Month: October 2025

Criffel

Standing high and stark above the flat lands in the south-east corner of Kirkcudbrightshire, Criffel seems out of place. It is as if the people hereabouts had called over the Solway to the folk of the Lake District and asked “Fine fells ye have there that we can see – d’ye mind if we have one, if ’tis going spare?”

Burns mentions Criffel in a song he wrote for the Dumfries Volunteers, so it has fame indeed (“The Nith shall run to Corsincon, And Criffel sink in Solway, Ere we permit a foreign foe. On British ground to rally!“).

The hill is a popular climb, the path leading up from New Abbey. There main path is signposted from the village, although there is another known route, that leads also over neighbouring Knockendoch, its subsidiary top.

We began, on a dry and bright day from Sweeheart Abbey in New Abbey. A short way down the main road is a signpost pointing south-south-west, between fields and then into woods. This leads to a pleasant village walk in itself – some of the year. Following finger-posts and up steps we came to the path behind houses – and came to a stop. We had found the right route (we later learnt), but the way shown appeared completely clogged up with brambles. A local dog-walker directed us to an easier way round, back onto the main road, past the kirk and up a residential road to the farm where we would have emerged. Apparently they have volunteers to clear the path every so often but, as wil th most volunteers schemes, they are getting on in years and not so able to battle the vegetation.

The path southwards is well signposted, along and round and to the shore of the local loch, Loch Kindar (which looks as if it has some history behind it). A large and determined herd of bullocks eyed us and started trotting not at us but for a gate in the field despite our being in the way. (On the way back they came at us to get into the loch. Each time it seems they reacted to our standing between them and the more adventurous of the herd who had gone to the next field or into the water.) After the loch, the path begins the climb and enters woodland.

There is a clear, well-marked path through the woods, plodding on until the wee Craigrockall Burn, running down the fell. There we turned uphill, up a proper fellside, woodland path, steeply climbing beside the burn. The woods are pretty here.

At the top, the path goes through a gate and emerges on the bare top part of Criffel. Still a long way to got. In contrast with the lush woodland, this part of the climb is windswept heather. We could not see the top from here: a cloud had descended on the summit and stayed stuck there.

The path is still clearly defined, and up we went. There is little to say until we entered the cloud. Inside the cloud, distances are hard to just: just walk on following the path as it appears beneath you. Eventually the huge summit cairn appeared. We stopped for lunch.

There is a beautiful view from the summit of Criffel, over the Solway to Skiddaw and Blencathra and out to sea – or so the books say, for a clear day.

It is a popular climb, and we met other walkers on the way up and down. (We had to reassure two teenage girls, afeared that the path would never end, that they were in fact within a few yards of the summit – they would see the cairn when they came to it.)

The plan had been to follow the alternative path down: from the cairn to the trig point beside it, and on to another cairn, then turn north on top of the ridge to Knockendoch, and then essentially due north on the ridge until it descends to the level again. We were told by another walker that it is a very pleasant walk. However the cloud was very heavy: the trig point might be next to the summit cairn, but we could barely see it. The path it not so well defined, and we could not see far enough ahead to judge which was the path and which way was just deeper into the marsh.

In the event, we retraced our steps the clear path and descended the way we came, which is a good walk in itself. It just means that another expedition is need in a future year.

See also

The route: map

Middlesex Border Walk – Tower Bridge to Richmond Bridge

The one with the bridges

The day was all along the Thames, but that provides surprising variety.

Beginning where I finished the last leg (which was before a few slight interruptions, to climb in Yorkshire and to go exploring Galloway), I arrived at Tower Bridge and headed west. This leg was essentially along the Thames Path. (The plotted route on this page is the Thames Path on the north bank, without all the diversions I needed to do in fact: when I walked it, there were roadworks everywhere, with paths closed and diversions into backstreets. I will omit those from the narrative.)

Past the Tower of London, its ancient towers clad in sunshine and tourists, I entered the City of London. Its streets may glitter with finance, but the riverside is a jumble, as the old docks were here and wharves still operate: here are riverside restaurants, wharves, Old Billingsgate, and London Bridge and Canon Street Bridge and Southwark Bridge, Queenhithe Dock, the view across the The Globe, then the Wobbly Bridge, piers of a variety of styles, and on until the Blackfriars Bridges. It is a good, broad riverside walkway that the Corporation have built all along their domain on the river.

Emerging onto the Embankment by the Inner Temple and then Westminster, the path is broad beside a busy road, where Victorian London showed itself off. Egyptian motifs on the cast iron benches presage the rearing up of Cleopatra’s needle, while ahead is the Palace of Westminster. It is a pity that the ugly block of the National Theatre stares from across the river.

Westminster Bridge, then around the Palace of Westminster, and off to Victoria Tower Gardens. Across the gardens and it is back to the river, opposite Lambeth Palace and to Lambeth Bridge. Crashing on down the river nothing is quite ordinary here – much is old but more is being rebuilt. Over Chelsea Creek (on a very odd-looking bridge) in a modern apartment tower development, and all after that is full of new towers for luxury living-in-a-small-box living. The traditional, leafy Chelsea reasserts itself – the Royal Hospital, best known for the Chelsea Flower Show, is along here.

(I have stopped noting bridges – they become too frequent – Chelsea Bridge, then Battersea Bridge then Albert Bridge are famous or infamous enough.)

I kept along the river as I could, or diverted inland to a street. Eventually the Hurlingham Club blocked the riverside and sends the path on a long diversion round it, through a public park and to the edge of Fulham. I stopped for lunch in Fulham Palace Gardens by Putney Bridge. All this unbroken townscape is unsettling for the country mind. Towns should stop and give way to fields, but here even where there are parks these are a concession in a great bulk of building, where towns merge and are indistinguishable.

A gentler part of the urban river followed. The path runs over the balcony of Craven Cottage Stadium (Fulham FC apparently: I prefer a good walk), and then north to Hammersmith. That is a fine place, by the bridge, with boats and swells, out in the summer heat, with fine houses. It is at the top end of loop of the Thames, and beyond is Old Chiswick. Chiswick Mall is genteel. The grand houses here have tall steps and flood barriers. (Flooding is frequent at the spring tide: In AP Herbert’s Misleading Cases in the Common Law, a rowing boat collides with a car and the rower successfully claims that Chiswick Mall when flooded is part of the High Seas and so under admiralty rules vessels must pass port to port.)

In the river’s southern loop are Duke’s Meadows, with long steps for observing the Boat Race. Then at Chiswick Bridge the path is sent inland along Chiswick’s suburban roads, until the famed Strand-on-the-Green, and from there to Kew Bridge.

Brentford is not my favourite place. Around and over the docks at the mouth of the Brent and the Grand Union Canal the route is thoroughly puzzling. Eventually though it emerges from the tangle, pops along th main road, and enters Syon Park. Cattle grazing to my right and kites flying and bicycles flying by – until Isleworth. When I reached the riverside, it was low tide and the channel between there and Isleworth Ait was practically dry: no longe the mighty Thames but a trickle, where great boats lay wallowing in mud.

It is not far from Isleworth to Richmond, all along the river, by a lock, a footbridge, under a road and a railway bridge, and finsihing the day at Richmond Bridge. Not a bad day at all.

See also

The route: map

Middlesex Border Walk: Tottenham Hale to the Tower

June: it must have been the hottest day of a scalding summer, but off I set on the next leg.

I will not call this my favourite leg, but there is always something to see. The previous leg from Potters Bar had concluded with a long walk down the towpath of the concrete-bound canalised River Lea, becoming bleaker towards the end, and I started the walk in much the same frame. Tottenham Hale itself is actually quite a polite urban village these days. The industrialised river is merely functional. That was just the start though.

The river mellows. There are boats and parks and little riverside café, and houses and industry. The path led me with no need for navigation, except to count the bridges to tell where I was to take my first diversion; which was after the Lea Bridge, an unmissable viaduct.

Here the stream splits in two, with the canal section taking a shortcut but the county border following the old, natural course of the Lea. Between them are the Hackney Marshes, where I headed. I crossed a foot-bridge.

It is not actually a marsh – it is a great, green gulf, of acres of park and playing fields edged with woodland. The Lea is a gentle, country river here – quite the contrast from the start of the morning.

In the distance, far across the grass, weird towers rose up. This was Stratford – the new Stratford which was built in the wake of the Olympic Games. (The old Stratford is still there, but that was beyond my expedition.)

By the time I reached the tangle of new, concrete bridges at Stratford, I was so dry I could have finished my water bottle in a single swallow and be left with no more for later, so I ventured over into the Olympic modernity to see what wonders were there. (The county border sweeps by the Olympic Stadium – the stadium and the new town are all on the Essex side, so I made a dash in and out – the impression it gave is unworldly, commercially thrilling, and quite another topic; off my route.

Back to the shimmering cladding of the Olympic Stadium, I skirted round the side, back in Middlesex (though it took a careful study of the map to tell where the ancient border lies in this modernity, and though a miniature park – all artificial, but with pleasant shade under the trees), and across the road to another green space. The old railway line is now a footpath, which crosses the canalised River Lea. A passer-by, to whom I explained my quest had a solemn “Go ye not there, soul!” warning about continuing the walk through Old Ford (which seems a bit unfair) but with an assurance that the canal would soon reach a bridge, so I took that route.

It is a grim canal – they have gentrified some of the waterways here, but this is the practical, abandoned-industrial part. The bridge was not there, or rather not accessible, until I came to the Bow Flyover, where a footbridge allows escape from the befouled concrete trough the canal has become.

I followed down to the Three Mills, and was forced thenn to the main road: an unrelenting main road in the heat. In time, the Limehouse Cut provides a direct route to the Thames in the East End, and the Lea Valley Walk goes this way, but I was following the county border, so I trudged on down the road until I could cut across south-eastwards. The plan was to ge to the end of Lanrick Road, by the river, and walk under the massive A31 viaduct. However there is no way under it, so I took a long trudge to the roundabout and a series of pelican crossings, to a path back to the riverside.

Did I mention it was scorchingly hot? And that I had neglected to bring a sunhat? I had lunch on a bench, overlooking the mud of Bow Creek, where the Lea performs a tight, squashed-S meander as its final act. They used to launch ships here: it must have been exacting timing to be ready as the tide was high enough, for at low tide the river is just mud, with a trickle in the middle.

The next stage took me on a loop around a thin finger of land in the river’s loop – developed in the last fe years into an exclusive development called “London City Island”. The Royal Festival Ballet have a centre here, emerging from the ‘island’ almost where I entered it, and off round to Leamouth. Where the Lea meets the Thames, Leamouth is the easternmost point of Middlesex, and a part of the old docklands. Boats are moored here, some practical and some as heritage vessels. There is a café, even a lighthouse (no longer used) and a retro-styled function room which at the time was hosting a wedding reception. Having reached the actual easternmost point, I turned west, and after this I left the River Lea and was following the Thames upriver.

The plan had been to reach Westminster. However the weather had taken a toll and my boots even more so – I had taken the wrong ones and by now it was like walking on sandpaper. Still, I pressed on, now on the (partly signposted) Thames Walk, to the Isle of Dogs. The riverside of the Isle of Dogs has been heavily developed for plush and no-so plush apartments, with the path forced back and forth from the riverbank, not always easy to follow. It was just a case of bashing on, enjoying the riverside views and seeing what I could see ahead. Opposite Greenwich, close to the southernmost point of the Isle, are Island Gardens, with a welcome lawn to doze on for a moment, and an ice-cream stall. There is a foot tunnel here under the Thames to Greenwich, which I have used before. For me though, the path lay on, around the Isle, up to Canary Wharf.

Past Canary Wharf, the riverside becomes more rooted in the East End dockside history and more like real places – through Poplar, Radcliff, Shadwell, Wapping, with old churches, old streets and modern developments, until I came eventually to St Katherine Docks, at the edge of the City of London.

I walked to Tower Bridge and the walls of the Tower of London, and called an end, until the next leg.

See also

The route: map

Loch Trool

Loch Trool is a gorgeous ribbon in the Forest of Galloway in the north of Kirkcudbrightshire, amongst the Southern Uplands.

The route up Glen Trool to the loch is a lovely walk in itself, but there is also a car park below at the foot of the loch, where the Water of Troll begins its run down the glen.

Clockwise around the loch, the path leads through the woods, close to the loch’s north shore. In time, it climbs to emerge on the road up the glen. It is quiet road, and at the Bruce’s Stone Lower Car Park, the path departs to run above the loch to Bruce;s Stone (erected to mark a victory by Robert the Bruce fought down in the glen).

The stone is at a viewpoint with a beautiful view south over the top end of Loch Trool, and the hills beyond. It is also where a path leads up to Merrick, Kirkcudbrightshire’s highest point (and indeed the highest mountain in the Southern Uplands), but the path around the loch does not lead that way.

The path from the stone leads down steeply to by the top of the loch and some of the burns feeding it. At Glenhead, you take a sharp turn westward to follow the south shore of the loch – this path is part of the Southern Upland Way. It runs through woodland with the loch glimpsed to the right, until it emerges at the car park again.

The route: map

Maps

Ordnance Survey:

Landranger 1:50 000 maps:

Explorer 1:25 000 maps:

See also