London Loop Section 1: Erith to Old Bexley

6th February

February arrived with slightly longer days and the promise of drier weather so I decided it was time to get back onto the London Loop. A couple of hours on the train saw me at Erith station to begin Section 1 with about eight and a half miles walk to Bexley station. The first part of which would be along the banks of the River Thames although not quite the first part since Erith Riverside Gardens was all fenced off for re-landscaping. I diverted around it and joined the riverside near Erith Deep Wharf.

Shortly after which the route turned inland and then along the industrial Manor Road before turning left back towards the river and Erith Yacht Club where it along with the Thames Path, Cray Riverway, and King Charles III England Coast Path headed east along the top of the embankment that separates the Thames from Erith Marshes.

There’s some good views from the top of this embankment including to the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford but believe me it was a lot fresher in the wind than it looks in that photo.

At Crayford Ness by the radio towers I paused for a picnic lunch, watching a tug pass upstream drawing two refuse barges heading, presumably empty, for London. Across the river lay Rainham Marshes with distant traffic on the A23 and the occasional high speed train passing over the Aveley Viaduct to or from the Channel Tunnel. Behind me however was an industrial estate with multiple scrap metal recyclers because this is classic London Edgelands, the liminal space between the rural and the urban, home to necessary if unsightly businesses.

Past Crayford Ness the confluence with the Thames of the River Darent, here also called the Dartford Creek, impedes further eastwards progress. Now the path turns south and follows the deep, muddy, twisting channel of the Darent past the Dartford Creek Tidal Flood Barrier. This tall structure is part of the same scheme as the huge barrier that stretches across the Thames near Silvertown to protect London from inundation by the North Sea.

About a mile and a half after turning south away from the Thames, past Crayford Marshes, I turned again to follow the route beside the River Cray. From here on the section is never far from the River Cray although the river is not always visible. Mind you where it is visible it’s not always particularly attractive. By a moored residential barge the route leaves the river to pass by more recycling businesses, ducks under the North Kent railway line, through another edgelands industrial estate and emerges at the busy A206 Thames Road close to a large roundabout. I circumnavigated the roundabout via several Pelican Crossings and crossed over the River Cray on the road bridge then turned right to follow the river towards Barnes Cray with a large area of scrubland on my left beyond which lay the Stanham River and the border between Greater London and Kent. It’s not a particularly scenic stretch of the Cray and wasn’t helped by the sunshine now being replaced by increasing amounts of cloud.

I followed the River Cray to Crayford, swapping banks via the road bridge at Maiden Lane, until reaching the Waterside Gardens in the town centre. Here I paused to rest on a bench and get out my Thermos because it was definitely time for more Bovril. When walking in the winter months it’s always time for Bovril :-)

Around the one-way system and a climb up the London Road and Bourne Road before thankfully the route took a left and headed across some slightly slippery playing fields back to the River Cray.

Just before Hall Place Gardens I crossed the river again and walked along the hedge with the miniature railway on the other side, sadly only operating in the summer, crossed the flood channel and skirted two sides of the woodland to reach the ramp and steps up to the bridge that carries the thundering A2 dual carriageway and the London Loop over the Dartford Loop railway line.

A short way up a slope beside the A2 above I turned right through a gap in the fence next to a superfluous broken stile and entered Churchfield Wood. This gently upward sloping path with the woods on one side and on the other fields and a quarry was a bit of a slog to be honest but had I bothered to check the map I’d have realised that there wasn’t far to go. A right turn down a tarmac path and I was passing the graveyard, which is always better than stopping in it, before emerging opposite St. Mary the Virgin church, Bexley.

I finished off the Bovril on a seat by the Lychgate before the short walk through Old Bexley to the station where I’d arrived last October, this time to depart on the first of three trains home.

Section 1 ✅

A Flickr Album from the day is here.

 

 

London Winter Lights round-up

I’ve been to four of London’s Winter Lights Festivals. Here’s how it went.

 

Southbank Centre

 

Dotted around the Southbank Centre was the least impressive collection of light artworks I’ve been to this year. Some were not specific to the festival but are permanent exhibits.

 

 

 

 Others were hard to find and in one case I think wasn’t there at all - the promotional material did mention that not all exhibits would necessarily be there at all times. The most interesting exhibits were the animated projections onto the Brutalist buildings but the whole thing was a bit underwhelming.

 

Here’s the Flickr Album

 

 

 

Canary Wharf Winter Lights

 

Always well organised with plenty of stewards (and security guards) to point the way and dish out free paper maps to help you find your way around. A good selection of artworks too. It’s always worth avoiding the weekends when it gets so crowded it’s hard to see the lights, I went midweek so it was much ore relaxed.

 

 

 

 The exhibits were mostly good. Alas one which I think would have been quite impressive was suffering from technical difficulties which stopped it working. The giant one-armed bandit was a bit meh and needed constant interventions from the attendant since no one seemed to be sure what to do. Apart from those there was plenty of light and sound to go around.

 

A Flickr Album

 

 

 

 Better still here’s a video walk around.

 

 

 

 Battersea Power Station 

 

Around and within the iconic power station were eight installations from the arty to the sparkly to the interactive provided something other than expensive shopping to do at Battersea. It’s worth waiting till it’s fully dark to get the best effect and this year ambient light levels seem to have been taken into account which has been a problem previously. Clever illumination meant the building itself was almost an unofficial installation itself.

 

 

 

 All the installations were present and correct. I’m still a bit confused by the kids horse-on-a-spring called “Never Ends” and no one seemed keen to begin.

 

The Flickr Album

 

 

 

and the video

 

 

 

 and finally to Shepherd’s Bush for

 

Here We Glow, Westfield

 

 This was a new one for me. It was a mix of festival specific installations and what I think are part of the shopping centre’s permanent lighting. Eight installations again - if you include the tacky selfie star outside the entrance to the tube station. A couple of the temporary exhibits  were pretty good sound+light works. One you could easily have walked past and missed.

 

 

 

A Flickr Album obviously

 

 

 

and a video

 

 

 

 

 So how did I rank them?

 

1st Canary Wharf, still the largest and best organised.

2nd Battersea Power Station, it’s improved in its second year.

3rd Westfield London, compact and some quirky installations.

4th Southbank Centre, glad I didn’t make a special trip.

Dover Street - Alight here for Green Park

23rd January 2025

I’ve been down another hole in the ground thanks to the London Transport Museum’s Hidden London tours. This time it was to parts of Dover Street station, or as we no it now, Green Park. This is a new Hidden London tour for 2025 and follows a similar theme to many others. We were met outside Green Park station (by the Diana Fountain) and once our tickets and photo ID had been checked and safety and other formalities completed Eesa and Becky led us into the station and down towards the Piccadilly Line platforms. Just before reaching the platforms however we went through a private door into the “lost world” of Dover Street station’s passages from the platform over-bridges to the disused lift shafts.

These now redundant passages took passengers to and from the lifts to the platforms but the station became too busy to carry on using lifts. When the lifts were replaced by escalators there wasn’t room for them at the Dover Street site so in 1933 a new ticket hall was opened below ground, accessed from entrances on Piccadilly and in Green Park and the station took its new name from the park.

The passages retain much of the original tiling in a light blue and white colour scheme and some original sign-writing too.

No Hidden London station tour can escape the system’s role in the second small disagreement of the 20th century and in the case of Green Park it was initially used for storage by some of London’s museums but after London Transport’s headquarters at 55 Broadway received a wee present from the Luftwaffe the museums were turfed out and the redundant passages converted to an operational headquarters for the LT board. This included a suite for the Chairman, Lord Ashcroft, at the foot of one of the lift shafts. Considerations of class meant he got newly plastered and painted walls whereas lesser mortals working and living down there kept the station tiling.

The tour returned along the passage to the Piccadilly Line before heading back into the public part of the station.

Then along the long tunnel to the Victoria and Jubilee lines. The tunnel where the mosaic tiles on the walls gradually turn from white and blue (Piccadilly end) to white and grey (Jubilee end). Also the long tunnel which makes some people avoid changing lines at green Park.

The point of this trek through the station was to get to the huge ventilation tunnel that expels warm air from the station and draws cooler air from the surface. There are no fans in the ventilation tunnel for this, the movement of the trains through the station platform tunnels is used, the trains being effectively huge pistons.

A long staircase leads down from Victoria Line level to Jubilee Line level.

and from the Victoria line level the tunnel rises vertically to the world above. In January this space is noticeably colder than the rest of the station.

Of course one of the fun parts of a station tour is getting to peek down at the trains and platforms from the hidden spaces behind the vents. So here’s the Jubilee Line platform seen from above the track.

And apart from making our way all the way back up to the ticket hall and handing back our visitor’s badges that was another tour done. Almost 90 minutes had passed but it didn’t feel like it. Considering it’s a new tour it all went very smoothly, nobody got lost and nobody was gained on route despite it being a busy station. The guides were knowledgeable and enthusiastic as ever. If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Tim Dunn/Siddy Holloway then Hidden London tours can be booked here.

There are more photos on my Flickr Album too.

Sunnymeads - in the sunshine!

Sunnymeads Station is the least used station in Berkshire according to the latest release of the Office of Rail and Road estimates of station usage 2023 to 2024. 

 

The station saw 24,560 passenger entries or exits which also means it ranks 2,199th across the UK. It’s not far from home so I thought I’d go and add 1 to the statistics for 2024-2025 😀

 

 

 

It’s no surprise that this isn’t a busy station. Located between Datchet and Wraysbury on the line from Staines to Windsor & Eton Riverside it sits in a private residential estate and lacks a car park for commuters. There’s a ticket machine but  not a ticket office. No ticket gates, no loos, no waiting room. There’s somewhere to park your bike though and (apparently) Wi-Fi. It’s very much not step free since access to the island platform is via a footbridge. There is a Customer Help Point and electronic displays showing the times.of the next departures. Two trains per hour are provided by South Western Railway in each direction, to London Waterloo, (via Richmond) and to Windsor & Eton Riverside.

 

 

 

 It’s quiet here, at least if you can ignore the jets taking off from nearby Heathrow Airport. It was a midweek lunchtime when I visited and I saw two passengers get on the train towards London and one who got on the same train to Windsor that I caught. There really isn’t a lot to do while waiting for a train. The best view of the station is from the Welley Road over bridge on the up side of Sunnnymeads, accessed via a footpath and a few steps alongside the line.

 

 

 

 Back on the platform waiting for the next train to Windsor I was glad that it was actually sunny at Sunnymeads unlike when Geoff Marshall made his video.

While waiting I was able to speculate about the mystery object in the field next to Platform 1. A submarine? A space capsule? Or just an old septic tank 😀

 

 

 

 Right on time my 1249 train to Windsor & Eton Riverside arrived and it was 71017, one of SWR’s recently introduced Arterio trains, so a first for me visiting Sunnymeads and a first ride on an Arterio. These 10 coach units certainly don’t fit on Sunnymeads’ platforms so it you’re planning on coming make sure you are in the front 7 coaches. I took a ride to Windsor & Eton Riverside - I think that might be a first too - and had a mooch around Windsor in the sunshine.

 

 

 

 I walked to the station from Datchet village but if you’re coming by train to Sunnymeads it’s around three quarters of an hour from waterloo or six minutes from Windsor & Eton Riverside.

 

With little else to do I took a few photos which are in this Flickr Album

 

 

 

 

 

Come to Sunnymeads and see if we can lift it off the bottom rung of Berkshire’s stations next year 😉

 

My 2024 in numbers.

 Here are some not necessarily accurate stats from 2024.

This Blog

Received 52900 "views", although I have no way of knowing how many of the viewers are human. 

Most of you are using the Chrome browser:

Chrome     46.8K

Firefox     1.19K

Safari     625

MSIE     131

HeadlessChrome     90

CriOS     13

SamsungBrowser     4

GSA     3

Silk     1

Other     4.11K

 

You use a range of Operating Systems:

 

Macintosh     31.5K
Windows     15.5K
iPhone     516
Android     454
Linux     358
Unix     284
iPad     112
Android 14    15
Android 10    7
Other    4.21K

And you are located all over the world:

Singapore    28.2K

Hong Kong    12.6K

Germany    3.34K

United States    1.39K

Israel    596

United Kingdom    572

Brazil    391

China    293

Iran    242

Canada    204

India    78

South Korea    64

Finland    53

France    27

Russia    17

Türkiye    15

Belgium    14

Mexico    12

South Africa    12

Other    4.83K

 

Hmm. I have no idea why this blog is so popular in Singapore and Hong Kong. Perhaps you can see why I doubt that all of "you" are humans ☺

 

My Flickr Photos

 

I uploaded 3,255 photos which received 64,333 views and 944 favourites. Of those 3,255 photos this was the most favourited:

Thanks to the three people with an odd taste in trains ☺

Rail Travel

According to Trainsplit I made 37 journeys costing £740.45 and saved £23.55 by using split tickets. Apparently I saved 493.92kg CO2e which is the equivalent of  running 3,315 washing machine loads and I spent a total of 42 hours and 42 minutes travelling.

These figures are well below the actual ones since I don't only purchase rail tickets from Trainsplit, sometimes I use the station ticket machines. Nor does it include the £120 I put on my Oyster Card over the year, much of which went on Underground or rail journeys.

Road Travel

I've driven 5302 miles using 123.16 gallons (559.87 litres) of petrol at a cost of £788.77. I've also spent £28 on bus fares (not including TfL buses which come under the Oyster Card spend). The bus fare spend will probably increase in 2025, I wish it was because we'd get a better local bus service rather than that the fare cap is increasing.

Air Travel 

Nope. I've successfully avoided the horror show that is passing through airports since March 2007. I did take the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight and back in June if you want to count that.

Sea Travel

Also nope.

London LOOP

Sections completed: 2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, and 15. Approx 72 miles (116 km) done out of ~150 miles (241 km) total.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Pool 2025

Deadpool 2025

My guesses for celebrities who won’t see 2026

• Neil Percival Young (Canadian Musician)
• Michael Caine (English Actor)
• Melvyn Hayes (English actor & voiceover artist)
• Sir Thomas Hicks "Tommy Steele" (English singer & actor)
• June Lockhart (American TV & Movie actress)
• Elizabeth Lois Shields, née Teare (UK politician, former MP for Rydale)
• Vanessa Redgrave (English Actress)
• Billy Connolly (Scottish actor, comedian, artist, writer, musician, and television presenter)
• Iain David Thomas Vallance, Baron Vallance of Tummel (retired businessman)
• Wendy Craig, (English actress)

The last two are replacements for Kenneth Cope and Jimmy Carter who left in 2024

Urban West London Ramble

16th December

 

December is dull. Grey overcast skies under which the huddled multitudes scurry spending money on presents for people they probably don’t much like. A shortage of daylight limits travel opportunities and everywhere is doing xmas tackiness. You might think that I dislike this time of year. You’d be right. Anyway I made an effort to get out of the house and immediate surroundings and took a train to Richmond without much of a plan of what to do once I got there. Inevitably it turned into an urban ramble passing through Isleworth, Syon Park, and Brentford eventually getting to Kew Bridge at dusk and catching a number 65 bus back to Richmond. I was even home in time for tea.

 

Who’s afraid of...

 

I walked through Richmond town centre down to the riverside near Richmond Bridge where I bumped into the controversial and troubled writer Virginia Woolf. Well not the real one obviously since she died in 1941 but a statue seated on a bench beside the river. The Richmond connection being that the town was her home during the Great War, after moving out of London and before the move to Sussex where she ultimately ended her life by walking into the River Ouse near Rodmell. You could sit next to her on the bench but she doesn’t look like you’d be welcome to do so.

 

 

 

 I sat on a nearby bench instead and then decided to walk along the river towards Kew.

 

Crossing the Thames

 

At Richmond Lock the riverside path was closed so I crossed over the Thames on the ornate Grade II* listed Richmond Lock Footbridge to St. Margarets on the west bank (north bank?) and turned right towards Isleworth.

 

 

 

 It was an hour or so before high tide but already the water was beginning to spill across the edge of the riverside footpath by The Boathouse so i was glad to reach the slightly raised grassed area of Isleworth Promenade. No I didn’t know Isleworth had a prom either. It’s entirely devoid of amusement arcades, candy floss stalls or Punch and Judy however, just a broad grassy strip alongside the river leading towards Thisleworth Marina (not a spelling error) where there’s no access to the riverside and you have to bear away to cross the River Crane at the Richmond Road bridge, about a hundred yards from its confluence with the Thames. 

 

I returned to the river’s side at Lion Wharf with a blue crane and a stack of pallets and other materials showed that this is still a working river, as does the number of barges moored nearby and the commercial buildings on the edge of Isleworth Ait.

 

 

 

I turned left and walked past the boats to Town Wharf where the Thames Path and Capital Ring Section 7 pass through the Town Wharf pub, or at least the outside terrace area that they’ve built across the riverside footpath and carried on until I reached The Duke of Norhumberland’s River.

 

Old Isleworth

 

The Duke of Northumberland’s River is named after Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland although he didn’t build it, he inherited it from his wife Dorothy Devereaux upon marriage. It is an artificial watercourse which distributes water from an old acquaintance of this blog, the River Crane, at Whitton and by a roundabout route brings it to Isleworth where it used to power a mill and by way of a system of sluices fills the ornamental ponds in the Duke’s nearby estate Syon Park. To cross it’s outflow into the Thames by Isleworth Ait there’s an old stone bridge at Mill Plat on Church Street which leads into Isleworth’s old riverside. Although the bridge is almost surrounded by modern flats now.

 

 

 

 Church Street is blocked to through traffic save for pedestrians and cyclists though I can remember when it wasn’t. It now forms a long cut-de-sac with the open end at the river by the London Apprentice pub. I might have stopped for a swift one but wanted to carry on while there was still plenty of daylight left.

 

 

 

Although I did pause for a while along with everyone else by Isleworth Drawdock where a crane was unloading a container from a barge and depositing it at the roadside. There seemed a good chance they’d drop it on themselves, the dog, or the adjacent parked van but eventually they wrangled it into place. It was a bit like a scene from an earlier time since they eschewed PPE and any kind of guarding to keep the public out of harm’s way. A HSE inspector would have had a fit.

 

 

 

 Syon Park

 

I passed The Isleworth Parish Church All Saints, which is an uncomfortable mix of 14th century tower and late 1960s modern because on the night of 27th May 1943 the church was gutted by fire; arson at the hands of two local schoolboys. Only the tower and outside walls survived. Rebuilding commenced in 1968 and was completed in 1970.

Skirting the churchyard on the raised walkway - the road often floods, along with the cars of anyone unfortunate enough to be using the riverside car park - I entered Syon Park  through the gate in Park Road and followed the path towards Syon House. As I did so it occurred to me that the last time I’d walked this way was with my maternal Grandad. So I’d have been at most 8 years old. Grandad used to take me and sometimes my little brother for long walks from Myrtle Road, Hounslow, sometimes to Osterley Park but I clearly recall going to Isleworth one day and through Syon Park to Brentford. I expect Gran wanted him (and probably us) out from under her feet else he’d be in his armchair smoking Guards fags and we’d be being told off for playing with the mangle in the scullery 😀

 

Anyway back to 2024. Here’s Syon House, the west London residence of the Duke of Northumberland. A Grade I listed building, it lies within the 200-acre (80 hectare) Syon Park. These days it shares the park with a big garden centre and its car park and a Hilton hotel. It’s still not a bad pad for a Duke’s not-quite-country-any-more-etreat though it’s a shame they built it under the Heathrow flight path...

 

 

 

 One day I must pay a visit to the inside but it’s shut in the winter. I left the park onto the London Road and made a short diversion to look at the rude lion.

 

 

 

 Syon House's 'Lion' Gate is widely recognised. The row of arches, topped off with a lion which originally stood on top of Northumberland House on Strand, the Dukes of Northumberland's town house. The popular story goes, which was also told to me by Grandad Kimbell, is that its arse pointed towards Clarence House as an insult after the Duke of Northumberland fell out with the then Prince of Wales. The Lion Gate was designed by Robert Adam c.1769, oddly in Adam's original drawings the tail hung down naturally rather than being raised and pointing straight. 

 

Brentford, battles and boats

 

I retraced my steps and continued in the direction in which the lion’s head is looking, towards Brentford town centre. One of the joys of walking around the streets is that you learn things in passing that you never knew. This time it was finding a plaque on the old brick boundary wall of Syon Park commemorating the fact that in 1616 – 1617 Pocahontas, a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, resided in Brentford with her husband, John Rolfe and son Thomas. You might know her from a Disney film. Or if you’re like me you’ll be reminded of Julian Clary’s “what’s a Hontas?” quip 😉

 

 

 

 In November 1642 a Royalist army advancing on London overcame a much smaller Parliamentarian force in battle at Brentford. The town was ransacked in the immediate aftermath of the engagement. Now cynical types might suggest that parts of it haven't been repaired since but that's just the current round of regeneration. Having driven the Parliamentary forces out of Brentford the Royalists advanced to Turnham Green where there was a stand off between them and a large Parliamentary force. But the Parliamentary commanders didn’t think that their troops were trained well enough to risk an attack and and the King decided not to press his advance on London by giving battle against a greater force. He decided, as it was near the end of the campaigning season, to retreat to Oxford where his army could be billeted over the winter. Had the King pressed on the course of history might have been very different. Here’s a view downstream from Brentford Bridge under which the River Brent flows and over an earlier version of which Prince Rupert’s troops advanced. According to Grandad somewhere along that left bank stood the street and the house where Gran was born.

 

 

 

 I stopped for a coffee in Brentford High Street before pressing on back to the riverside at Ferry Wharf where the River Brent/Grand union Canal make their confluence with the Thames having passed through Brentford Docks. In the back channel around Lot’s Ait are many houseboats and a boat building yard. Apparently some scenes in The African Queen were filmed at Lot’s Ait. I’ve no idea if that's true though some of the film was shot in Isleworth Studios which gives rise to the persistent urban legend that Isleworth is the origin of London’s parakeet population. Almost certainly not true.

 

 

 

 I walked through Waterman’s Park, formerly part of Brentford Gas Works, noting that all but one of the wrecks has now been removed from the river pending redevelopment of the moorings. That can’t go ahead until they work out how to remove the last vessel which is so structurally unsound it can’t be re-floated. Everything is now tied up in red tape waiting permission and environmental mitigation plans. Oops.

 

 

 

 As daylight faded I passed the tall tower of the London Museum of Water and Steam (aka Kew Bridge Steam Museum) and arrived at Kew Bridge just in time to hop on a 65 back to Richmond station.

 

A Flickr Album of photos take along the way.