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"You say that you love me (say you love me) all of the time (all of the time). You say that you need me (say you need me), you'll always be mine (always be mine). I'm feelin' glad all over. Yes, I'm-a glad all over" - Glad All Over, Dave Clark Five/Crystal Palace FC
What an opportune day to choose for London by Foot's first walk celebrating Croydon being 2023's London Borough of Culture. The weather was beautiful, the flowers were blooming, the trees were in blossom, and people were smiling as they walked past. Not only that but Croydon's only Premiership football team Crystal Palace FC beat London rivals West Ham 4-3 at home to put them above Chelsea in the table and all but ensure they're not relegated this season.
On more than one occasion we could hear the roar from Selhurst. It sounded like they were winning - and it turned out they were. I'd woken super early and taken a short ride on the 363 bus down to Crystal Palace Park. I had a bit of time before the others arrived but Crystal Palace Park is not a bad place to kill time.
I read the Guardian, had a crack at the crosswords, sudoko, and suguru and I took in the alpacas, sheep, sphinxes, and beautiful flowers. Of course I admired the 222 metre tall transmitter but I didn't head down to check out the dinosaurs. More than anything I simply enjoyed the sunniest, and warmest, day of the year so far.
It wasn't long before Pam and then Mo showed up and we headed into Brown & Green Cafe for brunch. I had a vegan sausage bap and a cappuccino to wash it down and we all caught up on each other's news before the non-brunch gang, Roxanne, Clive, and Vicky, arrived to join us. Then we set off uphill to the Cystal Palace triangle for a walk I'd called Ad Summa Nitamur. Named for Croydon's motto. Translation from Latin:- Let us strive after perfection.
Those less generous than myself may claim that Croydon is still, very much, striving. Personally I like the place. I used to work there. I've visited, and still visit, often. There's a lot going on and that's why I've devoted two walks to it. I could easily have done more. Two walks won't be enough to cover it.
On Church Road we passed Crystal Palace's (relatively) new Everyman cinema and The White Hart pub (which was already, a few minutes after noon, getting busy) and soon we crossed into Westow Park. Like many of the local parks it lives a little in the shadow of the behemoth that is Crystal Palace Park but on a sunny April day it looked absolutely glorious. As most of the green spaces we passed through did.
With both the Crystal Palace transmitting station and its little brother, the Croydon transmitting station, standing vigil over us we soon passed through Upper Norwood Recreation Ground and along Beulah Hill. We'd been following, so far, a stretch of the Capital Ring that Shep, Pam, and I had walked back in March 2020 - just before the first of the Covid lockdowns.
We came off Beulah Hill and headed down Biggin Hill (it's hills hills hills round that way) and cut through the surprisingly wild and sparsely populated Biggin Woods. After Norbury Hill (another one!) it was the turn of Norbury Park which we crossed diagonally into the centre of Norbury. Pam was quite pleased to see her dentist though she did wonder what the hygienist thought of seeing one of his customers hanging around the dental clinic on a Saturday afternoon.
Norbury was fairly bustling. Even though my friends Tony and Alex used to live there I'm not familiar with the area (we'd meet instead in Clapham, Brixton, or Balham). We turned off the high street into Craignish Road and, soon, into Norbury Hall Park. A park whose insistence that dogs are kept on leads has resulted in it having an abundant, and bold, squirrel population.
Many of them enjoying the sunny day. The next green space we passed through was Thornton Heath Recreation Ground which had the Norbury Brook, a Wandle tributary, flowing speedily along its side. From there we had a fairly long, and not particularly interesting save for a couple of impressive church spires, stretch.
Carew Road, Brook Road, Boswell Road, Kynaston Road, Sandringham Road, Pitt Road, Pawsons Road (flanking the large Queen's Road Cemetery), Queen's Road, St.Saviour's Road, Cameron Road, and Campbell Road took us to the busy A235/London Road. We crossed it by the Reggae Kitchen (booming out some rather fine music) and headed down Greenside Road, Sutherland Road, and Mitcham Road.
All I could offer the walkers in the way of excitement at this point was that we'd soon walk through a glamorous waste centre and we'd see a semi-circular grassed area. Pam was far more excited to the see the IKEA towers, almost ever present for a good two hours of this walk, on the horizon and spoke excitedly about their range of duvet covers!
After we'd passed through that semi-circular piece of grass and via Factory Lane and its waste centre we came out on the A236 near a flyover. Negotiating this proved tricky. Going over didn't seem the best idea so we went under. Unfortunately a tram line prevented us getting to our preferred destination, the Wandle Arms pub on the other side, so we had to climb some stairs and go over.
Added to the excitement. When we finally reached the pub it was not what I had hoped. A few guys were sat outside and one seemed to have fallen asleep - at 3.30pm in the afternoon. Inside the pub there were only a few tables, the bar was propped up by locals, and the tables that were free all had something on them - a lighter, a hat, a pair of glasses. Things that looked as if people were saving the tables.
A smaller area at the back of the pub looked an option but that seemed to be given over to the pub dog, Maxi. We took a couple of tables but I was still doubting it was a wise decision. Luckily the pub dog, despite its rather large mouth and bitey looking teeth, was friendlier than I first feared - and so were the locals too and soon they joined us in convivial chat. One did wonder why we were choosing to spend our Saturday wandering around Croydon.
Good question! Because it's what we like doing. At the pub Mo, Roxanne, and Clive all decided to call it a day. We'd done a decent walk already and the original destination of Coulsdon was soon scaled back to Purley which would turn out to be a good decision.
Pam, Vicky, and myself took a bridge back over the tram line and soon found ourself in a glorious looking Wandle Park, opened in 1890 and with part of the Wandle flowing through it,
From there it was back across the tram tracks, careful not to get mowed down, and along Vicarage Road and Waddon Road before crossing the Purley Way into Waddon Ponds where, in June 2021, a group of started a pretty lengthy amble along the Wandle to where it meets the Thames in Wandsworth.
Waddon Ponds was, like everywhere else, looking pretty good but it wasn't long before the we were back on the Purley Way heading south to Purley. There's some nice Art Deco architecture (even a branch of TGI Fridays) and then there's a nice smell wafting from a Chinese/Indian restaurant. There's also the huge Wing Yip complex where you can buy Chinese groceries or have a Chinese meal in one of several eateries. For Pam it's a destination as strategically important as IKEA.
There's also the site of London's first ever airport. We'd passed it back in October on a TADS walk (Merstham-Croydon) but it's interesting enough to look at twice. Winston Churchill took flying lessons there (and was nearly killed doing so) back in 1919, Charles Lindbergh (boo) flew into Croydon shortly after making the first transatlantic flight, and Amy Johnson (hooray) returned to jubilant crowds in Croydon after being the first woman to fly from the UK to Australia in 1930.
These days, a de Havilland Heron airplane is displayed for the pleasure of the huge number of motorists passing down Purley Way to visit Pets At Home or Budgen to marvel at. Eventually you move into a far more rural area. Views back across Purley Way Playing Fields take in the skyscrapers of Croydon and, on the other side of the road, we chose to walk through Roundshaw Downs. A beautiful, and vast, green area which rises slowly until we rejoined Purley Way and descended into Purley itself.
To be greeted with some bill posters that suggested, quite correctly, that not everyone is happy about next weekend's expensive coronation of a billionaire king. I'm running a TADS walk next Saturday (New Forest) and one friend has even said he intends to come along specifically to avoid being subjected to the coronation on television.
We continued down into The Jolly Farmers pub. It's one we've used before (on the aforementioned Merstham-Croydon walk), grabbed a couple of beers, and saw some happily refreshed CPFC fans regaling the bar staff with a rousing singalong of Glad All Over. Only slightly ruined by then launching into James Blunt's You're Beautiful.
I quickly rattled off a short list of Croydon notables (Stormzy, Arthur Conan Doyle - he lived in South Norwood, David Lean, Ralph McTell, Kate Moss, Kirsty MacColl, Amy Winehouse - went to the nearby BRIT school, DH Lawrence, Alex Brooker, Lucy Porter, Roy Hodgson, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, and, of course - our old friend, Wilfried Zaha) and Vicky, who'd grown up in and around Purley, regaled with very interesting tales of Purley's past.
Pam had noticed a whiff of Indian food and soon there was a menu on our table. We'd been thinking of going to the nearby Bombaylicious restaurant (hope there's one called Delhilicious, that'd work) but we decided we'd stay where we were. Why travel for Indian food if Indian food can come to you. I had dal makhani, bombay aloo, and garlic bread (all very tasty) and one last beer and then we all headed to the bus stop.
Vicky and I jumped on a bus to East Croydon and I took a train one step to Norwood Junction and then a ten minute Overground journey back to Honor Oak Park. I was home earlier than normal and I was, in fact, home early enough to watch Match of the Day and see Crystal Palace beating West Ham. But that wasn't the only reason I was glad all over. It was also because I'd had a really lovely day out with lots of really lovely people. We'll be doing the second part of the Croydon circumnavigation back in June.
