Saturday, 25 April 2015

The London Loop

Hayes → Moor Park

uxbridge-lock.jpg Distance: 18.28 miles
Ascent: 227 metres
Duration: 5 hours 51 minutes

Hillingdon
« Not walked | Not walked »

You should have guessed: today new gadgets join us for the first time. We buckled and both bought Apple Watches. Running in Workout mode for six hours and taking a phone call partway along was enough to pretty much drain their batteries flat, but they gave us award after award for our effort.

frans-tea-garden.jpgThe walk itself mostly followed the Grand Union Canal, diverting briefly to pass through Stockley Park and again to loop around a meandering river. At Denham Lock we paused in Fran's Tea Garden - not the most salubrious affair, but charming in its way, with row upon row of second-hand books to thumb.

Past Harefield we left the canal (and its swarms of flies) and headed across field and meadow through beautifully scenic countryside before hearing the familiar but somehow out-of-place clatter of the Metropolitan line. For the first nine years of my life this was the only railway that I knew, but nowadays it's startling to see the Underground rattling out to Hertfordshire.

Posted by pab at 13:26 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!