Back in the early 2000s, working in the West End, we'd often spend Friday nights in the pub. Marathon sessions as long as the working day had been and usually with nothing to eat (no-eaters, they became known as). Perhaps predictably, the night would often end up with me falling asleep on the 176 bus and waking up in Penge. Near the (by then closed for the night) Pawleyne Arms.
It's not happened for about a decade now and I'm quite pleased about that. Normally, I'd get off the bus, cross the road, and the get back on the same bus again and go home. But, in recent years, as walking has become more and more of an obsession I've realised Penge isn't really that far at all. Even if it would have felt so at 3am in the morning.
For yesterday's postcode related perambulation, the 11th in the series since I began in August 2020, I was tackling the relatively small postal district of SE20. In the middle of which sits Penge. Aware of the fact that I'd not clock up that many steps I decided to walk to the start (rather than get the bus or train) to add a few more.
I'm glad I did. I bought a Saturday Guardian and a Fry's orange cream chocolate bar at the Woodvale Supermarket and then headed down Wood Vale taking in lots of beautiful flowers and busy buzzing bees. More bees than I'd seen for years. Then it was up the steep Sydenham Hill and along the ridge (still called Sydenham Hill) to Crystal Palace Parade. It was a hot day but I had to shelter from a storm for a few minutes (not for the last time for that day). No problems. Those Guardian crosswords don't solve themselves.
When I reached Crystal Palace Park (an old favourite on these, and many other, walks) I was unable to pass through it on the route I'd usually take. They're having a summer series of pop concerts (I'm going to see Primal Scream and The Jesus And Mary Chain there next month) so much of the park has been fenced off.
There were a huge number of (mostly young) people going to see The Lumineers. A band I'd assumed to be some kind of landfill indie but Wikipedia lists as being folk-rock/Americana from Denver. I was either mixing them up with The Courteeners (another band I know nothing about) or I just assume almost every band to be landfill indie because so many are.
Perhaps because of the gig, the Brown & Green Cafe was busier than normal but I managed to find a table and had a vegan sausage butty and an English breakfast tea while reading the paper and watching the world, mainly in the form of thirsty Lumineers fans, go by through the window.
Fed and watered, I headed down to the lake. The ice cream van wasn't doing too much, or any, business in the drizzle but the dinosaurs looked as impressive as ever. I like dinosaurs. As you can see below, I'm not the only one.
I paid my respects to Guy the Gorilla, approved of the bar that had BLACK LIVES MATTER written in large capital letters on it, and made use of the facilities before leaving the park, under a railway bridge, on to Penge's High Street.
It's not the most high end of high streets. The pubs of Penge (Pawleyne Arms included) seem to be the sort of pubs where older men gather to watch horse racing on big screens. It was too early for a pint anyway. Even if it would have meant getting out of the rain which was, by that point, starting to pick up again.
After Vampire Tints and an advert for a verdant shark day (!), I had a quick look round Penge Recreation Ground. All but abandoned, and looking very forlorn, in the rain. Who wants to slide down a wet slide or swing on a wet swing?
Back on the High Street, there are a couple of notable buildings in the St John the Evangelist church and the, mostly obscured by trees, Waterman's Square Almshouses. But elsewhere it's much as you'd expect. There's a KFC, a Wetherspoons, a Cake Box (for fans of egg free cakes), a German Doner Kebab place, and a Yardman Butchers which even I, a vegetarian, can appreciate is a good name.
There's a Costa, an Iceland, a Pizza Hut, a Sainsbury's, an Indian restaurant, and there's a Tesco Express where I took brief shelter from another storm. I was only wearing a t-shirt (inappropriately dressed as usual) and the Tesco Express was freezing so I found another bus shelter and when the rain calmed down I turned away from Penge's High Street on to Royston Road. Then Westbury Road, Percy Road, Chesham Road, Chesham Crescent, and Garden Road which took me to Winsford Gardens Open Space.
Just over three miles from my home but a place I'd never visited before. In truth, there's not much to it. A few park benches (all wet of course), a children's playground, some outdoor gym equipment, and a row of bug hotels. It would have been nice to sit in on a sunny day. On a now overcast day, the rain having just stopped, passing through it was sufficient.
There was, from there, a fairly unremarkable stretch along Croydon Road (A213) and Elmers End Road (A214). The highlight being a shop called Quirky Bits in Elmers End. Just before Birkbeck station, there's a bar called Grace's. It didn't look particularly inviting so I didn't pop in. Instead, I took a left and followed Witham Road, then Warwick Road and Wheathill Road parallel to the railway lines.
I crossed the Croydon Road again and followed Haysleigh Gardens, Selby Road, and Seymour Villas to Betts Park. Another new one on me and a considerably bigger green space than Winsford Gardens. There's a section, the only remaining section, of the Croydon Canal in Betts Park but it's rather sorry looking. The sort of place a jogger finds a dead body.
The Croydon Canal was opened in October 1809 and ran from Croydon (no shit!) to the Grand Surrey Canal in Deptford, nine and a half miles. It enabled lime, timber, clay, chalk, and agricultural produce to be sent to London and for coal to be sent to the then ancient market town of Croydon.
The canal once meandered through the long lost, and apparently beautiful, Penge Common and Forest but it never made a profit and once the railways came the game was up. Much of the canal was silted up and eventually suburban homes were built where the forest once stood and the canal once flowed. Penge was no longer a quaint village but now just part of an ever expanding capital city.
My walk was nearly up, told you it was short, and I'd not even stopped for a pint. With the Crystal Palace Tower, not for the first (or last) time of the day looming into view, I left Betts Park on to Anerley Road and, near Anerley station, popped into the Anerley Arms, a pub I'd not visited before.
It didn't start off too promising. When I arrived there was nobody else in there except for the landlord and a mate of his playing darts. It was a Sam Smith's pub (the furthest one south apparently) and they're nowhere near as cheap as they used to be. I grabbed a pint of organic lager for £5 and enquired about salt'n'vinegar crisps (Sam Smith pubs do great salt'n'vinegar crisps).
They only had cheese'n'onion or beef so I skipped the crisps and found a table where I could charge my phone up and read The Guardian (nice long interview with Cillian Murphy whose new film, with Christopher Nolan directing, Oppenheimer sounds promising). Soon others came in and I overheard the landlord chatting away to a couple of visitors from Reading (the town of my birth).
He was telling them about how Sam Smith pubs are run. They sell all their own beers, all their own crisps, they don't play music (the owner doesn't like paying PRS), they don't show sporting events on big - or small - screens, and they strongly discourage the use of mobile phones and laptops. They don't want people coming in to their pubs to watch television or work. They want to promote, as the landlord had it, "the art of conversation".
That's all fine but I was on my own and, truth be told, their lager is not actually that nice. I drank it very slowly and walked further up Anerley Road to the Douglas Fir (more a taproom than a pub but a pleasant and lively enough place) where I had a far more agreeable pint of Hunter's Helles lager.
And that was pretty much my walk done. I headed back to Crystal Palace station, the Lumineers - presumably, by now, almost ready to take the stage, and I jumped on an Overground train back to Honor Oak Park and went home and watched television. Leicester's Katie Boulter was knocked out of Wimbledon in the third round by defending champion (and third seed) Elena Rybakina (representing Kazakhstan) and on the news there was a story about a 'well known' BBC presenter paying a teenage boy £35,000 for explicit images (which the boy used to pay for his crack cocaine addiction) but I couldn't find out who this 'well known' presenter was. I've got a feeling it'll come out soon enough.
My perambulation around the perimeter of SE20 hadn't been the most exciting or most eventful, it had only served up one good pub and some pleasant, if damp, parks. I probably didn't get as wet as those watching The Lumineers in Crystal Palace Park (or those watching Blur at Wembley Stadium or Bruce Springsteen in Hyde Park, the Iron Maiden fans won the lottery on Saturday as they were playing under the roof of the O2 - though they lost it as they had to watch an Iron Maiden gig) but I did get quite wet.
Despite that though, I had an enjoyable day and now I need to think about which postcode I'll tackle next. I'm determined to cover all of the SE ones eventually. On foot, not pissed up on a nightbus.
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