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I’ve had lots of generous feedback on my Capital Ring posts, for which I’m very grateful. If you’ve enjoyed reading my words and looking at my pictures, I hope it inspires you to get out and try it yourself. It’s a fascinating trek around London, and I guarantee it’ll introduce you to new places you’ve never heard of, and will want to visit again. It may be 78 miles long, but it puts the capital city into a new perspective, making it feel a smaller, less daunting place.

Looking back, I’m surprised that it took me so long to complete (11 sessions over six months), but with the exception of the final section (and a miserable bit around Greenford); I generally picked clear, sunny days. The beauty of the Capital Ring is that most of it is so close to public transport links, it’s easy to do as little or as much as you’d like. There’s certainly enough variety to spend long, satisfying days traipsing around London – but set yourself too long a walk, and you may miss the chance to linger at unexpectedly interesting points.

On the whole, the walk itself is very, very easy to follow. Negligence is more likely than vandalism to send you heading off in the wrong direction – with the walk passing through 18 different boroughs as well as the land of organisations like Royal Parks and British Waterways, some bits will be better-signed than others. It’s easy to see where the Capital Ring’s promoters got their cue from – the south-east London Green Chain, which forms a great chunk of the early route and is almost perfectly signed along its way.

While it’s my home borough and I give it a lot of stick, Greenwich Council seems to have paid most attention to making sure Capital Ring walkers don’t get lost, along with Richmond-upon-Thames, another council which puts a lot of effort into promoting local walks. In fact, most of the south-of-the-river boroughs do well.

But this shouldn’t lull you into a false sense of complacency – a good guide book is a must to make sure you stay on track. I used the 2001 edition of Colin Saunders’ The Capital Ring, which has since been updated, but my old copy more or less stood the test of time, and is a fascinating guide to some of London’s less talked-about districts.

The worst parts of the route to follow are through the entire stretch in Barnet – where the signage is very patchy, with one vital turn not marked at all – and Ealing, where the route is awkward, poorly-signed in parts and badly maintained. A section through Stamford Hill/Stoke Newington hasn’t been signed at all by Hackney Council, and the Royal Docks section is awkward due to a missing sign or three.

But on the whole, it’s easy to walk. A bit muddy here and there, mind, but this is simple stuff. Having the route sealed off at Wandsworth Prison due to a shooting wasn’t expected – Thames Water flooding on the Lee Navigation probably was. There are parts that are terribly dull – although, Grove Park aside, they’re not the bits that snake through streets. The industrial bit of the Grand Union Canal near Greenford’s not much fun, especially when you’re clambering over landfill sites. But this comes after following the canal through Brentford Lock, and before climbing Horsenden Hill. The little bits of rough are far outweighed by the smooth. And there are some bits that feel needlessly long. But these are minor quibbles.

The best bits? Wimbledon Park through to Richmond Park is a beautiful walk and was a wonderful way to spend a warm, summer evening. Harrow-on-the-Hill is like a journey back to the 1950s, while Fryent Country Park feels as if it should be 20 miles further away from London. I’d love to visit the Welsh Harp reservoir again, while simple places like Preston Park in Wembley and Cherry Tree Wood, East Finchley were just pleasures to visit.

The cemeteries – particularly at Wandsworth, St Andrew’s in Kingsbury and Abney Park in Stoke Newington – were fascinating and, particularly at the former, moving. Views into Surrey and into London from various bits of Norwood were treats. Passing over north London rooftops on the Parkland Walk is fun, whe whole stretch from Springfield Park, Clapton, down to the Olympic Park was an insight into a London many do not know.

It’s hard for me to judge familiar south-east London corners against places I’d never visited before, but if you’re not from these parts, I challenge you to visit Maryon Park, Oxleas Woods and Eltham Palace and not be impressed.

Capital Ring 1: Charlton to Grove Park
Capital Ring 2: Grove Park to Crystal Palace
Capital Ring 3: Crystal Palace to Wandsworth Common
Capital Ring 4: Wandsworth Common to Richmond
Capital Ring 5: Richmond to Hanwell (Two walks in one post)
Capital Ring 6: Hanwell to Harrow on the Hill
Capital Ring 7: Harrow on the Hill to West Hendon
Capital Ring 8: West Hendon to Stoke Newington
Capital Ring 9: Stoke Newington to Olympic Park
Capital Ring 10: Olympic Park to Charlton
722 photos taken on the route

What next from here? Other than writing to Walk London and asking for a certificate, that is. It looks like the London Loop – around the outer edge of the capital – awaits, doesn’t it?

And now, the end is near… well, not all that near, as it happened. There were still a good 10 miles to go on the Capital Ring as a I hopped off the 108 at Stratford High Street. All around, the changes to E15 as 2012 approaches were apparent, as builders worked on creating approaches to the Olympic Park and developers continued making the place look unrecognisable from what it was a decade ago. From here, the walkway follows the Greenway for a couple of miles – quite literally, walking on top of a sewer. Part of Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian scheme to rid London of pongs and disease, the Northern Outfall Sewer runs from Hackney Wick to Beckton. The Capital Ring sticks with it for most of the way.

It’s not thrilling stuff, to be fair. The first section is surrounded by Olympic Park works, as work takes place to upgrade the walkway towards West Ham station in time for 2012. It passes the ornate former Abbey Mills Pumping Station – another part of Bazalgette’s grand plan. A clear view down to the Millennium Dome and Canary Wharf reminds you which side of London you’re in. Passing over the District Line and London, Tilbury and Southend rail line, by a park and a cemetery, the pathway becomes more peaceful. Neighbourhood cats prowl through the bushes, while all around, the Plaistow rooftops stretch out.

Finally, it’s off the Greenway, through some residential streets, over the A13, and into Beckton District Park, covered in autumn leaves. I’d expected a grim, modern, featureless open space, but in most parts it’s actually anything but that. The park’s older than it looks – dating back to 1903, a couple of decades after the creation of Beckton, named after the governor of the Gas Light and Coke Company, Simon Adams Beck, whose works dominated this area for decades. The park alternates between little bits of woodland, grassy mounds and formal gardens like the walk featuring examples of trees from aroud the world. The Capital Ring takes a twisting route through the park, with Tate & Lyle’s huge Silvertown plant coming into view.

But it’s the great roars which start to dominate again, from the dual carriageway running north of the Royal Docks, and from London City Airport, whose planes make this walk a noisy one. The business customers who use the flights from here don’t have to come home to the housing estates which are dotted around Beckton.

The Capital Ring passes by New Beckton Park – padlocked for reasons best known to Newham Council – through some housing, and to Cyprus Docklands Light Railway station. Built in 1881, the Cyprus estate was named after Britain’s capture of the Mediterranean island. Bit it’s more a more recent building project that snatches the attention if you take a short diversion through the DLR station – the student accommodation at the University of East London’s Docklands campus, a series of cylindrical buildings which face the Royal Albert Dock. They also overlook London City Airport’s runway – perfect for plane-spotters, but I hope those student halls have good soundproofing.

Then it’s the grimmest part of the walk yet – past a boarded-up pub, over a nightmare-to-cross roundabout, just at the point where the Capital Ring signs dry up. Thanks, Newham. The map in my 2001 guide to the walk indicated a walk towards the river, but here the route appears to cross the dramatic Sir Steve Redgrave Bridge over the Royal Albert Dock, past King George V Dock, past the old work site for the DLR’s extension to Woolwich, ending up in a dull housing development at Gallions Point – stubbornly titled Galleons Point. Here, though, the path finally reaches the river, with a view across to Thamesmead and Woolwich, the water lapping up on a grassy bank below.

The path continues in front of some flats, a couple of signs pointing out that this is private property and only Galleons Point residents are allowed on the adjacent grass. Nice. You have to press a button on a gate to be allowed out. From here, it’s along a narrow, dilapadated riverside park to Royal Victoria Gardens. Opened in 1851 as Woolwich Pleasure Gardens, its fairgrounds were initially popular, but it later fell into disrepair and became a haunt for prostitutes. It reopened in 1890 under its current name, but suffered from wartime damage and today looks, like most of North Woolwich, like it’s seen better days. This small area had been part of Kent since the Norman Conquest, and was part of the old borough of Woolwich until 1965, when it became part of Newham. As far as I know, no trace of it being run from south of the river remains nowadays.

North Woolwich was always run-down, but it looks more down-at-heel than ever now, with Pier Road eerily quiet. Its pride and joy, the old station museum, a terrific but underpromoted little gem, was opened by the Queen Mother in 1984, but quietly shut its doors in January 2009. It’s now boarded up and vandalised. This huge building was the first North Woolwich railway station – the second, which replaced it in the late 1970s, also lies derelict and boarded up next door; superseded in 2006 by the Docklands Light Railway extension to nearby King George V and across to Woolwich. A heritage railway group had wanted to take on the old stations and the rusting remains of this leg of the North London Line – part of which is earmarked for eventual reuse as part of Crossrail – but their plans appear to have come to nothing.

Perhaps the DLR’s extension to Woolwich, which opened in January, had contributed to North Woolwich looking like a ghost town – plenty of people had always travelled from south of the river to use the North London Line, and later the DLR. Now they can just travel direct without walking down these streets. After all, the railway had always been an important part of North Woolwich’s history. It first opened here in 1847, long before the arrival of the docks, with a ferry service to “South Woolwich”, which didn’t get its own trains for another couple of years. The ferry to the south bank was killed off by the Woolwich Free Ferry, but the north pier stayed in use for excursions until World War II. Its remains are still there, opposite the old station.

After all this thought – and stopping to chat to a man who was waiting to photograph a bus – it was down into the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. The lifts were out of service, and chicanes have been placed inside the tunnel by Greenwich Council in a vain, aggravating attempt to deter cyclists from riding through the long, damp passageway. At Woolwich itself – the official start/end of the Capital Ring – the path runs through the car park of an ambulance station, through the traffic jam at the Woolwich Ferry (which has been operating a one boat service for some time), and then onto the Thames Path, past the smart flats at Mast Quay – built on stilts in case of flooding – and alongside Woolwich Dockyard Estate, where the path looked sad and neglected. The long-closed aquatic centre still looked as gloomy as ever.

The riverside path stops abruptly short of the Thames Barrier, denying Capital Ring users the chance to see London’s best-known flood defence close up. Instead, it’s through isolated housing at King Henry’s Wharf – a housing development built in anticipation of the Greenwich Waterfront Transit, axed by Boris earlier this year – and past some industrial units, and into Charlton. Where it started to rain. I’d gone 77 dry miles on the Capital Ring. The final one wouldn’t be so lucky.

But Maryon Park and Maryon Wilson Park – the former best-known for its starring role in Blow-Up, the latter much loved for its wonderful childrens’ zoo – seemed at their best in the gloomy conditions. Once part of a highwaymens’ hideout called Hanging Wood, both parks feature steep hills and huge trees. Clambering up a sharp incline in Maryon Park, leaves flying down from the trees, I was pleased I’d saved one of the Capital Ring’s best-kept secrets until last. The stands at The Valley come into view at Maryon Wilson Park, where – for the final time – I gazed back at the London Eye and the City. It’d been a long way…

Finally, it was out of Maryon Wilson Park, across the road, and into Charlton Park, where the football pitches and semis on Canberra Road came into view again.

A squirrel formed the welcoming committee as I reached the back of Charlton House, turned around to see if anyone was looking, and touched the sign post to mark the completion of my walk. Eleven separate walks and 78 miles later, my Capital Ring journey was all over. Ahead of me stretched the path back around to Shooters Hill, Eltham, Grove Park, Beckenham, Streatham, Wimbledon, Richmond, Isleworth… and the rest. Behind me stretched another path. With aching feet and fading light, it was time to go home.

Here’s all my Capital Ring posts on one page.

One of the most striking things about living in London is that it is always changing, often before our eyes. Tourists may come to visit ye olde London town, but the city we know is always in a permanent state of flux. New buildings go up, old ones are torn down. People settle down, people move on. Not all change is good, and some change is bewildering. But one of the few things that stays the same in London is its constant reinvention. The end of my penultimate Capital Ring walk certainly showed that off – but it began with corners which have barely been touched for decades.

Social change was on display as the walk kicked off in the back streets of Stoke Newington. Together with nearby Stamford Hill, this area has one of the capital’s biggest Jewish communities, and certainly the most visible one. But there’s also a large Muslim community here, too. Any bother? No sign of it in these leafy streets. In 2002, one of the founders of the local Muslim Jewish Forum told N16 magazine: “When they’re house-hunting, Muslims often choose a Jewish road, they see Jewish neighbourhoods as safe and peaceful.”

The neat, snug streets didn’t last for long, though, as N16 became E5 and I entered Clapton. If you’re not local to that area, it’s unlikely you’ll have heard of Springfield Park. But it’s a beautiful green oasis, with well-kept lawns and views out across north-east London. At the foot of the park is the River Lee, and Walthamstow Marshes, and a marina for boats to moor up in. The path crosses the river, and for a while you’re on the Walthamstow side of the river – or, once upon a time, the Essex side.

There’s very little marshland left in London – the last remnants of Greenwich Marshes vanished 20 years ago, Plumstead and Erith marshes are now Thamesmead. So Walthamstow Marsh is special, almost unique – and almost eerily quiet and still; well, until a rush of sirens from distant Lea Bridge Road. The wetlands now form a nature reserve, and with some of the land also used for grazing, there’s even a cattle grid on the route. Railway arches cut across the land, and it was here that aviation pioneer AV Roe tested his early aeroplane designs. A century on, this side of the Lee probably looks much the same as it did then. Across the river, back on the Clapton side, the Anchor and Hope pub looks tempting… but the High Hill Ferry which used to cross the Lee here, and gives its name to the street along the water, ceased many ago.

Eventually, it’s back across to Clapton, through Millfields Park, across the Lea Bridge Road and down to where the River Lee Navigation splits off – it’s this route the Capital Ring will follow. Outside another pub, the Princess of Wales, an old lady was having a bizarre row with a mum and kids. From someone’s back garden, a greyhound stuck its nose through the gate to see what I was doing. Back across the water again, and now on the edge of Hackney Marshes as the Lee Navigation continues ahead. Alongside are the Middlesex Filter Beds, once a part of London’s water supply; now a nature reserve.

Narrowboats are moored along the water, their owners stopping to chat – it dawned on me that it’d probably be very easy to live up here and completely disappear from the rest of civilisation… all wistful thoughts ended, though, with the discovery that the tow-path was flooded. A sign had warned of some flooding that was due to be fixed “by September 2009″. It was the end of October, and the contents of a Thames Water main were still streaming into the canal. There was no other option than to take a deep breath – and go for it, though the water…

Squelching on down the pathway, I reached the old Lesney toys factory at Homerton. Formed after World War II by schoolfriends Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith, Lesney began life as a die-casting factory, diversifying into toys in the 1950s. The Matchbox line was a roaring success, with the Lee Conservancy Road complex opening for business in the 1960s. The original Lesney firm folded in 1982, the Matchbox name was sold and production eventually moved overseas. With so much change in east London over recent decades, the Matchbox factory looms over the Lee like a relic – but not for much longer, as demolition teams have already bulldozed part of the site and are currently stripping out the rest.

Recently-built housing mixed with light industry on the other side of the Lee Navigation, but the greenery on my side came to an abrupt halt at a sign pointing out that there may be some diversions to the Capital Ring. This was the start of the Olympic Park. It was a hive of activity, but the 2012 media centre is shaping up to be a squat, ugly building. In fact, I didn’t quite twig it was part of the Olympic Park at first, thinking it might just be some kind of warehouse. No wonder the residents of Leabank Square, opposite, aren’t impressed. (“If we were across the canal from Hampstead Heath or Wimbledon Common – they would have been to scared to design something like this! But it’s only Hackney Wick – so let’s lay a tower block on its side and the scum locals will absolutely love it!”) The huge Olympic Stadium suddenly appears behind the media centre, and starts to dominate the view.

Further down, a familiar tune came into my head – I’d reached Lock Keepers’ Cottages, the home of Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast for nearly a decade. Now a private home, it’s dwarfed by the Olympic Stadium just behind. The cottages, by Old Ford Lock, only date back to the late 1940s, but in 60 years have already seen dramatic changes to their surroundings. The next few years will see even more change as a whole new district emerges behind the cottages. I’d last walked up here in June 2007, shortly before the bulldozers moved in. Blue hoardings block off the old Lee riverside path, which now leads up to the stadium. There’s enough in place now for the imagination to fill in the gaps on how this will look in 2012.

The path finally leaves the Lee at the Greenway – the walkway on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer. It’s shared with Olympic workers and construction traffic, and offers an uninterrupted view of the stadium and the complex work going on around it. There’s a diversion off the Greenway further down, onto Pudding Mill Lane, passing its eponymous DLR station, and across Bow Back River. Suddenly very familiar territory came into view – Stratford High Street. After waiting an eternity to cross the A11, something even more familiar appeared. I put my still damp-feet into motion and ran for a 108 bus home.

So now, the end’s in sight. If all goes to plan, there’s one more leg to go – Stratford to Charlton. It’s strange to think I’ve covered nearly 70 miles already. At least I know what to expect at the end of the final 10 – but there’s still plenty of exploring left to do in east London.

Most of my past Capital Ring wanderings seemed to make some kind of geographic sense to me. I can place Wandsworth on a map and know that if I keep going in one direction I’ll get to Wimbledon, and so on. Sure, getting there from Crystal Palace confused me a little bit, but that was about travelling between parts of south London which meant – and still mean – completely different things to me, and not being familiar with what lay in between.

But six hours’ strolling on a gorgeous autumn day took me on a wildly diverse 11 mile walk, where I still can’t quite work out how I started in the morning close to the end of the M1, and ended the afternoon in Stoke Newington. Outer London to inner London, west to (almost) east, with a familiar stretch in the middle through Highgate. London doesn’t always seem small on foot; but for me, this stretch of the Capital Ring shrunk the city a bit.

There’s not much to see in Hendon – unfortunately, the first couple of miles are dominated by the roar of roads. The peace of Hendon Park is put in context by noise from the M1, and a near-complete lack of signage (thanks Barnet Council) makes navigation through suburban streets tricky. The River Brent homes into view again, but the poorly-kept parks alongside it seem to be there just to offset the grimness of the adjacent North Circular Road. Two crumbling gazebos, remnants from a hotel demolished in 1974, seem to sum up the attitude here – cars first, people second. The ducks in the Brent have it better than they used to – the ponds in the Decoy, Brent Park (not to be confused with the retail estate in Neasden) were once there so they could be hunted. Not any more, and they seem to be the most content creatures for miles around.

The Brent splits in two here, and the path follows the Dollis Valley Greenwalk by Mutton Brook, underneath a CCTV camera and signs warning of pollution in the water. The noise from the A406 and A1 continues to dominate, until the route finally gets to Northway Gardens, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Once a brave social experiment in creating a classless community where all were equal, it’s now a highly desirable place to live. A Porsche pulled up alongside me as I wandered out of a Jewish mini-market bearing beigels and kosher chocolate, and people took tea in a cafe by the park. Immaculately-kept, big, suburban houses surround you here. Who lives in a house like this? Someone with more money than me, that’s for sure. The traffic noise fades here, as another form of transport starts to dominate thoughts.

Through an alley and into East Finchley station, looking as spotless as the day this big, bold building reopened in 1939, when the Northern Line first reached these parts. Above the Underground roundel, the lozenge of the LNER – whose steam trains last ran here from King’s Cross, Finsbury Park, Crouch End and Highgate in 1941 – remains in place, a reminder of the dramatic changes the Tube brought to these parts of north London. Above the platforms, an statue of an archer prepares to fire an arrow towards Highgate – but that’s something we’ll get to later. Next door is the surprisingly anonymous UK headquarters of McDonalds, strangely out of place in this aspirational corner of the capital.

The name “Dirthouse Wood” would sum up a couple of the places on this stretch so far – but not Cherry Tree Wood, which used to have that name and kicked off the change in fortune for this stroll. Children playing, couples strolling, rich autumnal colours everywhere. A little cafe was doing a roaring trade, and even though it’s a tiny little place, this park was enough to lift my mood. Better still was the words on a street sign upon leaving – “London Borough of Haringey“. Finally, I could put the map back in my bag, because the Capital Ring signs were back again.

Suddenly, familiarity. Six months ago, I’d met a pal for a walk along the disused Finsbury Park-Highgate Northern Heights rail line – where those old steam trains ran to East Finchley, as well as round to Alexandra Palace. We’d got lost in Highgate Wood and almost failed to find our way to Alexandra Palace. And here I was at the spot where we’d got stuck – at the entrance to Highgate Wood. I could definitely relax for a while. The approach to the wood passes over the old Alexandra Palace line, with the bridge turned into a mini-park. Peering down from the bridge though…. there wasn’t much to see. Now that was why we’d got lost.

Like much of the southern stretch of the Capital Ring, the northern stretch meanders through what’s left of long-gone forests. Highgate Wood was once part of the great Forest of Middlesex. Full of well-to-do families taking the kids for a half-term walk, it, and its sister Queen’s Wood, are wonderful places to wander around. The steep exit from Queen’s Wood certainly made me feel like I’d got some exercise. From here, it’s up a hill onto the Highgate Road, and then onto that disused rail line to Finsbury Park.

When the Northern Line was extended to East Finchley, and onto Edgware and High Barnet, the job wasn’t completed. Among the bits that didn’t get done were converting the Northern Heights line to part of the Northern Line, linking it up with the old Moorgate-Finsbury Park Tube service (which in itself became a mainline route in 1976). Tube trains from Moorgate to Alexandra Palace were meant to start running in 1940 and much of the work was already done – the old station at Highgate was rebuilt, and a start was made on electrifying the lines. World War II intervened, work stopped in 1940, and even the steam trains which were still running along the line were cut back. After the war, the Tube extension scheme was scrapped, and the old steam service limped on until 1954, when the line and its stations closed to passengers. The rebuilt Highgate station still sits derelict above the Tube station, an eerie monument to a future that never was.

In 1972, the tracks were lifted, and the route was gradually adopted by Haringey and Islington councils as the Parkland Walk. Some of the fixtures and fittings installed by London Transport remain in place, the platforms at Crouch End are still there, and a never-used substation at Crouch Hill is now a youth club. But nearly four decades after it saw its last trains, shuttling empty to and from a depot, the Parkland Walk has gone back to nature. A group of children collected worms as joggers passed by. On my last visit it was crowded with Sunday walkers. On a Monday afternoon it was a peaceful oasis above north London. Given the choice between the Parkland Walk and having a railway back, I wonder what locals would opt for?

The sight of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, looking like an extra-terrestrial invader to the south, was a reminder of how close to central London I was getting. Finsbury Park’s somewhere most non-north Londoners only visit when there’s something on – like the late, lamented Rise festival – but this great slab of green is a terrific big city park; large enough to explore yet small enough not to get lost in. From here, it was across the road, into another borough – Hackney – and alongside the New River.

First constructed in 1613, it takes drinking water from Hertfordshire into the capital. SIgns warn you that this is north London’s drinking water, so not to let your dog do its business on the banks. It’s unnavigable, still, and clear… and looks bleak on its raised banks heading towards Stamford Hill. It ends in two reservoirs by Lordship Road, where I was greeted by the sight of a dead rat. Just as unsettling – the Capital Ring signs had vanished from this stretch. I took a mini-detour trying to get back on track. A white minibus pulled up alongside me, deposited a very, very small orthodox Jewish boy by the side of the road, who then stood looking lost and confused as the bus drove off, before finally realising after 30 seconds or so that he was meant to walk home down Queen Elizabeth’s Walk. That was the way I should have gone, but I found Clissold Park all the same. I could have done without seeing the day’s second rat, alive and well and darting out of one of the ponds, though.

It was only 4pm, but the sun was already low in the sky, treating hordes of families and kids to another array of autumn colours. A big cafe, built in a 1790s mansion house, was full of customers. From here it’s along Stoke Newington Church Street to end this section of walk at Abney Park Cemetery.

This is a real hidden gem, chaotically laid-out and largely overgrown, with fascinating headstones telling stories of this area’s past as a haven for Protestant dissenters. The most notable graves are of Salvation Army founders William and Catherine Booth, just by the Church Street entrance. An unexploded World War II bomb is believed to be buried somewhere in the cemetery.

Outside the cemetery, on Stamford Hill, nature was back at bay again. With the light fading, it was time to head home. The next leg would throw me into even more unfamiliar territory – before giving me a glimpse of home. But I’d learned more than enough for one day.

It’s been a long time… um, since I actually did this walk. Well, about three months – after which I spent six weeks mostly travelling, and then over a month, er, forgetting to post this. But I’m digging my walking shoes out this week to have a pop at completing the Capital Ring, so it’s time to refresh my memory and show off what came before. In this case – off the Metropolitan Line at Harrow-on-the-Hill, a walk up a steep hill, through some woods, a graveyard, and back up to an amazing view across London.





From St Mary’s Church, Harrow-on-the-Hill, it’s down through the famous old school’s playing fields, plotting an uncertain path through beautifully-kept sports grounds. From here, it’s out the across the only stile on the Capital Ring and around the back of Northwick Park Hospital, taking us into the borough of Brent, and the place where all London’s sparrows seem to be living nowadays.






And then it’s proper 1930s suburbia once again – through Northwick Park itself and underneath South Kenton station, shiny new London Underground signs not very well disgusing the fact that this used to be a manky Silverlink station. Before Preston Park station is the green space it’s named after, a pleasant and, once again, perfectly-kept little spot. The same can’t be said for the streets by the station, but then nestled between some semis is the entrance to somewhere quite extraordinary.

Fryent Country Park is the kind of rugged place you don’t expect to find sitting behind suburban homes. I’d never really thought of north-west London as being a particularly green area, but with open fields, ponds and woods, it’s an interesting place to explore. It’s easy to imagine getting lost here, although the rattle of the nearby Jubilee line shatters the illusion a little. From here, Wembley Stadium provides an optical illusion, with planes coming into Heathrow looking as if they’re flying under the arch.







The back streets of Kingsbury beckon next – we’re still in the shadow of Wembley Stadium here, before St Andrew’s Church beckons. Moved from Wells Street, Fitzrovia, in the 1930s, it replaced an older church, which remains in a sorry state next door. The smashed-up graveyard was a heartbreaking sight.





Another North London gem then appeared – the Welsh Harp reservoir, looking blue and idyllic in the sunset.



The Welsh Harp marked the point where the Ring enters the borough of Barnet – fiefdom of controversial Conservative London Assembly member Brian Coleman, currently its mayor. So here was where the signage started to dry up again, and a closed-down Barnet Council youth centre came into view. Once, this was probably alive with the sounds of young people learning to sail – I’d seen this earlier on the route in Wimbledon Park, a teacher good-naturedly pitting her wits against some lively kids. Instead, it was boarded up, presumably awaiting arsonists or vandals. Not the kind of thing you expect to see in a “regeneration area“.




Finally, the day’s destination – the thrills of West Hendon Broadway. From here, I could have continued to Hendon station and got the train, but with Oyster pay-as-you-go still not accepted, it was easier to jump on a bus to Kilburn and pick up the Tube. Today, I’m returning there, picking up the Ring again.

Click here for all the past Capital Ring posts.

I’ve cheated here – this is actually two sections of my Capital Ring odyssey in one – Hanwell to Greenford last week, Greenford to Harrow this week. I joined them together because they were both fairly short, largely unexciting, and because two posts about how Ealing Council clearly can’t be arsed to look after its section of the walk would drive most people to drink. Anyway, here goes…

It started out so well, this bit. Perhaps avoiding the toxic moths a billboard warned of helped. Walking from Boston Manor station, I saw something in the bushes. I stopped for a closer look – and saw a rabbit dash away. Once I’d reached the Grand Union Canal, I saw something in a clearing by Osterley Lock. Was it a log? No, it was another a rabbit! And another one, and another one… but the big-eared fellas didn’t hang around for me.

And, to be frank, on this stretch of the Capital Ring, there’s not a lot to hang on for. It starts well enough – along the canal to the picturesque Hanwell Flight; six locks designed to take the canal onto higher ground as it heads on its way towards the Midlands. There’s a pub, and a sign announcing a dog called Blunder has been found. Hooray! But then there’s a diversion. The Capital Ring follows the River Brent from this point. Which starts off all well and good, but then it follows it obsessively, round pointless meanderings through dull stretches of open space. It’s as if someone couldn’t be bothered to take the job of designing the path seriously.

Which may be true. This stretch is entirely in the London Borough of Ealing; and it is the dirtiest, uncared-for section of the route so far, with bad signage and litter everywhere in sections. From the carefully signed stretches through Richmond and Hounslow, and other councils’ pride in their open spaces, Ealing Council’s neglect came as a jolt.

The route itself? Through a wooded section off the canal, it then hits a muddy section where it passes under a bridge dating back to 1762, which carries the Uxbridge Road over the Brent. From here, it leads to a field and the Wharncliffe Viaduct, which takes the Great Western mainline across this part of west London. The noise from Heathrow’s flightpath fades here, but the roar of diesel trains heading west soon replaces it. The impressive structure has seen better days, it carries a crumbling royal coat of arms, while taggers have attacked the top of the viaduct.

From here, it’s Brent Lodge Park, which is pretty and provides views of the old Hanwell village. “No! No! Don’t go in the river..,” a man cried, before a splash and the sight of a dog merrily playing in the Brent. It’s here the river is at its most picturesque, and if it wasn’t for the roar of Inter City 125s it’s easy to imagine being somewhere like the Forest of Dean instead of being in west London. Brent Lodge Park also has a brilliant curiosity – a millennium maze. Part of it was funded by “ITV’s Year of Promise” – presumably so that future generations can come here and ask, “Dad? What was ITV?”

But then the insistence on following the river gets boring. It goes on, and on, and on… across a bridge, through a meadow, then the signs peter out a bit unhelpfully as it reaches a golf course, and then more following the river, in and out, until Bitterns Field – a former landfill site. Welcome to Greenford. Finally, passing a section of riverside path which has subsided, the path parts company from the river.

The tidy semis close to Greenford Broadway felt like a relief, but then Perivale Park was just as gloomy – rubbish strewn everywhere, and people trying to make the best use of a neglected, partially-abandoned tennis court. Through a messy section by an athletics track, and then the noise and smells of Western Avenue. And it began to spit with rain. Nearby South Greenford station offered a tempting chance to escape, but I ploughed on, across the footbridge over the A40, looking out of town, wondering where the thousands of travellers below were heading.

Passing more semis, and squeezing down the side of a sports field, and then an unusual sight – a little two-car train pootling up the line from South Greenford, passing an old semaphore signal. I walked on, then heard a loud creak and a clang. The signal had changed. It was easy to imagine this in 1904, the year the line was built.

One observation about Greenford. Alcohol. Almost everybody I passed from Perivale Park onwards was clutching a can of lager or cider. Empty cans of Polish beer were everywhere. I hesitate before slagging off other parts of London, but maybe it helps to have a bit inside you around here; it’s not a place to lift the spirits. Back among the semis, a right onto the main road, and… a retail park. To my left, Greenford station. Halfway around the route. Time to get out of here.

At which point, I went home. Eight days later, I came back. The learning spires of Harrow would make a fine ending, surely?

I returned to Greenford by Tube, which, oddly, is quicker than the little diesel train I’d taken to go home via Paddington the previous week. Ahead of me – Horsenden Hill, which apparently offers one of the finest views in Greater London. Would this be a green oasis after the previous few miles of uncared-for, unloved open space? Like heck it was. A new London fact was learned today: in the London Borough of Ealing, you are never more than 200 metres from an abandoned can of Tyskie. So through Paradise Fields, as scrappy and litter-strewn as the parkland that preceded it, with signs covered in graffiti, until the Grand Union Canal – this time the Paddington branch of it.

It was pretty quiet – kids on bikes, bored families on summer holidays, bored-looking families of ducks swimming around. The noise from a nearby car sound system gave this stretch a menacing air. Then the 18th-century Ballot Box Bridge marked where the path started to climb Horsenden Hill proper. The road which the bridge carries, Horsenden Lane, has a rural feel about it, but the bridge itself carries so much clutter – it can only carry one lane of traffic, so is equipped with traffic lights, CCTV and an unnecessary “Welcome to Perivale” sign – it felt like a border crossing into some kind of restrictive state.

Then – despite a lack of signage – it was up Horsenden Hill, pausing a little way up to see planes land at Heathrow before guessing “it must be that way up” and reaching the summit. The view out west is impressive, although admittedly it wasn’t particularly good weather for it – with rain clouds looming and the wind getting up, I felt a bit like Ted Moult in the 1980s Everest ads, even though it was July. But the views on the information boards at the top didn’t match what I could see with my eyes, and was this going to be a good place to sit and rest? Not with one battered old bench it wasn’t.

Horsenden Hill Wood, by contrast, was a genuine oasis of tranquility – full of birds, and more or less deserted. And then it was back to pounding suburban streets, traffic using Horsenden Lane as a rat run. A sign pointed right, and I turned right. And then… lost.

I fished out my guidebook, and tried to get my bearings. Out came my iPhone with its GPS, and I’d wandered a little off course. Why? The sign pointed the wrong way. I retraced my steps, and found a second sign pointing the wrong way. I simply can’t understate how little attention Ealing Council had paid to maintaining the route. Its section of the Capital Ring is grim. I used the same iPhone to report the broken signs, and finally, after what’d seemed like an eternity, saw a sign which made me smile. “London Borough of Harrow. Welcome to Sudbury Hill.” And guess what? The skies cleared too.

I passed one of London’s least-used train stations, Sudbury Hill & Harrow (if it’s any more than once an hour, you’ll be lucky) as a handful of commuters, and turned left to climb Sudbury Hill itself, heading into a wooded stretch, with a cricket match taking place in an adjacent field. Now that was more like it.

Further up the hill, and finally… Harrow on the Hill. I’d been through the station a few times, but never visited the town itself. It’s unlike anywhere else I’ve ever visited in London – a village seemingly built solely around Harrow School, whose buildings are everywhere. It’s twee in the same way that Dulwich Village is twee, but while Dulwich is flat, the steep hill here at one point reminded me of a seaside village.

Despite regular buses – double-decker 258s looking completely out of place squeezing through the village – I’ve never seen so many occupied black taxis anywhere outside central London before. It’s an incredible place – almost a memorial to an England that long ago ceased to exist – and one that must be surreal during term times. After the drudgery of the last few miles, this was somewhere that really took my breath away. At 10 miles from central London, this is the furthest out of town the route goes.

The top of Football Lane, aptly, offers a tremendous view of Wembley Stadium, and provided a sensible place to stop and wander to Harrow to catch the Tube home, passing a brilliantly-named off-licence, Hill Street Booze. Next time it’ll be downhill from Harrow – and hopefully in a good way.

Hooray! Walking shoes back on to pick up my round-London trip on the Capital Ring once again, after a break for holidays, a couple of weeks where I didn’t have many evenings free, and a few other issues. It was good to be out and about again, and this stretch was completely new territory for me – a reminder that in London, there is always somewhere you’ve never visited before, and always something to surprise you. This was my shortest stretch yet – a diversion to meet a pal at Brentford bought cheer, but meant this stretch was (officially) less than four miles long. But there was still plenty to see here.

I picked up where I left off at Richmond, passing the green and the site of Richmond Palace; no sign of the roads flooding around here as the Thames was just picking up again from a very low tide. Under Richmond railway bridge and Twickenham Bridge, passing the Old Deer Park – and the meridian line that isn’t near Kew Observatory – the walk had a Sunday afternoon feel about it; even though this was a Monday and people walking to and from work mingled with the families with small children.

Crossing the Thames at Richmond Weir, things start to change. Looking up through St Margarets and Isleworth, you can see the boatyards ahead, and the roar of the planes heading into and out of Heathrow gets louder. But there was one last sign of genteel Richmond to enjoy – a group of older people sketching the scene at the weir.



A bridge over the little River Crane – with a stern warning from Middlesex County Council about posting bills – took me into Isleworth, a place I’d always assumed was rather grim and lifeless; having previously associated the place with the M4 and Sky TV. Wrong!



Old Isleworth, by the Thames, is a pretty well-kept riverside village – although further back from the Thames, Hounslow Council has done its best to ruin the ambience by cluttering the place with street signs. With Isleworth Ait (island) in the middle of the river at this point, the Thames flows slowly and it feels like life in Isleworth should do the same. Boatyards, pretty old houses, a mighty riverside pub – the London Apprentice – and a 14th-century church tower indicate that this should be somewhere peaceful.


But it isn’t. The planes – Heathrow’s flightpath is almost directly overhead here – make a racket, but constant traffic down the narrow main street shatters the relaxing feel. If something could be done to take cars out of Isleworth, the place would be transformed.




Then it’s through Syon Park, flat and open except for the ha-ha surrounding the London home of the Duke of Northumberland, where the walk leads to a clutch of garden shops in the grounds. After that, it’s Brentford Lock, only very recently redeveloped, which marks the start of the Grand Union Canal and is now a swish residential quarter.

Here, though, I took a diversion to an earlier waterside redevelopment – Brentford Dock, to meet an old colleague. A late-70s version of what’s appeared at the lock, it sits on an peaceful corner of the river, opposite Kew Gardens and on the site of an old railway goods yard – signs of the old line greet you on the way there, and some of the old industrial land remains. It actually reminded me of some of the earlier developments in Rotherhithe – right down to the closed-down pub in the development, the equivalent of SE16’s Downtown.

Back up the canal again, underneath the A4 and past the gleaming headquarters complex of drugs giant Glaxo SmithKline. Near here used to be the old Lucozade factory with its “replaces lost energy” slogan, always a welcoming sign on a return to London. But that went five years ago has been hiddden in a museum since then – and it won’t be coming back. Last month, councillors in Hounslow turned down a plan to re-erect it. One of GSK’s replacements is a striking yellow sculpture, called Athlete which sits by the canal.

Beyond GSK, the canal takes on a rural feel. Ducks fed ducklings, a swan hunted for food. Water seeps through the locks. Cyclists say hello as they pass by. The Grand Union Canal walk continues for another 136 miles to Birmingham from here, making my 78-mile circuit feel a little weedy.





The roar of the adjacent M4 gives the game away, though – and it is hard to believe that anyone thought it was a good idea to build the motorway here. Traffic noise aside, it’s a quiet stroll towards the end of this section of walk, as the path comes into Hanwell. Walking towards Boston Manor Tube station, I passed a disused sports ground, where even the cars in the car park were derelict.




After this short and sweet stretch through Brentford, it was a sign of some of the neglect to come…

A shooting had truncated my last stroll along the Capital Ring, but picking up the route again at Wandsworth Prison meant I was able to enjoy one of the greenest sections of route so far, moving from city commons to the surprising sight of having my path blocked by a grazing cow. I wasn’t expecting to be slightly worried by passing a mean-looking bull on this leg…

Picking up the route by Wandsworth Prison, the leg starts at the pretty Victoria cottages of Alma Terrace, which shows what can be done with streets with a little love and imagination. The prison itself looms forbiddingly to the right, and then it’s through residential streets to Wandsworth Cemetery, which I took the option to walk through. There are few extravagant memorials here, but students of wartime London will find many graves of those killed fighting the Nazis, or, in one case, a 19-year-old sailor killed when an air raid hit a Putney dance hall. Another grave was for a young man killed in his mid-20s just a few weeks back in a bike accident. I paused and found his details on a website, and the tributes to him, one proudly saying his child had just started to walk.


With thoughts of too many people gone too soon, I moved on past Earlsfield station, over the river Wandle and into Wimbledon.

Through the underwhelming Durnsford Road Recreation Ground, past a mosque and up to Wimbledon Park station, suddenly things took a turn for the affluent. Wimbledon Park itself was full of children playing, and the tennis courts were starting to get some serious use. At the centre of the park is a beautiful lake, where the noise of south London fades away and – aeroplanes and District Line trains aside – the sounds of children playing and ducks quacking take charge. It was a gorgeous day, and I could have stayed there for hours.

Out of the park and onto a problematic section of route at Wimbledon Park Road. From the start, the quality of the Capital Ring’s signage had gradually got worse – Greenwich had done their job very well, Lewisham had missed some bits, and beyond the Green Chain walk boroughs the signs had petered out a little. Now the route followed the boundary of Wandsworth and Merton – two boroughs which weren’t exactly lavish with their signs. In fact, knowing the walk followed the boundary saved the day, because that imaginary line was easier to pick out than the route. Past the All England Club’s croquet lawns, up past some seriously posh homes and up to Putney Heath.



And then it’s green nearly all the way. Together, Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common form a huge chunk of open space. The walk passes through scrubland before hitting open common at Wimbledon’s windmill, where the cafe closes at 5pm sharp. The London Scottish golf club has its course here, but most of the walk passes through woodland, before emerging alongside Beverley Brook. I chatted with a man whose dog duly leapt into the river for a swim, and emerged into a big field by the A3, suddenly so full of dogs that I felt I was in a Pedigree Chum ad.






Crossing the dual carriageway by footbridge at Kingston Vale provides a sudden jolt back to reality, but the scene soon changes dramatically. I’d only ever been to Richmond Park once – that was in an ex-girlfriend’s VW Beetle many years back, where we wandered around and gawped at deer. On foot, it’s a different proposition. The largest urban park in Europe, Richmond Park is huge. No deer to greet me, though, and as the sun began to set for the evening, passers-by were few and far between. Up a hill at the brilliantly-named Spankers Hill Wood, then towards Pen Ponds, the quiet only disturbed by the roar of jets from the Heathrow flightpath above. It suddenly felt possible to get completely lost in this vast open space.

But here’s where I committed a big boo-boo – I managed to miss Henry VIII’s Mound, from where you can look towards St Paul’s Cathedral. Instead, I was distracted by the views from the side of the mound – on one side, deep into Surrey, and on the other, straight over to Heathrow, the roof of what I guessed was Terminal 5 reflecting the setting sun. Watching the planes land and take off had a hypnotic effect. It was time to clamber down the hill, and after about three miles, finally leave the park at Petersham.

The path heads down to the river here – I thought I knew what to expect, I’d only been here a few weeks before after taking my stricken camera to Nikon’s HQ in nearby Kingston and passing through this area on the way. I couldn’t have been more surprised, though. After passing a churchyard, a right turn into a field which I thought looked like grazing territory. Can’t be, I thought, not this close to London. Into the next field, I was confronted with a) commuters strolling home from work, and b) cows merrily chomping away. Um, best give way to the cows, then, like that woman in the waxy jacket is doing. Petersham Meadows is all flood plain, so the cows help keep the grass down. All was fine until a bull eyed me suspiciously. Well, he probably didn’t give a toss about my presence, but I didn’t hang around to find out.

And finally, to the river. The walk into Richmond lasted longer than I expected, but with the sun setting, it didn’t really matter. Couples strolled along the path, ducks dawdled outside a riverside restaurant. I’d planned to be back in Greenwich by now (it was now past 8pm, over five hours after I’d started out) but had enjoyed the walk so much it was no problem to change my plans. At Water Lane, the White Cross pub might have had an entrance for high tides, but it wasn’t showing the football match I wanted to see. I looked east into the sunset along the Thames – then darted off to find somewhere on Richmond Green. It’d been my favourite stretch of walk so far. It’ll be at least a couple of weeks before I can pick up the walk again and cross the Thames, but I’ve made a note to come back and explore this area another time.








The next stage, north to Brentford and beyond, will feature my trusty SLR once again, as that’s back in service. But for the next couple of weeks, the scene’s going to shift a little…

Here’s a weird one for me to get my head around – taking one bus from near my house, going for a walk, and ending up across the other side of south London, on Wandsworth Common. That’s what happened to me on the mental map-bending third leg of my Capital Ring walk.

With my “proper” camera out for a month, my little compact came out to do its duty in Crystal Palace Park. A glance over towards the QE2 bridge at Dartford, and off. Past Crystal Palace rail station, and then on an annoying zig-zag walk inserted into the route so you can take in another fine view, this time from Belvedere Road, Anerley. Then it’s over into Westow Park, an attractive little hilly escape, and from there to the park with the worst name in the world – Upper Norwood Recreation Ground. Seriously, had Croydon Council run out of imagination by the time they got to that one? How about Paxton Meadow? Dougie Freedman Memorial Gardens? No, Upper Norwood Recreation Ground it was.

Despite the terrible name, it’s a lovely bit of green surrounded by quiet suburban streets – well, not so quiet for me, as the kids were coming out of school at the time. So far, so pleasant. Coming out onto Beulah Hill wasn’t so much fun, because walking alongside a traffic jam rarely is, but the surprise of seeing a great view over London from Convent Hill made up for it. Left into Biggin Hill, and below some allotments, the Croydon suburbs opened up in front of me, dominated by the twin towers of the old Croydon Power Station – now incorporated into Ikea on Purley Way. At the bottom of the hill, a real treat, Biggin Woods.

Another remnant of the Great North Wood, it’s a tiny wooded patch that, within just a few seconds, makes you feel you’ve travelled deep into a forest. Well, if you ignore the idiot R&B being blasted out from a nearby house, that is. But that seems to be the theme of this first stretch of the walk – it’s easy to imagine when it really was all fields and woods round here; the homes just seem to be a rude intrusion.

From here, a change of scene as SE19 gives way to SW16 and rows of neat semis – until I saw a St George’s flag billowing from a nearby house, I thought I’d entered another affluent corner. This once was, though – Norwood Grove contains attractively laid-out gardens and the old home of one of the founders of P&O. Nice life, until you consider that Arthur Anderson was also an early backer of Crystal Palace FC. Signs facing each other across a stream tell you you’re leaving Norwood Grove and entering Streatham Common. A set of gardens called The Rookery are a remnant of where people used to flock to SW16 to sample its reviving spa waters. No, seriously.

A pause at the cafe on the common’s south side – where the chit-chat from the yummy mummies is about house prices – and across to the foot of Streatham High Road. Years back, not far from here, I used to go to parties at my old college’s halls of residence at Furzedown, at the bottom end of Tooting. But there’s no reminiscences of drunken japes here – instead it’s pounding the pavement towards Streatham Common station, and on up Conyers Road which, with its ornate water works, once must have been a street of desirable villas, but years of neglect by Lambeth council and some of its residents make this a messy, cluttered avenue, with one house looking like it was being squatted. A bit like my own street in Charlton, although the squatting opportunities are more limited in SE7.

Past a street sign featuring the painted out motto “BOROUGH OF WANDSWORTH” – a reminder to Boris and pals that London’s boroughs haven’t always been set in stone (the original Wandsworth borough featured Streatham and Clapham, the current one focuses more on Battersea) – and onwards, into the “brighter borough” proper and Tooting Bec Common, where lads play football and young couples wallow in the evening sunshine. It’s not the quietest of corners, though – the path keeps returning to the Brighton main line, with Sussex-bound expresses charging past every few minutes.

After this, it’s into Balham, emerging onto the high road at Du Cane Court, one of London’s best-known apartment block developments. I decide to continue on for a while, to avoid the rush hour Tube, and it’s not far to Wandsworth Common, with boardwalks across its ponds and, er, the noise from the Brighton main line once again. But turning left across the common, it’s another nicely laid-out bit of Victorian suburbia, with squirrels darting across the paths.

From here, the walk continues past Wandsworth Prison – but the day I did this was the day of the shooting at the jail, and many streets were cordoned off. A Clapham Junction-bound bus was too tempting. The rest would have to wait for another day.

If you squint, you can see what blocked my path while doing a further leg of the Capital Ring earlier today – police tape. Not many walkers have their strolls curtailed by a killing, but my path through Wandsworth Common was blocked by this afternoon’s shooting outside the prison, which left a man dead. Police are hunting for two men seen running away from the scene.

I’d been out all afternoon, having walked there from Crystal Palace Park, and was unaware of the news, so was a bit surprised to see two policewomen, police tape and a forensics expert where I was supposed to be walking. I’m a bit hesitant about approaching the police these days, mounting stories of officers who don’t quite realise they’re there to serve the public (harrassing photographers, beating up demonstrators, you know the drill) have left it in my mind to keep out of their way. But my sense of curiosity got the better of me – as did the queue of waiting cars with drivers shouting out “what’s going on?”

So, up to the officers I strolled. “A critical incident has happened, that’s all we can say.” Curious, I thought – clearly something had only just happened. I showed my press accreditation (not often I need to use it, but it was worth a go in case something had only just happened – there were old colleagues I could tip off). They laughed. “Then you’ll know what’s happened anyway.” I couldn’t be bothered to pursue it any more with them, although if this was my local area I probably would have done.

So, in the end, the internet on my phone told me what had happened, because the story had been on the BBC News website for two-and-a-half hours, while the two policewomen whose wages my tax pays for declined to be of any help. If Metropolitan Police ever wonders why ordinary Londoners are beginning to hold it in contempt, it’s little incidents like that that’ll hold the answer why.