Category: Blocked paths

Herts Embraced: what HS2 has done

HS2 has chewed up part of the Hertfordshire Border Walk between West Hyde and Chorleywood. I walked it to see how it can be done. I took a pre-HS2 map (Explorer 172 – Chiltern Hills East) as a guide to where the paths ought to go.

HS2 have said that they will restore the footpaths when the works are completed, and there are signs of the blocked paths’ being preserved, but it could be several years yet before they are opened, and we cannot tell what alignments will be left. The county border is unmoved and immemorial, even if the paths which once defined it move.

From the A412 Uxbridge Road, the mouth of the footpath on the county border has been obliterated by the HS2 work site. However there is a way round, and HS2 have posted a diversion map on a tree. I walked south along the road into Buckinghamshire, under and then alongside the massive new viaduct. By a layby is a small path up through the woods, to a lane (Tilehouse Lane) where I turned north again. The lane used to run through, but is now cut off by the construction site: it ends where the border path resumes.

I followed the path eastwards therefore, along the edge of the wood, with the vast site to my right, along the county border, down across a new works access road, and then it is closed again, with a diversion.

This diversion is the same as the one I did some years ago – then I think I had to work it out on my own, and took a wrong turn somewhere that led me into difficulty, but this time the diversion is shown on maps attached to signposts. It took me south and round and under the M25 in a foot tunnel, and to a road at the edge of Chalfont St Peter. Walking north along the road to start of the village, there is path back eastwards, tree-lined and then out into a broad field. It is well defined now, skirting the side of a mobile home park to the left, and to an access road close by the M25. A new local road has been built since the map was printed, but this is the end of the diversions. They added perhaps two miles to the route.

I headed down Shire Lane, which runs along the county border. Very soon the road swings left, but Shire Lane, the old road, is straight on, a tree-lined path, emerging at a corner and resuming being a road, past the Dumb Bell Inn and on northwards. When the road hits a T-junction, it is stil straight ahead: Shire Lane has become a woodland footpath (with Newlands Park to the left: the Chiltern Open Air Museum is in the Newlands Park Estate).

After a dog-leg, the path heads north again through woods a house comes into view and the path becomes a road, and leads down into Chorleywood.

It is a lovely stretch of walk, that took just a few hours. It will be better when the convulsing works are finished and the paths are put back, but I will take it as it is for now.

Route map

See also

Maps

The route spreads over a wide are and a series of maps is needed to complete it.  It might be done with standard Landranger maps, though the additional detail of an Explorer map can be very helpful.

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

In the Landranger, 1:25 000 series:

Lost paths and phantom paths

There are paths which are lost by neglect – some are blocked by landowners – some are diverted or scrubbed up lawfully. Then there are those which might not have been official in the first place.

One of the latter is on the Middlesex Greenway. Each time I have been that way, I have seen the path marked clearly on the Ordnance Survey map but I have seen the high fence and passed by – but his time I found a way in and walked the path. It is a footpath marked on an official map, after all.

It was a morning’s walk from Staines to Uxbridge – part of the Middlesex Greenway and of the Middlesex Border Walk. Between Stanwell Moor and Harmondsworth is the huge expanse of Heathrow Airport, and the walk along the dual carriageway A-road beside the airport is not the most pleasant experience, so a cut-off is welcome.

I came upon a heavy gate – high, impassable and meaning business, but the path was visible and tempting through the bars. Then looking around, I saw that there was a way to slip around the gate, and I did so, and I walked the barred path for the first time. It had cleanly not been walked for some time and undergrowth was trying to take over, but it was clear, wide and open – until the end, where it fizzles out just before it can emerge on the pavement. Still, ducking under trees I did emerge where the map showed I can come out; but the shrubs to found a new hedge have been planted: while I could slip through, as spring turns to summer the end of this path will be blocked at last.

I do not like blocked paths. The council have a duty to open them. I therefore did some research, and annoyingly I could find no indication from the history of the site that there was ever a public path there – just an access to industrial / commercial units. (It runs behind some yards, and a side track, not marked as a path, heads off it.) Yet it is is on the Ordnance Survey map. But it is not on Hillingdon Council’s published ‘definitive map’. So I wrote to the council.

The reply came back swiftly. ‘There are no routes recorded on the Definitive Map and Statement which run through this area.’ Further, a search of records finds no evidence to suggest it is a public right of way, and without evidence of use or historical documentation, it will not be. It was worth a try. The Ordnance Survey map was misleading. The Middlesex Greenway must then follow the main road here. It is a pity.

Paths still blocked on the Middlesex Greenway

Breaking news: nothing has changed on the Middlesex Greenway blocked paths.  This despite promises by the highway authorities.

I felt I was skiving, not continuing around Hertfordshire, but I was working on Saturday – lifting and carrying – and on stand-by on Sunday in case needed for a rescue.  So I went to investigate two stretches of the Middlesex Greenway which I found blocked last year.

First – Bedfont Court north of Stanwell Moor village. The route of the Middlesex Greenway runs north-east along Sprout Lane North and then is meant to turn north along a lane called Bedfont Court.  This is marked as a public footpath on the Ordnance Survey map but when I arrived, I found it blocked by concrete barriers and a high fence.  It looks as if the lane was once a row of cottages (there is a sign, buried in the foliage, for the Bedfont Court Estate) but there is no sign of that now: it might have been bought out and the public right of way conveniently forgotten.  There is no sign either of where the path is meant to emerge at the other end.  This is being looked into.

Then, I drove to Edgwarebury Farm, where the path across a scrubby field has vanished under what looks like a stalled and abandoned development.  The start of the path is still obscured in the churned up ground, now left and overgrown.  The end of the path, its north-eastern end by the farm, is invisible, though not physically blocked.  The Middlesex Greenway is walkable here by a diversion but that diversion is not a public right of way. Again this needs looking at, in advance of plans to lay it out as a golf course (which is a far better development than filling it with cardboardbox houses).

It is a work of constant vigilance to undo the blocking of paths, by man or by nature, and it seems that it is not a priority for the bureaucracies which are entrusted with keeping them open. That leaves it to those who walk the wild places to do something.