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Enfield had been proving itself to be a particularly sticky destination, in many ways a north London counterpart to our seeming inability to escape Croydon many months and miles back. Pam, Neil, Bee, Eamon, and myself had made an aborted attempt in January that saw us give up half way round and settle in a pub for Neil's birthday drinks before having a curry in Chingford's Spice Station and heading back home.
The Uxbridge contingent had been unable to join us on our second attempt but Shep (who miraculously, or perhaps he had some foresight it would be abandoned) was back on the case. Pam and I just missed him in Seven Sisters and with half an hour before our next train to Turkey Street we repaired to a jovial, local Colombian coffee shop for hot chocolate and vanilla latte as South American sounds blasted out the radio and heat blasted out of some kind of industrial device.
It set us up nicely for the Overground to Turkey Street, where we met with Shep, took a walk along the Turkey Brook (seeing old fishy friends, pegged out rubber gloves, and a pub boasting that it served "REGULARS ONLY") into Enfield proper. Breakfast was taken in the Best Cafe and, unlike last month, I gave the mashed potato a swerve.
I love mashed potato but it's not really a breakfast food. Instead I had scrambled egg on toast with plenty of ketchup and a big mug of tea. Pam had some tasty looking mushrooms and Shep got to work on his old favourite, bubble'n'squeak. It was cheap, cheerful, and it set us up for what had the potential of a challenging walk ahead of us. Luckily the snow, for the most part, had not settled and the temperature had risen a few degrees making it a surprisingly pleasant day.
Enfield is not a place to wax lyrical about. Grotty pubs, shops flogging mobility scooters, a ridiculous number of discarded keys, and, sadly, a ridiculous amount of discarded litter. It's a crying shame that people seem to have so little respect for their own environment and that they're happy to live surrounded by rubbish. Polystyrene boxes, lager cans, shopping trolleys, and spent laughing gas canisters are your constant companion as you walk a metalled path alongside Turkey Brook.
It has the potential to be quite a picturesque spot with its gentle waterfalls and expanses of green fields, yet the litterbugs have ruined it. For aesthetes like us at least. The ducks and assorted other waterfowl (of which we saw a lot, even an Aylesbury) didn't seem so bothered. They weren't even impressed by the fact somebody had incorporated an old sink unit into their back fence.
Enfield Lock is where stage XII proper starts. A pretty little lock keeper's cottage looks out to the Lea Navigation as the Lea (or Lee) breaks into various different streams, rejoins itself, breaks up again, and rejoins again. The Lee/Lea is even more confusing than the London LOOP.
It was around this point, in January, we kept getting lost - but this time we were forewarned and after crossing several bridges and stopping to admire some coots, moorhens, Canada geese, and a graffiti cock, we passed the Swan and Pike Pool, and reached the top of vast King George's Reservoir and carried on through some fields into an area they call Sewardstone. Sharp and Saunder's trusty tome informed us that the William Girling Reservoir, the next one down from King George's, was once home to as many as 30,000 gulls.
Remnants of the week's snow were still lying on Sewardstone Green (described as 'an outlying parcel of Epping Forest') and it was tricky to ascertain which direction needed to be taken. It was even trickier to ascertain what purpose the above solitary stile served. It wasn't tricky, however, to either admire the sunlit uplands of the hill, the views over the reservoirs, or the picture postcard perfect weatherboarded farmstead Carrolls Farm. I think I could probably live there.
It was now time for a loop around Gilwell Park, the world centre of the scouting movement. When we passed through in January there were hundreds of kids camping, dodgems, and music blaring. It was pretty much empty this time. We managed to take a wrong turn somewhere along the line which meant plenty of checking the book and lots of GPS phone usage.
It worked though. We got back on track soon enough and after diagonally cutting through a field we chanced upon one large horse and one little pony stood as if in a queue. They made for a bizarre, if cute, sight. The houses tucked down this unpaved road were pretty impressively sized too. A real architectural mish-mash. One looked like it belonged in an Edward Hopper painting, another could have come from the brush of Grant Wood. My (possibly incorrect) speculation was that there are a lot of rich self-made builders who live in Chingford and they've all built their own houses. Some have better taste than others.
Soon we reached another 'outlying parcel' of Epping Forest (Epping Forest is another tricky area to pin down precisely), saw an Italian dog muzzle (or a musket as I called it) hung on a fingerpost, spotted yet more spent laughing gas canisters, and cut diagonally towards The Royal Forest pub (where our January walk had ended).
Doubling up as a Premier Inn, it was as soulless as you'd imagine. They had no real ale on tap so Shep asked if they had any bottles. They didn't. His request for crisps was equally unproductive and he was informed they'd not had a delivery in two months. I had a lager while Shep bemoaned the "ditzy barmaid with a Biro in her hair" who'd try to put lemonade in Pam's gin'n'tonic!
It was not the sort of venue to make a 'two pint mistake' in (even if, only last month, we made a four pint mistake in there) so we chatted amiably and headed off out of the back door into the mud for a quick peek at the 16c Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge (that's it at the top of the blog) perched atop Chingford Plain.
Revision informs me it's a rare example of a 'standing' and was used to view the hunts that were once held in the forest below. The upper floors would have been completely open and rumour has it Elizabeth I used to ride her horse right up to the top. With The Royal Forest pub and the nearby Butler's Retreat, it completed a pleasant architectural set piece but not one we'd be able to spend much time admiring as we now reached the county of Essex.
Essex hospitality is clearly second to none and they'd already put the wine on ice for us. We yomped up a long slow hill and passed the Warren Wood pub (which looked like it would have made a much more satisfactory pit stop than The Royal Forest) before arriving, for the first time in my life, in the pleasant looking Buckhurst Hill.
Scenes of textbook suburbia became our constant companion for the rest of the walk with the rather notable exception of a brief interlude as we passed through Roding Valley Recreation Ground. A pretty pond basked in the late afternoon sun as geese and ducks sunned themselves and little windmills span.
After the pond we crossed the Roding itself on a cute little bridge (remarking that we must walk the Roding some time) which brought us out near a car park and a very busy David Lloyd sports centre. From there we would follow the B170 into Chigwell, crossing the M11, and, what would prove to be the day's penultimate destination,
The King William IV pub was full of the well dressed people of Essex (and one noisy little bugger with a crappy looking remote control car - what's the appeal of that?) and I wondered if they'd even serve us as we were pretty muddy by this point.
There was no problem whatsoever, the staff were very friendly and if the pub felt a bit like a chain hotel bar that wasn't much of a concern once we'd imbibed a couple of beers and put the world to right. The nearest Indian restaurant was a good mile or so away so we decided to go Italian, in the Papillon Chigwell.
Pam and I had penne arrabbiata and shared a bottle of Merlot while Shep went for pizza and a beer. It was so good a strawberry cheesecake appeared as dessert before Shep and I got some (illegal) tube beers in and we all had a jolly good game of Heads Up with a nice Korean girl and her friends on the train. It hadn't been the most spectacular walk we'd ever done but I think it's safe to say we all had a lovely day out and it's definitely safe to say I was somewhat trolleyed by close of play.
We only have two more stages to walk now and in three weeks we'll walk from Chigwell to Harold Wood and then, finally, set the date for the last stage which will take us back to the Thames and, ultimately, Purfleet. My joke that to celebrate I'd treat myself to a night in the Purfleet Travelodge with a local hooker backfired when Shep revealed the nearest Travelodge to Purfleet is actually in Thurrock, roughly nine miles away. One hundred and fifty miles will be more than enough!
