Middlesex Greenway – Page 2

Middlesex Greenway 4: to Pinner

I reached Pinner at 4:00 pm. Are there no independent cafés anywhere these days? Still no cherry-topped buns: muffins aplenty but no buns. This must be addressed urgently.

The route from Uxbridge lies across Uxbridge Common then it needs some good compass work. The route follows the River Pinn through Ickenham to Ruislip, which is complicated in this section; the Greenway route seeking out green footpaths threading amongst so much suburban streetscape, but to manage to pass through such a thickly urbanised area with so little on road, within woods an across heathland, is an achievement. A marked map and a magnifying lens got me through though.

Then it emerges at the Ruislip Lido, disappearing into the autumnal woods beside station (that of the Lido’s miniature railway, that is). This is why the route is rightly called the Greenway, or perhaps orange-tawny-and-brown-way at moment. Soon though, Middlesex being Middlesex, it emerges in a polite suburb, in the Eastcote or Pinner (indistinguishable), and tracks the Pin Brook tight between houses then suburban streets to Pinner station (a real station this time).

This is of course Metro-Land: there are no “streets”, but “avenues”, “lanes”, “ways”, “closes” and “meadows” – anything to avoid the dread, urban word “street”.

Pinner is a good end for a day’s journey, at 20 miles from the starting point, and with an easy route to Croxley. However there is a long way to go, and that map is begging me to look further, across Pinner Park Farm (yes, a farm this deep in the suburbs), to an unpromising name: Headstone Lane. It is getting dark quickly though. I’ll see after I finish this cup of tea.

Please donate to the Stroke Association: click here.

Follow my track on the Middlesex Greenway

(I am told that this can also be followed on Twitter: @wildthing_uk)

Middlesex Greenway 2: Not Heathrow, yet

I have reached Uxbridge town centre in time for a lunch stop (12:20). (Thanks to Costa for having wifi. Good coffee and muffins too.)

It was a mixed morning all along the lonely western edge of the county: up across the scoured moor (pouring with rain) between the great reservoirs and through the undeveloped, threatened places around Heathrow; then along the boundary fence of the monstrous airport itself. It is funny to think this was once a hamlet of a few houses called “Heath Row”, and that the corridor in heart of the airport still follows the hamlet’s main lane.

Then the route led me through Harmondsworth, a village which the airport’s owners want to demolish to expand their shop. I expect it is revenge for being forced to sell Gatwick by the monopolies commission. I passed the mediæval church and just out of sight of the mediæval Great Barn (“the Cathedral of Middlesex”), along an ancient footpath, all under threat. Then north of the doomed community I reached the M4 – there is a footbridge across it – to West Drayton, and immediately entered the edge of an unbroken metropolitan sprawl which reaches from here to Essex.

It looks unpromising to the east, and the tearing motorway concrete bodes ill, but in fact there are big green spaces there; the Middlesex meadows fighting against blind, bland urbanity even on the track of the road; sports fields and the lands still free around Heston, and the magnificent Osterley Park, and if Heston is now known for a concrete service station selling plastic-wrapped food, it was once a village famed for cherry-topped buns celebrated even beyond the county. I shall indulge in more fruit buns as I go, in their honour.

Please donate to the Stroke Association: click here.

Follow my track on the Middlesex Greenway

(I am told that this can also be followed on Twitter: @wildthing_uk)

Middlesex Greenway 1: Staines

Staines: a clean start on the bridge over the Thames, the southern border of Middlesex. Dawn. Dark. Just stopped raining blue sky.

(Already tired too: I got only a few hours’ sleep last night as it was a the Chairman’s charity quiz night. Still, at least our team came respectably above the middle of the board.)

Late autumn may be the worst time of the year for a day-long walk as the daylight is short, but on the other hand autumn is the loveliest time of the year for the colour and smells of the dim lit dawn and dusk. As long as I do not slip on leaves and plunge into the chill canals which I will be passing soon, nor get stuck fast in deep sloughs of mud, I should be all right.

There should be a “Middlesex” sign on this bridge. Can the townsfolk push for that? This is not some anonymous suburb, but Staines, the ancient bridging point, ad Pontem, gateway to the Capital County.

The first step though is north, along Bridge Street, then to try to find the way along the Wraysbury River. It is a bit disconcerting that I might get lost after just 200 yards. The brook though should take me onto Staines Moor and northwards.

Let’s go.

Please donate to the Stroke Association: click here.

Follow my track on the Middlesex Greenway

(I am told that this can also be followed on Twitter: @wildthing_uk)

Hiking the suburban wild places

Rupert Barnes

Endless rows of identical semi-detached houses on roads laid down by compass and set-square built for the station – get up, get the train out, work, get the train home, sleep. The Victorians hated the new suburbs their industry created: the “Dark Suburbs”, a metaphor for a land separated from culture doomed to ignorance; but then those left in the towns would say that. What were these new, amorphous neighbourhoods obliterating the green fields? No seats of learning, no theatres, no ancient churches – all the necessities of civilisation – and only the means to get out.

That is not true though, is it? The rivers are still there, and the little countryside brooks, and village greens, if hemmed in by habitation, and the churches and the theatres which have sprung up. The pretty, well-tended park is not a gift of municipal benevolence, but a reserve surviving from what was always there. The foxes that run though the end of the garden did not come in from the countryside: it was the town which came into their countryside.

Create your walk through the suburban countryside: this is what the Middlesex Greenway is about, the walk which I will be reopening at the weekend, and there is room for many more explorations to find the suburban wild places.

The suburbs everywhere took a pattern from the planned development of “Metro-Land“, where the ideal was rus in urbe: the countryside in the town, to each house a preserved plot of meadow as its garden; and between the houses the countryside remains. Of those footpaths that strung the old villages together, many remain, but you have to go to have a look. If you are missing all this, you are missing the very point of the suburbs.

Switch off Googlemaps and satnavs and whatever: they are only interested in drivers and roads. Step into the open and breathe, and find those little paths that were here long before the encroaching suburb. Locked in a charging steel box you go from town to town, but a good map, a paper, Ordnance Survey map, shows the actual landscape, deep in the conurbations.

Even in unrelenting streetscape, there is variety and detail to be found on foot that a driver misses, and yes you can take joy in the presence of your fellow man, in all his quirky variety. Those once identical houses are not identical any more, after generations of individualisation. The bland conformity is found in cheap, concrete council estates – a pile of bricks, a slab of concrete, a square of scrub grass behind a two-foot plastic-coated chain-link fence – but even they have not blunted the human spirit and those who have bought their houses have shown that they can be made beautiful.

This is what the Middlesex Greenway explores in the most suburbanised county of them all; Middlesex. It finds the green western edge of the county by rivers and farms, but then plunges into the suburbs, finding the parks, the paths by hidden country streams, even farms in the conurbation, and many forgotten places. It then steps into the relentless streets but not to rush by, so they too can be appreciated in their variety, from the ground. There too are parks and pocket-parks known locally and there for you to walk. Eventually the Middlesex Greenway emerges by the River Lee, canalised for industry but where its banks are bursting with fragrant nature which will not submit to the slide-rule. All this is there to be found.

Follow my route on the Middlesex Greenway

I am told that it can also be followed on Twitter: @wildthing_uk

To donate to Stroke Care, click here.

Rupert Barnes

Walking the Middlesex Greenway

On Saturday 21 October 2017 I will be starting to walk the Middlesex Greenway, from Staines in the south-west to Enfield Lock in the north-east. Using Ordnance Survey’s on-line tools, I have calculated the distance at 45 miles, and how long it will take I cannot say, but I have set two weekends aside.

The intention is to re-open the route – to see that it is still walkable and if not then to do something about that, and to encourage others to walk the route or sections of the route, for health and, frankly, for the pure pleasure of it.

I am also looking to encourage donations to the Stroke Association: there is a link below for donations, and I will include a link on each post I make as I go along.

The route has not been walked in full, as far as I am aware, since Stephen Collins devised it and walked it 1990: he took two days, but then he was a keen and frequent hillwalker. I am also a keen hillwalker, but less frequent. I also have to make notes as I go and check that the path is still walkable. I have also possibly chosen a poor time of the year in terms of visibility: the daylight hours are short, though in all other respects an autumn walk is a sensual delight.

The Middlesex Greenway is, if it is still walkable, an ideal long-distance route for those of us in the suburbs: good hard work and running close to stations for getting there and getting home, while exploring lesser known parts of what we think are familiar places.

Actually, don’t just let me tell you: pull your boots on and explore it yourself .

I will post here as I go when I can, and I am told that it can also be followed on Twitter: @wildthing_uk

Follow my route

To donate to Stroke Care, click here.

Rupert Barnes