Wandering the Wandle.

"The hardest working river for its size in the world"'

That's what they were saying about the Wandle back in 1805 and though those days are long gone and it's now, slowly - the process very much still ongoing, being given over to leisure walks, parks, and, of course - this is modern London, luxury flats, it can still be hard work, of sorts, for a band of merry walkers to negotiate their selves along its route from Waddon near Croydon to Wansdsworth where it flows into the Thames.

That's my excuse for the odd wrong turn anyway! Although it might have more to do with the fact that it has been FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE long and eventful (yet, at the same time, uneventful) days since I headed up a London by Foot walk and, despite a TADS trek down to the coast a fortnight ago, I may have been a bit rusty when it came to my map reading skills. I did write the walk about a year and half ago!

Ultimately, it didn't matter. The London by Foot crowd are a pretty forgiving lot and everyone seemed to have a nice day out (which, more than anything else is the point), saw some new sites, hopefully made some new friends, and had a laugh or two along the way. The route we eventually walked may not have been the one I had planned but we walked from start to finish and if the last fifteen months has taught me anything it is that we need to able to adapt our plans according to the circumstances we find in front of us. Life doesn't happen the way we want it to. Life is a wave we need to learn to surf.

Not that, initially, in the shallows of the nascent Wandle anyone would find use for a surfboard. I'd risen ridiculously early (5am!) after a tea drinking night in in front of what most, though perhaps not Scotland fans, would agree was a fairly dull 0-0 draw between England and Scotland in Euro 2020 so it meant I was out and about early and arrived in Waddon (Honor Oak Park - Norwood Junction, Norwood Junction - Waddon) nice and early and once I'd had a brief browse of the area, the Waddon Hotel may have seen better days, I made myself to the Waddon Cafe, had a cup of tea, and charged my phone up.

Shep and Pam arrived in good time and it was apt that they should be the first two as they were my accomplices on my last LbF walk, a William Blake themed affair, between Xmas and New Year of 2019. I had cheese omelette, chips, and beans and a can of Coke (and they threw in another complimentary cuppa), Shep had chips and beans, and Pam had a veggie breakfast and shared her bubble and squeak with that delicacy's number one fan Shep.

It met with his approval and soon we met with Colin and Patricia (joining an LbF walk for the first time since August 2019's third part of my Magnificent Seven graveyard trilogy) and then, back at Waddon station, with both Mo and Ellie. Whenever new people come on the walk I am a little apprehensive. I love them being there (and both Mo and Ellie are lovely so of course I had nothing to worry about) but I can't help worrying. When we stop for a drink I imagine they'd rather be walking. When we're walking, I'm thinking they'd like to stop for a drink.

That is, alas, how my brain works. From the station we followed Epsom Road, Purley Way (very briefly), and Waddon Court Road into Waddon Ponds which, along with Carshalton Ponds, is the source of the river they call the Wandle. From here it flows 14k/8.7 miles to Wandsworth but our walk, as we'd occasionally need to leave the Wandle as it goes underground or through private or impassable land, would be closer to 20k/12 miles.

The Wandle has been used since Roman times and in the 17c, Huguenots were attracted to its banks by the cloth and textile mills that lined the river. It has two tributaries - the Wrythe (which we'd see) and the Graveney - or Norbury Brook (which we would not).

After a brief mix up we skirted the edge of a pond, admiring two swans with their seven fluffy cygnets (a theme of the day) and passed a jazzy retrofuturist multi-storey car park before following a path that lead alongside, and over, the Wandle and, at one point, past a row of quaint cottages with their own 'moats' and, in one instance, a twee little private bridge.

Already, it didn't look much like what most imagine the London Borough of Croydon to look like. Soon it wasn't. We passed into the borough of Sutton (quite an unfamiliar borough to me but one Pam could take over as expert on following Mo and Ellie's Croydon knowledge). 

The river still barely more than a few centimetres deep and so new that its clearness remained unsullied, we soon turned into the impressive looking, and impressively sized, Beddington Park. The former grounds of the manor house of the Carew family who lost it, via bad debts, in the 1850s to the money lender George Samuel Ford.  It's so vast that when you arrive you think you can see the whole park but that's just the front garden. Walled areas give way to even larger gardens and when you get to what was, essentially, the back garden you get a real scale of how big these manor houses were.

Certainly big enough to run a hunt in. Or bury a human head in. In 1591, Sir Walter Raleigh secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton (one of Queen Elizabeth I's maids of honour) at Carew Manor and this brought him, and her, into royal disfavour. For which he was sent to the Tower of London. The marriage survived but when Raleigh was beheaded in 1618 by James I a story took hold that Bessie Throckmorton kept his embalmed head in a bag for the rest of her life. Local myth has it the head is still buried in Beddington Park.

Don't worry if you're not a fan of decapitation. If you're an admirer of follies, Beddington Park is the place for you as well. There are alms houses (presumably), rickety cottages, and what appears to be the largest pigeon house (or dovecote) for miles around. The Wandle wends and weaves its way through the park and sometimes the banks are muddy but we prevailed and soon were afforded views of multiple waterfowl.

Canada geese, Egyptian geese, more swans, mallards, coots, moorhens. They were all on show. Even a heron (not the last of the day). St Mary's Church in the park contains an organ screen by William Morris and, more pleasing still, there are graceful green bridges, delightful stone crossings, picturesque waterfalls, and there even appeared to be a wedding getting ready to start.

To crash a wedding in the era of Covid would be a very crass act so we continued on and out of Beddington Park. Past Elms Pond (another heron) and following the zig-zag of Butter Hill, over the Wrythe, and into Mill Lane which, roughly, follows the course of the Wrythe until it flows into the Wandle.

There was an outdoor craft and relaxation centre with garden gnomes and, more disturbingly, there was an iron shed with a deckchair outside it which had a dead crow on it. Something out of the British folk horror imagination or just some local nasty bastards? Is there really even much difference apart from one being in the mind and this being violently real?

There were beautiful clapperboard houses with their own private views of the Wandle where the owners could sit on their decking and watch the world go by and then there were more 'affordable' flats adorned in St George Crosses for the Euros and decked out with a little outdoor bar. There were people doing tai chi by the side of the river and there was Watercress Park which was named for the product that used to grow there. At least until a Croydon typhoid outbreak in the 1930s killed 43 people and saw the end to the area as a hotspot for watercress.

This is, now, the Wandle Trail and pleasant though it is, it's not always easy to follow. Old mills lined the path to teach the locals, and visitors, the Wandle's history. Curious bridges crossed the various paths of the Wandle. It took us through Poulter Park with Mitcham Rugby Club to our left and then Imperial Fields, the ground of Tooting and Mitcham FC (and, formerly, home to both Chelsea and the mighty Dulwich Hamlet) whose former players include Alex Stepney and Dario Gradi

Next up, in a seemingly endless list of parks, was Ravensbury Park (now in a new borough - Merton - another I'm not very familiar with). Ravensbury Park is the site of a former calico mill and pleasure gardens, and, before that, 13c Ravensbury Manor. By the day's standards, it was unimpressive and The Surrey Arms - the pub you find on Morden Road when you leave Ravensbury - is, in Pam's words - and in our memories (we'd been before, some of us) - "passable at best".

We ploughed on. Into the very impressive Morden Hall Park. Formed from land that once belonged to Westminster Abbey, it is managed but appears wild. Decking takes you on a journey through long swampy marshes that if the weather had been not so typically British and grey might have been reminiscent of Florida or Louisiana.

It was a delight - and further was to come once we'd crossed the tram track (between the stations of Morden Road and Phipps Bridge) in the first pub stop of the day. The William Morris is a former factory, designed by Morris for Liberty - as are many of the surrounding buildings, that was made to look like a house - and now is one, a public one.

Colin, as ever on these walks, generously got my first pint - a Camden Hells which was soon followed by a second. Others took Camden Pales, Ellie had some dirty fries, Colin and Patricia cleaner fries, and Mo some onion rings. The sun was not exactly out but the weather was clement enough and even though Hungary and France were playing out a surprising 1-1 draw in a larger riversidegarden we were happy on a pub bench on the terrace and the toilets had quite pleasant William Morris style flooring.

Ellie departed and we plodded on. Where the William Morris pub is, now known as Merton Abbey, was once the grounds of Merton Priory (founded by the Sheriff of Surrey in 1114 and sacked by Henry VIII in 1538) and you can see parts of the priory wall dotted around the area as well as hear people listening to Whitensake's Here I Go Again while pouring out copious amounts of booze to spend an afternoon by the Wandle.

An earworm, of course, had been born. We passed through the centre of Colliers Wood and into one of  the many Wandle Parks that flank the river. This one was made memorable by the presence not of the jauntily named Pickle Ditch trickling into the Wandle but the sight of at least four police officers searching the park. For what we know not.

Next up was Wandle Meadow Nature Park (the names do get confusing quite quickly) and here I foolishly led the LbF gang down what became an ever narrower, ever muddier, ever less passable path. Until my confidence and bravado got the better of me and we could go no further. We turned round and took a detour past Haydons Road station and picked up the Wandle near the former site of Plough Lane, Wimbledon FC's old ground.

Where once Vinnie Jones pushed Dennis Wise in to the Wandle in an event that, like the assassination of JFK and man landing on the moon, everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. Shep, once a big fan of the Dons and a regular attendee at their home matches, boasted he could name that era's Crazy Gang team although, to be honest, I heard no mention of either Clive Goodyear or Terry Gibson as he reeled off the names of luminaries like Fashanu, Beasant, Cork, Sanchez, and Young.

As we passed through Garratt Park in Summerstown, talk turned to the possibility of a second pub stop - for the toilet as much as the drinks - and a necessary diversion through Earlsfield. St Andrew's Anglican church (built by Edward William Mountford - architect of the town halls of Battersea, Sheffield, and Lancaster - in 1889/90) looked imposing but minds were on emptying bladders and then refilling them and a pub called The Wandle (passed up on last July's lengthy Capital Ring stroll from Streatham to Richmond) seemed to make sense considering the theme of our walk.

Alas, no dice. We'd not booked and the pub was filling with eager football fans ready for Portugal v Germany. They did, however, allow Pam in for a wee so, for this act of kindness alone, I hope one day we can return for a drink. We passed  through a modernist style housing estate with graceful arches underneath the buildings and through the sprawling King George's Park into Wandsworth itself.

Which felt like an achievement. By now, I'd given up on reading my prepared route and was just clinging as close as possible to either the river or the map app on my Samsung. Wandsworth, like much of London, is now peppered with modern and expensive looking skyscrapers but it retains its essential character, even as it is scarred by the A3 one way system. I used to drive from Tadley to SE23 a lot and this was always one of the more 'interesting' parts of the journey.

We passed the towering brick chimney of the Ram Brewery (long operated by Young's) and the new development of the Ram Quarter before passing down a careworn road that barely deserved its name, The Causeway!, to a semi-island in the Wandle called The Spit. Here you could see a solitary grebe, a coot (they, famously, don't give a fuck), and the Wandle finally giving way, without fanfare, into the Thames. Like a dignified senior citizen breathing their last breath.

The Wandle, it seems, starts with a whisper and ends with one too - but along the way it has some adventures. In that it's not so unlike many of us. On its western side stand luxury apartments although seemingly not the infrastructure of bars, restaurants, and shops such developments would demand - and on its east the rather more prosaic edifices of the Western Riverside Waste Authority and a couple of car dealerships.

We turned back and followed The Causeway to The Crane pub. What a great little boozer. The music was terrible and there's no excuse, as Colin correctly pointed out, for having a Mumford & Sons poster on the wall but the staff were friendly, the drinks came quickly, and the football was on but not intrusively so (the end of Germany 4 Portugal 2 and the start of Poland 1 Spain 1). 

I booked an Indian for later and we sat chatting the night away on deep leather sofas and it felt as close to being back to whatever normal is as I have felt since before the days when Covid was a glint in the eye of a bat looking across a Wuhan wet market at a sexy pangolin. We pulled ourselves, with some difficulty and much performative noise, out of the sofas, said goodbye to Mo, and headed to Kathmandu Valley where, apart from another couple who were finishing up, we had the place to ourselves.

Well, us and a constant stream of Just Eat delivery drivers. Taking on board the advice that DRAUGHT BEER IS NOT GOOD WITH CURRY, Kathmandu beer (brewed in Stratford, E15!) was taken (although they'd had a busy night last night so we soon had to switch to Cobra) and I ordered paneer tikka and paratha. It was bad ordering. The paneer was nice but it came on a bed of onions and I'm not keen on them. Everyone else seemed happy enough, and even let me steal bits of their food, and though it was not a curry to write home about (even though that is exactly what I am doing now) it was just good to be back doing this kind of thing.

Not just eating curry and drinking beer but going to different places, seeing friends, walking, laughing, and feeling as if you exist as a person and not just an image on a Zoom screen. In two weeks TADS are of to Canvey Island, in three we shall resume our Capital Ring walk, and in August, all being well LbF will be back for a hike around Hampstead Heath.

For now, following a walk in which I set a 2021 record of 32,682 steps, I'd like to thank Pam, Shep, and Colin for the photos (some of which I have used here) and them as well as Patricia, Mo, and Ellie for making it such an enjoyable day. I hope to see them, and you, again soon in the future for a lot more of this kind of thing. I like to think I'm the hardest working walk organiser in the world. Well, at least for my size.