It is a mile and a half across from Pinner to Headstone Lane. Starting at the station and heading up the high street (using a compass in a town gets funny looks, but it is needed to get the right streets out to where a footpath breaks into the open). Then it is a simple, muddy footpath over Pinner Park Farm. A farm seems out of place here folded into the suburbs but it is a green lung needed to break the claustrophobia. At the end the footpath crosses the dual carriageway and the railway and there the suburban townscape begins again.
The route does not go straight to Stanmore, but tracks north-east to break into the open, heading to Harrow Weald Common then west to Stanmore Common, creeping round the edge of Bentley Priory.
I was walking close to the northern border of Middlesex and had been climbing steadily. The highest point of Middlesex is at a road junction on Bushey Heath a few hundred yards north of the route – I didn’t divert to it though.
Some of the route is difficult to follow here as it crosses the commons and turns south again down to Stanmore. I studied the pencil line on I had made my map and thankfully it is drawn by a number of landmarks, but even here I got lost somewhere on Pinner Common, and emerged in the wrong place. I am glad I was not doing this bit at night. Eventually after various wrong turns I reached Stanmore Station at 1:15 pm.
This is my short day today, and Stanmore an easy route home. Back next weekend.
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Follow my track on the Middlesex Greenway
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