The conurbation begins at West Drayton, but the route, after some drear road walking, heads out of the town to the waters. In Yiewsley I met the Grand Union Canal (which I could have followed all the way home), but the route leads a little further beyond, to the county’s border with Buckinghamshire, on the River Colne. Here for a while I found myself following “Shakespeare’s Way”, a walking route from the Globe Theatre in Southwark to Stratford-upon-Avon. Now that would be an interesting walk for another time.
Leaving the Bard’s track, the Greenway runs through an industrial end (this is not the Middlesex of Edwardian villas and well-tended front gardens) but suddenly out into a green lane, following north up the Colne on the county border, on a route borrowed by the London LOOP path (and I do wonder if the latter copied the Middlesex Greenway as it was proposed at the same meeting in 1990). It is a pleasant walk. The leaves were deep, but after reaching the hardened paths later, I lost most of the mud off my boots before entering the café (sorry) but that autumn morning fragrance is a charm to the senses.
I followed the waterside all the way to Uxbridge before heading to the town centre, and when I get going again in a few minutes I will rejoin the waterside briefly before I turn north-east.
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Follow my track on the Middlesex Greenway
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