockets of the shareholders who run the services and not back into the infrastructure.

Yesterday morning's journey involved a bus to New Cross Gate, an Overground train to Surrey Quays, another Overground train to Clapham Junction, a third Overground train to Shepherd's Bush, and, finally, a Central Line tube to Greenford. Even typing it all out is exhausting. I dipped my head into The Guardian crossword and the byzantine journey became less laborious.

 

 

Greenford's an ill defined sprawl of a place. The two stations (Greenford and South Greenford) are both the best part of a mile from the main parade and with the A40 and the A4127, two very busy roads, both dissecting the place it seems to lack a centre, to crave a soul. I made haste to the Big Boys Cafe (hopefully named for the owner's not inconsiderable girth rather than the preferred clientele) where Shep and Pam were both already waiting.

I had cheese omelette, chips, and beans with bread and butter and a cup of tea (which I nearly managed to finish) and Pam showed us her Covid forehead zapper and we even had a go. Shep and I had a temperature of 36.6 and Pam was 0.2 higher, all pleasingly below the worrying 38 mark. We caught up with work and family news and set off along the aforesaid A4127, regularly passing and being passed by one of those cars with a big camera on the top that they use to make maps on the Internet.

Once we'd passed under the A40/Western Avenue we were back on the Capital Ring proper and soon we were turning into Paradise Fields - and witnessing our first graffiti of a day that would come to be dominated by it. The folks in the London boroughs of Ealing, Brent, and Barnet, it seems, love a good swear. 

Paradise Fields didn't really live up to its name - unless your idea of paradise is sitting on a bench in the drizzle drinking a can of Kronenbourg and staring at a retail park. The Grand Union Canal passes along the perimeter of Paradise Fields and we followed along it, taking in the occasional coot, until we reached a bridge, the homeless guy living under it had quite a tidy little space, passed over it, and soon started climbing Horsenden Hill.

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Quite a steep ascent too. A good work out for the legs and though the views from atop the hill were commanding they were, for the most part, of some of the most anonymous parts of London. Pam and I scanned the horizon for recognisable buildings and struggled to identify any until we reached the top of the hill and Wembley Stadium, not for the last time during the walk, came into view.

It looked like a good spot for hanging out with mates, picnics, and beers but we passed the trig point that marked Horsenden Hill's highest point (80 metres) and descended through a pleasant wooded area furnished with the occasional timber bridge.

This took us back into suburbia where we decided to give the Ballot Box pub a miss (far too early in the walk and we're not big fans of the Hungry Horse chain). Of marginally more interest to me at least was All Hallows Church which was, surprisingly, built during World War II. I kind of imagined church building might have been put on hold during that conflict.

 

 

A broad tarmac footpath took us past Sudbury Hill and Sudbury Hill Harrow stations. The similarity of those names must cause no end of confusion but at least they're only about 200 metres apart. The former was the more architecturally pleasing as you'd expect from Art Deco maestro Charles Holden.

Harrow Road, which seems to act as Sudbury Hill's High Street, was typically scruffy but did at least feature Pam's Food & Wine which raised a smile (if not by the man looking out of the window above it as our Pam snapped it), a sign reading, falsely, SWEETS ARE ALL YOU NEED, and the Rising Sun pub which had been converted into a Sri Lankan restaurant and hotel. One imagines waking to the evocative smell of hoppers and idiyappam.

 

 

We followed Harrow Road as it veered left and soon began climbing the steep ascent into Harrow on the Hill. The random bollard, one of a pair, was snapped on this climb and the path that we took is called Green Lane which is not as much fun as its local nickname, Piggy Lane.

Coming out into Harrow on the Hill our trusty tome informed us the Capital Ring signs were painted black here so as not to upset the delicate balance of the surrounding colours of the area. Which might have made sense if the usual Capital Ring colour was bright orange or flashing cyan and magenta. But as it's green and there was a lot of greenery around it seemed more likely that it was simply down to local snobbery.

 

 

To be fair, the signs do look kinda cool in black. Harrow on the Hill's pretty easy on the eyes too. Imagine a more suburban take on Hampstead minus most of the pubs, restaurants, shops, and even heath. There's money here for sure but if I had enough I'd chose Hampstead over Harrow.

That didn't stop us enjoying the quaint pastel shaded cottages that lined the road as we climbed further to one of the highest points on the entire Ring and THE farthest point from Central London (10 miles/16k from Charing X) the entire orbital path reaches. The hill is believed to have been a place of Pagan worship in Saxon times and the word Harrow means 'scared grove'. In 1094, the Normans built one of their earliest English churches atop the hill, St Mary's, and its spire, almost certainly a later addition, can be seen from miles around. We'd look back at it as the day wore on.

The white building below was until recently the King's Head Hotel and is said to date from 1535. Rumour has it it's one of the places Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn and that explains why the small triangular green has a portrait or Mr VIII hanging from what looks like some kind of crude double gibbet. 

Our interests lied more with getting a drink than dissolving monasteries and chopping our wives heads off so we repaired to the delightful Castle pub. QR codes scanned, masks donned for entrance, and track and trace details submitted we were taken to what amounted to our own private room and Pam and I sat in armchairs worthy of Sir Rowley Birkin QC. I knocked back a pint of London Pride, Pam a pint and a half of Beavertown Neck Oil, and Shep two of the same.

 

 

It was the sort of pub you could quite easily waste an entire afternoon in and if I lived in Harrow on the Hill I imagine I regularly would as there doesn't seem to be much else to do there. Unless you're a Harrovian that is. We'd be seeing plenty of them soon.

First we looked at their buildings. Mostly of red brick they make for a pleasing architectural set piece and our book outlined a brief history of Harrow School. Founded in 1572 it initially took in just one pupil (not sure how that even qualifies as a school?) but as its reputation grew steadily it ended up providing the entitled education for future statesmen like Winston Churchill and Pandit Nehru and authors like Byron and Anthony Trollope. Pevsner had remarked on the Sicilian Gothic style of the 1877 Speech Room and I tried to work out which building that actually was before we descended down the oddly named Football Lane.

 

 

Rugby football it turned out, as the legions of sweatshirt clad freshers passing us gave way to several games of rugby on a series of pitches which our path took us neatly through the middle of. Golf, too, is played in Harrow and soon we were on the edge of a golf course whose hedges hid several stray balls, one of which found its way in to my bag as a souvenir of our wanderings.

The edge of Northwich Park Playgolf Centre, and a bench covered in dense bush, would have abutted the grounds of Northwick Park Hospital (where, in 2016 - Pam informed me, a clinical trial of the Parexel drug led to patients' heads expanding to double the size and multiple organ failures if, thankfully, no deaths) had our path not cut through it. The Ducker Path part of this cut is said to take its name from the former outdoor swimming pool where Churchill swam as a boy.

The path emptied into Northwick Park Playing Fields where Association Football, rather than rugby, was being played and we crossed under the West Coast Main Line from Euston to the North West and Scotland and the Bakerloo Line by South Kenton station completing part IX of the Capital Ring and carrying straight on into Part X. It was nearly 4pm and we were not making great time so we gave the unfriendly looking brick expressionist Windermere pub a swerve and passed through some unremarkable if not unpleasant suburbs and the windswept and almost deserted Allonby Gardens until we reached a part of London I'd never even registered the existence of before: - Preston!

 

 

Preston, it is my sad duty to report to you, is a rather sorry looking oplace. Traid bins overflow with Sports Direct bags and sleeping bags and Fancy Chicken N Pizza seems to be having as much of an identity crisis as Preston itself. Beaten up Talbots rot in driveways and the concrete lined Wealdstone Brook (which soon flows into the river Brent) is far from one of London's most auspicious waterways.

Shep and Pam, having taken more ale on than me, were both desperate for a wee so a portaloo in a local front garden provided a timely opportunity to relieve themselves and meant that Fryent Country Park, which we'd soon be entering, would remain unwatered except for the light drizzle that had returned.

 

 

Fryent Park is split into two by A4140/Fryent Way and both halves, Barn Hill Open Space and Gotfords Hill were almost completely empty. No playgrounds, no benches, no cafes, no football pitches, and virtually no people whatsoever. One can only assume the good people of nearby Kingsbury are not fans of green open spaces.

Signage in Fryent Park is sketchy at best so we worked our way diagonally across Barn Hill Open Space, over Fryent Way, and into Gotfords Hill where a fingerpost atop a hill looked so stark and so captured the day that Pam's photo of Shep approaching it looked so dramatic yet so drab that it simply had to head up this blog.

 

 

From here we could see Wembley Stadium but the sky was so grey the white arch almost faded into it. We descended back down to what we hoped would be the outskirts of Kingsbury only to discover we'd somehow turned back on ourselves and ended up back on Fryent Way.

Not a major problem. We took a shortcut through some side streets and soon reoriented ourselves back on to the Ring just in time to see the 'new' St Andrew's Church and its tall stone spire. The church was actually built in Marylebone in 1847 where it was renowned for its musical performances. Oddly, between 1931 and 1933 it was moved to Kingsbury stone by stone and re-erected where it now stands. Inside, it is written, the striking interior will have you thinking you've entered a minor cathedral.

 

 

An overgrown cemetery lurking behind the church proved reasonably photogenic to Pam and myself but Shep deleted the photo he took of it because he said it might give him nightmares. Overgrown cemeteries may be the stuff of his nightmares but it's long been established that waterfowl are the raw materials of his finest dreams and with Brent Reservoir and the Welsh Harp Nature Reserve coming up next I was keen to furnish him with just that level of corrective.

On a sunny day I'd imagine Brent Reservoir is even more spectacular. Even on an overcast late September afternoon the best part of 30,000 steps to the good (by close of play I'd notched up 36,954 - not far off a 2020 record but not quite toppling the 37,470 chalked up on the Streatham-Richmond stretch of the Ring) it couldn't fail to impress. Tower blocks and the arch of Wembley Stadium loom over the reservoir but fail to overshadow it. 

It's one of the largest sheets of water in the whole Greater London area and, over the years, over two hundred different species of bird and two hundred and fifty species of moth, have been sighted here. We made do with swans and coots and I related how the reservoir provides the water for the Regent's Canal and was used for the rowing events in the 1948 London Olympics.

 

 

Leaving the reservoir we reached a shabby looking street of shops in West Hendon and crossed over the M1 and the main railway line from St Pancras to the East Midlands and Yorkshire. Brent Cross Shopping Centre was hidden from view to our south and Hampstead Heath, remarkably, was not far away either but you'd not get that from a cursory glance at the centre of Hendon.

Connections with the 18c actor David Garrick (who bought the ancient manor of Hendon at an auction of a land that had once belonged to the Earls of Pembroke and the Marquises of Powys) seem quite at odds with Hendon's current status as a hub for takeaway restaurants and phone repair shops and cavernous pubs like The Hendon which we entered at 6.30pm and Ian joined us half an hour later in what's now becoming something of a Ring tradition.

The Hendon was like a Wetherspoons but with the crucial difference that it wasn't a Wetherspoons and was thus free from Brexit beer mats and Covid denial. I had a pint of Peroni, Ian did too, and once it became apparent that the only available ale was off, Shep joined in with a San Miguel. A second, and third, drink followed (Pam switching to pink gin) and we rushed to Hendon Central station to take the Northern Line two stops south to Golders Green as there were, seemingly, no curry houses in Hendon!

 

 

The New Balti Restaurant was nothing to write home about but the tarka daal, paratha, and pulao rice were perfectly serviceable and Shep made an impressive bubble on the end of his Cobra bottle even if it was a bit odd that they made us sit with our masks on until they brought the menus out. As if the presentation of a menu would, in itself, be an antidote to Covid.

 

With the new 10pm curfew in place there was no time for further mucking about either in the restaurant or on the tube. Ian shot off home and me, Shep, and Pam took the northern line further south. At Waterloo I took the 63 home where a cold San Miguel was waiting for me in the fridge following my sensible decision to stick to Lucozade during Friday night's Kahoot/Zoom quiz. It hadn't been the greatest walk ever, these aren't the greatest times ever, but I still felt miles better for getting out and doing it than almost anything else in my life makes me feel so I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I did it in such lovely company.

 

Thanks to Shep and Pam for the photos and to both them and Ian for the company. Next time we're departing Hendon Park for Stoke Newington via Highgate and more familair sights and better pubs but before that, rules permitting, we'll be out in North Weald Bassett next weekend in a TADS walk I'm calling, due to it passing by their former home Dial House, Stations of the Crass. If there's more than fifteen of us we'll apply for a grouse shooting permit ;-)