TADS #65:New Malden to Clapham Junction (or Ducit Amor Oppidi).

"May you never lay you head down without a hand to hold, may you never make your bed out in the cold" - May You Never, John Martyn

 

I'm quite an emotional guy. I get emotional about friendships, I get emotional about music, and I get emotional about walks. When all three are combined it's an emotion overload and one song that conveys that vibe better than most is John Martyn's beautiful May You Never from his incredible 1973 album Solid Air.

John Martyn was born (with the  name Iain McGeachy) in New Malden in 1948 and a fantastic mural outside of New Malden railway station not only reminds visitors and New Maldenites alike of this fact but even has the lyrics of May You Never typed up on it. What a great start to a day, a day that brings to an end a bumpy year of TADS walks.

There had been a lot of good stuff (Theale to Thatcham was a fun - and well attended day, our jaunt to Hengistbury Head felt like a summer holiday, the trip to Scarborough WAS a summer holiday, and our recent trip out to Waltham Abbey and Broxbourne was highly companionable) but there'd been a few problems too. 

The TADS walk to Dorking was interesting but it was a solo jaunt so less fun than normal, the Battle to Hastings walk was curtailed so early I didn't even write a blog about it (shock horror) although the night did end up in drunken fun with The Small Fakers at The Piper, and other walks were cancelled/postponed. Amongst the gang there were physical and mental health problems, extreme weather played a factor, train strikes too, and I also had to remove someone from the group (for the first, and hopefully, last time ever) for rude and abusive behaviour. I'll walk on grass, I'll walk on mud, and I'll walk on tarmac but I can't walk on water and I won't walk on eggshells. We're not big on rules in TADS but one thing we do insist on is people showing respect for and to each other.

 

I woke up fairly early in the morning, picked up a Guardian in Honor Oak Park Sainsbury's, and hopped on a train to Clapham Junction and then another (very quick) one to New Malden. Moving into South West London I was confronted, as is so often the case, with rugby fans on their way to Twickenham where later that day, and played out - it seems - in every pub in the area, England would lose 24-22 to New Zealand. Later Scotland would beat Fiji and the mullets on display were so impressive it was hard to tell if the players were hipsters or throwbacks. Perhaps, those two groups aren't mutually exclusive.

At New Malden station I took a while to take in the aforesaid mural and a friendly local lady came to chat with me for about five or ten minutes. She was a very proud New Maldenite and seemed quite pleased that someone had come to visit her town, a place - she said - that most people had never heard of. I, of course, told her it was where Pam grew up and, in fact, as I came out of the station I found myself outside Pam's childhood home on Howard Road!

As well as John Martyn there were memorials for Jacqueline Wilson (still alive, you can have a memorial while you're still alive) and Anthony Caro who is no longer with us as well as some New Malden history which I'd already prepared to dish out as spiel once the others turned up. Pam had also prepared some 'side-spiel' and had strictly ordered us to pare down the Tadley talk as we were on her 'manor' and she would be the one telling the stories.

That didn't go exactly as intended! I killed time by taking in the various Korean shops and restaurants on New Malden's High Street but managed, admirably, to keep myself out of the surprisingly pleasant looking Wetherspoons pub (The Watchman, Alan Moore knows the score) and pondering why bees are so much a part of New Malden folklore (the town's denizens, it is said, are busy bees) and wishing that my three favourite Bees (Michelle, Evie, and, er, Bee) were joining us.

 

After a brief recce, I bumped into Shep outside The Burlington Cafe and it wasn't long before Pam, Sharon, Jason, and Rodney joined us (Colin completing the gang but not joining us for food) and I tucked into a decent veggie breakfast (top marks for the crisp and crunchy hash browns) and washed it down with a cuppa (Shep had a bubble'n'squeak which took me back to the days of the London LOOP) as we all caught up on each other's news. It wasn't going to be the most glamorous, or photogenic, of walks but the last walk of the season isn't really about that.

It's about getting together, having fun, making a two (or, in some cases, three) pint mistake, and generally trying to enjoy life. None of us are getting younger and friends have passed away this year. The older I get the more I think the most important thing in life is cherishing time with friends and family, enjoying shared moments, and trying to be kind to those around me. With these TADS walks we do our best to make sure all these things happen. More often that not, we succeed.

I got my spiel in first and I started with the walk's title. Ducit Amor Oppidi is the Latin motto of the Municipal Borough of Malden and Coombe and means 'the love of our town leads us' although the town of New Malden is relatively new. There's a clue in the name.

Two miles south of Old Malden, New Malden came into existence when the railway arrived in 1846 and notable incidents in its history involve fifty people being killed by a Nazi bomb on the 16th August 1940 and the town once being home to Spillers Pet Foods. It is now perhaps most famous for its large South Korean population (about 15,000 Koreans live in the town) and a smaller North Korean population of about 600 - which still it makes it the largest North Korean population in all of Europe.

It's widely believed the Korean influx stems from when Samsung made New Malden their UK HQ (though they have since moved to Chertsey, twenty miles away. To cater for the Koreans, the town has a noraebang (a karaoke bar) and eateries serving bulgogi (a beef dish) and bibimbap (a rice based food) and just to spice things up New Malden is not twinned with any Korean towns or cities but with Jaffna, Sri Lanka's twelfth biggest city.

Notable New Malden folks, present company excepted, include Stormzy, Max Wall, Diana Rigg, Jamal Musiala, Tom Holland, Jamie Woon, David Kynaston, and that man John Martyn. Pam told me stories about how the old Art Deco Decca pressing plant (now a very prominent B&Q) was where Be My Baby by the Ronettes was pressed, how one of her neighbour's houses was used for the outside shots in the very of its time Sid James sitcom Bless This House.

There was also some stuff about Brass Eye, the Kray twins, The Cambridge Arms pub, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts as well as a delightful story about Steadman Pearson from Five Star being arrested for 'public indeceny' in a local pub toilet as well as the time Pam was flashed on a nearby railway bridge. Flashers, apparently, don't shout "wa-hey" when they do their flashing. 

From the cafe, we passed through Blagdon Road Recreation Ground, up a little snicket/ginnel/alley/back passage (depending on where you grew up) and into Beverley Park (one of the sites where Pam and her family scattered her mum's ashes) and the side of the Beverley Brook. If you want to read about that you can click on this hyperlink as Pam and myself did a Beverley Brook walk earlier this year.

With autumn leaves satisfyingly underfoot, we crossed over the railway line (yes, on the flasher's bridge) and took the pleasant Beeline Way into Raynes Park, Sharon and Jason's old manner, before embarking on a stretch of unremarkable, if not unenjoyable, road walking. In fact I took a wrong turn here which proved to be a short cut. Sometimes mistakes work out.

At the top of Copse Hill, near some very impressive houses - one had a garage that looked as if it had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, we entered into Wimbledon Common. Or, to give it its full name, Wimbledon and Putney Commons. Alas we would see no wombles or stag beetles (the latter being real and said to be very common here) but we did see lots of golfers as we walked a long an enclosed pathway that didn't quite live up to its curious name of The Toast Rack.

The common, or commons, cover 1,140 acres and are the largest expanse of heathland in all of London but we're actually fortunate to be able to enjoy it (or at least the bits that haven't yet been colonised by golfers - motor racing must be the only sport more environmentally unfriendly than golf) because back in 1864 one Earl Spenser (not that one, he spells it with a 'c' - a very appropriate letter for a member of the aristocracy) attempted to pass a bill to enclose the common and build a house and private garden there.

He was a close friend of William Gladstone and the owner of Wimbledon Manor so he had a bit of clout but, in a landmark decision, his bill was rejected and a board of conservators were established to preserve the common in its natural condition and keep it open to the public. We didn't see the best of the common, the windmill, Robin Hood Ride, the Farm Ravine, or the Silent Pools, but we got a brief taste for it before The Toast Rack emptied us out near Caesar's Camp.

Caesar's Camp is where once stood the remains of an Iron Age hill fort which is believed to have been stormed by the Romans under Claudius and, later, Vespasian. There's not much to see now as the remains, the barrows, were deliberately destroyed by the Tory MP John Erle-Drax (a man whose family got very rich on the back of the slave trade) in 1875. They don't conserve much, these Conservatives, do they?

As the common slowly turns in to Wimbledon Village we saw Camp David (an old nickname of mine) and Keir Cottage which was timely as the news came through that the zealous and heartless culture warrior, and Wimbledon born, Kemi Badenoch had been announced as the new Tory leader. Making it very likely that Starmer will be safe in his position for a few more years yet.

The plan had been to pop in to The Fox & Grapes for drink (I'd been before with my nephew Dan and found it most agreeable) but it was closed for a private function (lots of smartly dressed people soon turned up) so we continued across the final part of the common, The Causeway - with views across to Rushmere Pond, and in to Wimbledon Village proper where The Rose & Crown beer garden was so inviting, and unseasonably warm, that some of us made a thoroughly planned 'two pint non-mistake' and some (Colin and Shep) even managed to squeeze a third in as Rodney and Jason batted terrible dad jokes back and forth across the table and we all agreed on just how shit Mrs Brown's Boys is.

Wimbledon Village (as opposed to the more generic Wimbledon Town) is the original Wimbledon (or, according to a charter signed by King Edgar the Peaceful in 967 - Wimbedounyng) and its notables, the new Tory leader aside, include Oliver Reed, Boris Becker, Ted Heath (the bandleader, not the former PM - some people thought they were the same person, in fact I once did), poet Robert Graves, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Bazalgette, Raymond Briggs, Mark Hollis - second mention in a fortnight, Annette Crosbie, Jack Davenport, Sandy Denny (yes!), Nelson, Marcus Mumford (no!), Leslie Hore-Belisha (inventor of not just the Belisha beacon but the modern driving test), William Wilberforce, June Whitfield (of course), Ridley Scott, Brian Sewell, Jamie T, Jenny Lind - the Swedish nightingale, and, best of all, Halie Selassie I of Ethiopia.

Wimbledon Village is nice. There's a branch of The Ivy (they seem to be cropping up all over), some other inviting looking pubs, as well as independent bookshops and a big fancy blue house. From The High Street, we took Church Road up the hill to what Wimbledon is most famous - the mostly quite boring sport of tennis.

In 1877, the All England Croquet Club decided to broaden its horizons and host a tennis competition and the rest, as they say, is history. Current champions are Carlos Alcaraz (Spain) and Barbora Krejcikova (Czechia) and all time records are held by Roger Federer who's won the title eight times and Martina Navratilova who has gone one better with nine. We had a look in, wondered how much a pint or a glass of Pimms would set you back there, and moved on to Wimbledon Park. Once we could find a gate to get in the bloody place.

 

 

Some bladders were close to bursting so we made fairly short work of a park that, in the 18th century, our old mate Capability Brown landscaped and whose lake was formed by building a dam in a brook that leads to the Wandle river. Old Capital Ring signs reminded us of previous walks and carved Jack-o'-lanters reminded us of how Hallowe'en has become a much bigger deal for the younger generation than it was back in our day. I know people who consider it a bigger deal than Christmas.

As most of us had been unable to have a slash in the park (I'd tried to go behind a tree but there was inadequate cover and I didn't want to be accused of trying the old wa-hey routine) we made a brief non-drinking stop at The Pig & Whistle pub where all of the customers were so engrossed in rugby they didn't notice us popping to the loo, seeing a man about a dog, spending a penny, and turning our bikes round.

From there we took Acuba Road to a green space along the side of the Wandle called Foster's Way (where's Big Neil Bacchus when you need him?) until it becomes called the Wandle trail. We'd walked this way before some years ago when we walked the length, more or less, of the Wandle so I didn't do any Wandle spiel this time!

We were ready for another pint so once we'd taken a walk up the bustling, and pub heavy, Garratt Road and popped through the strangely spacious Garratt Lane Old Burial Ground we found ourselves outside, and then inside, another Young's house - The Brewers Inn. The rugby, of course, was on (Sharon, it turns out, loves a haka) but we still got a table and had a good old chinwag before taking the final mile or so to our final destination. Rodney dropping out after the pub and me booking a table for six at the Panahar Tandoori Restaurant in Battersea.

 

We sang the theme tune to Kickstart, talked about watches and hummus, and ordered five Cobras before Shep and myself shared some tarka daal, some paneer masala, and some garlic bread. The chat and the company was good - not to say the 1980s Festive Fifty quizzes which Shep aced - that we ended up spending over three hours in the friendly restaurant (they even bought us complimentary Baileys and After Eights at the end) and apart from me nearly going for a piss in the kitchen everything went very smoothly - as you'd expect with the assembled cast. I had one last bit of spiel about Clapham Junction. The station opened in March 1863 and is in Battersea and not Clapham, a train crash on 12th December - the day I passed my driving test AND saw The Jesus And Mary Chain at Brixton Academy (Pam was there too but I didn't know her then, I was with Shep and Darren) - killed 35 people and an IRA bomb in 1991 didn't kill anyone, it is now Britain's busiest train station for interchanges and sees an average of over two thousand trains per day!

It had been a super fun day and after a sometimes turbulent TADS year we had a safe and enjoyable landing. I took a train to Clapham Junction, another to Peckham Rye, and a 63 bus home where, of course, I didn't go straight to bed even though it was just past the witching hour when I got home.

Thanks to Shep, Pam, Colin, Rodney, Sharon and Jason for joining me yesterday (and to Pam and Colin) for some of the photos I've included in this blog and thanks to them and, deep breath, Adam, Teresa, Neil B, Bee, Neil W, Tina, Laura, Chris D, Chris B, Mesude, Ian, Arlow, Cath, Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie, James, Natalie, Mo, Val, Eric, Tracey, Dave Fog,  as well as Freddy and my parents for making this TADS season such a memorable one. Mostly in a good way. We're back in February for TADS' 10th (TENTH) season and we'll begin by taking a stroll from Ash Vale to Farnham but the 2024 walking isn't quite over yet. Next Saturday we're back on the Thames Path and then there's the traditional end of year LBF walk coming up on December 29th. Be good to see you all.