One thing about SE19, it's up high. It doesn't include the highest point of all London (that's Westerham Heights in the very south of the borough of Bromley) but it is so high that the postcode contains two very prominent transmitting stations. There's the famous Crystal Palace one (below) which, at 219 metres tall, is still the eight tallest structure in London despite being built in 1950.
Then there's the newer, and smaller, Croydon Transmitting Station. Built in 1964, at 152 metres it's London's 37th tallest structure and if you live in the area and enjoying listening to Capital Radio, Kiss, Magic, Smooth, or Heart then it's more than likely that's where you'll be getting your signal from.
These two transmitting stations were my, almost, constant companions yesterday as I took my eighth postcode related perambulation round the mean, and not so mean, streets of SE19. I could have walked to the start but I decided I'd save my legs (I didn't know how exactly how long the walk would be) so took the Overground from Honor Oak Park to Crystal Palace where I repaired, immediately, to the Brown & Green Cafe in the station for a vegan sausage butty with a cup of tea. It was pretty good too and came with more rocket than one man could reasonably eat.
I left the station (opened - a plaque informed me - in 1854 to serve the two million annual visitors to the relocated Crystal Palace that gave the area its name) and turned right down Anerley Hill, past a couple of impressive pieces of street art, before taking a left into Hamlet Road and then the first right into Maberley Road which would lead me all the way to the South Norwood Lake and Grounds.
On this stretch I saw some frankly unlikely Gil Scott-Heron graffiti, a reasonably Brutalist church (St.Paul's of Anerley), and a blue plaque to Ira Aldridge, a Shakespearean actor known as The African Roscius. I'd never heard of him but a brief visit to Wikipedia informs me he was born in New York in 1807 and died in Lodz, Poland (where he's buried) sixty years later. He made his name touring with the African Grove Theatre, a black American troupe that formed before slavery had even ended. In 1824, he emigrated to Liverpool to escape discrimination in the US and soon made a name for himself all over Europe.
You do learn things on these walks (and if you read these blogs). I passed one of London's many Harris Academies and entered South Norwood Lake and Grounds. Via the Trim Trail (which I didn't use). This park is roughly three and a half miles from Forest Hill where I have lived for nearly twenty-seven years yet I have never, once, visited before.
I'm not sure how that has happened but I certainly hope to visit again. You follow a tree lined path down to the surprisingly large lake itself where, if you're lucky, you'll see swans, coots, mallards, moorhens, geese, herons, and even great crested grebes. The grebes and herons were having a day off but the rest of the waterfowl duly appeared.
More than that, the lake is full of fish as several quiet fisherman dotted around its banks testified to. An information board informs visitors that you can catch carp, bream, roach, rudd, perch, tench, gudgeons, and even sticklebacks in South Norwood Lake. More confusingly, there's a memorial to Betty Florence Vincent (who reached the ripe old age of 90) in which her boys tell her, in the afterlife, that the "Bream and Tench" have been "Restocked"!
I'd posted about my perambulation on Facebook in the morning before leaving home and Mo had replied to me to tell me she was planning to visit South Norwood Lake that day anyway so maybe we could meet up. That seemed like a good idea to me and once I'd finally found the cafe, almost accidentally crashing a kid's judo class in the process, I also found Mo.
We didn't avail ourselves of any of the cafe's goods but we stopped for a chat, a catch-up, and spoke of plans for future walks (specifically next week's Thames Path Part IV and a future pair of Croydon walks) before taking a quick loop around the lake and parting our ways. It had been good to see Mo and I look forward to spending more time with her (and others) next week when we convene in Teddington to walk to Walton-on-Thames.
Mo headed south and I headed north and up Auckland Road. After a while I cut left into a forested area called Beaulieu Heights. Not only had I not been to Beaulieu Heights before, I'd never even heard of it. There weren't a lot of people about so I took a series of mostly uphill paths through the woods until I eventually came out in a gladed area at the foot of the Croydon Transmitting Station.
The road I came out on was South Norwood Hill which, just after All Saints Church (above) became Beulah Hill. On my left stood council houses, to my right mock Tudor dwellings. When Beulah Hill meets Spa Hill there is a large Harvester (the Beulah Spa) but I wasn't ready for a drink yet and was confident there'd be better pub options than a Harvester soon enough.
Instead I took a diversion into yet another wooded, and - to me - previously undiscovered, area with the rather unassuming name of The Lawns. You pass Tivoli Lodge to get into the woods themselves and Tivoli Lodge, a plaque proudly states, was built be the architect Decimus Burton in 1830. Burton is more famous for Kew Gardens, the Wellington Arch, parts of London Zoo and Hyde Park Corner and for designing various seaside towns. Among them St Leonards-on-Sea, Folkestone, and Fleetwood. He even designed much of Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Tivoli Lodge, then, would be considered a fairly minor work by his standards but it looked pleasant enough. Even if it was covered in scaffolding. There wasn't much going on in The Lawns. I saw one other person though I did see a couple of squirrels and a few pigeons. Eventually I chanced upon a wooden sculpture of a dog called Frankie and, with nobody around, I felt free to launch into Sister Sledge's early eighties hit Frankie ("do you remember me?").
There was also a memorial to the, presumably dead - like Frankie, Charlie, and, as with Beulah Hill, the path curled round and emptied me out into a green area complete with table tennis facilities and an interesting map of the Great North Wood that used to cover huge swathes of SE London and gave Norwood its name.
I had to ascend Spa Hill back to Beulah Hill, it's a hilly walk this - unsurprisingly, before following that road, the A215, west past the Linh Son (Buddhist) temple and a house that looks like a squat and was adorned with lyrics from The Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows and weak jokes about Donald Trump.
Not long after that my route joined a section of the Capital Ring that Shep, Pam, Kathy, and I had walked in March 2020 just before lockdown. I'd remembered that it had afforded us commanding views of Croydon, especially the IKEA towers, and I had remembered that correctly. I had not remembered that the views north to the skyscrapers of central London were even better and I had not remembered seeing a plaque to the Norwood Society however. They represent local people's concerns and also host walks around, and talks about, Norwood. They sound a good bunch.
While looking at the map before starting this walk, I had become curious about a small pond, the Beulah Hill Pond, that is wedged into a tight corner of the A215. I'd found a blog written about visiting it and was prepared to be underwhelmed. I certainly was. A couple of solitary ducks floated in the pond. They were easily outnumbered by the amount of litter that had been thrown in there. Including an empty vodka bottle and an old Quavers packet.
There were four benches facing this forlorn pond but, just to make the scene even less impressive, there was an iron fence, with peeling green paint, hindering the view. A view that, to be honest, wasn't great anyway. Unsurprisingly nobody was taking advantage of the benches.
I repaired, instead, to the nearby Conquering Hero. Another one I'd seen on a map while planning my route and one I had high hopes for. Initially, I was disappointed but with a pint of Madri, and the Saturday Guardian, to keep me company I warmed to the place. There were lots of big screens on showing sport, a dartboard, a pool table. a reasonable smattering of friendly customers and, unsurprisingly considering its location, it was a Crystal Palace FC pub. As Palace were playing their rivals Brighton later that afternoon (a game that ended in a 1-1 drawer) I imagine the pub might have got quite busy later.
But I only stayed for one. That was always the plan. Squeezers don't really work on solo missions! I continued on the A215/Beulah Hill until it reached a crossroads with the A214/Crown Dale. Turning right into Crown Dale I passed a branch of Morley's (there's a few branches north of the river but they're mostly South London based. I don't eat chicken so I can't tell you if their motto, "MMM...It Tastes Better", is false advertising or not) and, with the Crystal Palace Tower, looming in front of me, I continued along until I reached Norwood Park.
It's been over ten years since I visited Norwood Park and though it's not spectacular as parks go it's pleasant enough. The views are good and there's a fairly confusing monolithic sculpture called Juggernaught of Nought by Richard Trupp. As with so many local parks there is a One O'Clock Club. I've still no idea what a One O'Clock Club is despite the name constantly cropping up.
I left Norwood Park, under a railway bridge and on to Gipsy Road. I was in Gipsy Hill but it seems the good people of Gipsy Hill are not in full agreement about spelling. The GIPSY PLAICE FISH BAR went for an I but the GYPSY ROSE CAFE clearly prefer the Y. So it's up to you if you prefer to dine at the Y or if you'd rather something fishier.
Of more immediate concern to me was the sight of The Paxton pub. I can vaguely recall visiting there many years ago in what seems almost like a different lifetime now. I seem to recall I wasn't happy at the time but that the pub was nice. I'd earmarked The Paxton for my second, and probably final, pub stop but a problem soon emerged. It was boarded up.
Oh well, I wasn't that thirsty and I'd already done the Guardian crossword so I ploughed on. There'd be no more pub stops on this walk or all day (though perhaps if I'd seen Simon's message, a fairly standard "You out and about?", on my phone a bit earlier that might have changed). Instead I rounded The Long Meadow and began the steep, and circuitous, ascent of the A2199/College Road.
This emptied me out on to Crystal Palace Parade itself, near a Shell garage and in the shadow of the Crystal Palace Tower. The tower blocks and trees covered in ivy could, if it had been hotter, almost been from some huge Latin American city, but the campsite on the edge of Crystal Palace Park remained very British. It always surprises me that some people go camping in London.
After passing a blue plaque for Joseph Paxton (gardener, architect, Liberal MP, and banana pioneer) and Henry Buckland (the manager of the Crystal Palace) I turned into Crystal Palace Park itself. I'd covered much of this in my SE26 perambulation but as SE19 cuts through the middle of the park duty demanded I revisited.
Visiting Crystal Palace Park is never a chore. Egyptian geese frolicked by the rusty laptop (tradition dictates I tell you I saw Pixies play there over thirty years ago), the maze stood quietly, a small child was having her photo taken with the statue of the gorilla ("is it King Kong?" - adorable), and the dinosaurs, as they always do, sat proudly on the banks of the lake.
A lovely way to end a lovely walk. As seems appropriate for a walk that ends up in Crystal Palace I was feeling 'glad all over'. I hopped back on the Overground, took it to Honor Oak, popped into Sainsbury's and walked home for a night of pizza and television. Over the course of the day I'd walked 21,587 steps which is a long way from an all time record but is, at least, a 2023 record. I'm aiming to beat that next week on the Thames Path. That's something I'm looking forward to. But I'm also looking forward to my next postcode related perambulation because on every one so far I have found something that I didn't know was there. Our immediate surroundings become interesting when we invent new strategies for looking at them. This transmission didn't, strictly speaking, come from a satellite town but it did come from the heart. Those towers are towers of power.
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