24th March 2025
West Wickham Common to Hamsey Green
Nearly a month has passed since I was here last and I’m alighting from a train at Hayes (Kent) railway station to tackle the next section of the London Loop. Section 4 starts officially at the edge of West Wickham Common near Coney Hall so the walk starts with a three-quarter mile link up and down along Pole Cat Alley to reach the junction of Croydon Road and Gates Green Road.
The guide says of Section 4, This well wooded section has a fair amount of climbing, rewarded by some splendid views. It isn’t wrong, especially about the climbing.

From here a path goes between the houses, past a car park, along Church Drive and into Coney Hall Recreation Ground, a large area of playing fields with a children’s nursery in the middle. Before you reach the nursery you cross the Greenwich Meridian from the Eastern Hemisphere and into the Western Hemisphere and there’s a small stone marking the line of the meridian.

Leaving the recreation ground across a road I headed for St. John’s church, turning right in front of the building through the churchyard then down across an open field and across the busy A2022 to reach Sparrows Den, home of the Beccehamian Rugby Club. There’s two routes across Sparrows Den. Left along the roadside edge then diagonally across or straight on towards the cafe and toilets then beside the Pitch and Putt course. Ah, toilets, I’ll go that way then. Yes of course they were closed and padlocked because this is England. 🙄
Fortunately the next part of the route was through Spring Park Woods.

Although it was still cloudy overhead the temperature had now risen enough for me to take off my quilted gilet. Part of Spring Park Woods is called Cheyne Wood and an information board gives some of its history. Originally the grounds of a private lodge that became a children’s heart hospital which was damaged by a V1 flying bomb in 1944, becoming a children’s convalescent hospital until 1989. Inevitably the former hospital site was redeveloped for housing in 2003 but fortunately you can’t see that part from the Loop. The information board also tells of the Ancient Order of FrothBlowers, a charitable organisation from 1924-1931 who partially funded the children’s hospital.
I emerged from the woods into the open area of Shirley Heath, popular with dog walkers and with a convenient bench on which to sit and eat a picnic lunch of sausage sarnies washed down with some Bovril from a flask because although it’s officially Spring it’s still Bovril weather. Once refuelled I carried on through Kennel Wood following the Loop markers, the posts for some of which had rotted off at the base and were propped against trees or lying on the ground. There’s a lot of that on Section 4 meaning that in places confirming the right way using the map on my phone was needed. The other things on the ground were a lot of small white Wood Anemones - also confirmed as such using my phone 😀
After Kennel Wood came a half mile or so of walking alongside the busy Shirley Church Road but at least there was a lot of spring flowers on the wide verge. Also the sun had now come out and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

A footpath left off Shirley Church Road took me around the grounds of Shirley High School Performing Arts College (which just made me think of “Fame!”) and then climbed steadily into Pinewoods. From this point on there would be a lot more climbing. On reaching Upper Shirley Road I chose to make the detour down the road a short way to Shirley Windmill, a tower mill built in 1854 to replace an earlier mill that burnt down and now oddly located in the middle of a small modern housing estate. The mill stopped working in about 1890, but most of the original machinery, including its millstones, is still in place, and has been restored. On some days it is open to the public, today wasn’t one of them so I retraced my steps to rejoin the Loop.

Along Oaks Road I turned off into the woods and having worked out
which of the several paths was the correct one headed into the Addington
Hills. The path went up. Then it went up some more. Then it came out
from under the trees and turned into some shingly steps that went up
even more. Being a fat old bloke I didn’t get to the top without pausing
for breath.

I was really glad to reach the viewing platform at the top firstly for the far reaching views of Croydon’s towers and south London. The Crystal Palace transmitter tower was visible in the haze to the North. Secondly the viewing platform incorporates some seats. The Bovril flask came out again and I took a 10 minute break to look at the view. At one point two elderly ladies joined me on the viewing platform. They’d taken the nice level route from the nearby car park.

It was along that level route to the car park that I walked next before turning right by the isolated Chinese Restaurant and back into the woods, going up and down some rather more moderate slopes until reaching Coombe Lane tram stop. A little way along to the left I crossed Coombe Lane and entered the grounds of Heathfield House, taking a path through the woods and dropping down some steps to reach the pond near the house itself. A Grade II-listed Italianate Victorian villa at the top of Gravel Hill, it was once the home of industrialist Raymond Riesco who gifted it to the people of Croydon in 1964. Croydon council have been trying to sell it as a development opportunity on a 125-year lease. From the number of yellow petition posters in the area I think it’s fair to say that the people of Croydon are not happy about that plan. As I write this I see that the property has been pulled from the auction in what’s being described in the press as “an embarrassing U-turn by Mayor Jason Perry”.

Having walked around the pond I took the path back up again - yes the route just goes down and around the pond just to go back up again via an almost adjacent path - and through the landscaped grounds with an impressive Camellia tree next to the path. Crossing the car park I noted some vintage COVID Precautions signage still in place on the gate. Will future generations look on such remnants the way we look at ghost signs on buildings and pre-Warboys road signs?
From Heathfield left along Riesco Drive and into the Bramley Bank Nature Reserve, the way through this ridge top woodland being a little difficult to determine, the guide says keep on the main track by the left hand edge but nothing resembles a “main track”, about half way through the left hand edge turns 90 degrees to the left, and if there were any Loop markers they’re well hidden now. I emerged at the small patch of grass opposite the houses of Broadcoombe and followed the Loop markers into Littleheath Woods for a short distance before crossing the open space of Fallen Oak field where a couple with a dog asked me if there were any “sheep farms or anything around here”. Wrong person to ask mate 😀
Then it was back into Littleheath Woods and uphill again over the brow of a hill.

Near a water tower and comms mast the path turned right, became somewhat uneven, and wiggled its way through a tapering stretch of woodland past a playground to meet the A2022 Addington Road. Thank you if you were the truck driver who stopped to let me cross here rather than take the 200 yard detour via the crossing at the traffic lights.
The next 750 yards or so was along a back alley behind houses and across a couple of residential roads and that’s some good shit you’re smoking there miss. This brought me to the entrance to Selsdon Wood. Where the path went steeply uphill again. Or at least by this point in the day it seemed steep. The surface was also littered with washed out flints and tree roots to catch the tired and unwary. Down again to a right turn onto the old bridleway Baker Boy Lane through the ancient Puplet Wood and after another mile of stumbling over loose flints etc. I arrived next to the entrance to Farleigh Court Golf Club. (This section of the Loop goes around the golf course rather than through it which if you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll realise is frequently not the case.) I followed the path along the side of Old Farleigh Road before crossing it to Elm Farm, the crossing point here being a bit risky as it’s on a fast bend. Nearly got taken out by a Tesla 😒
The path between Elm Farm and Allesley Farm is narrow and I expect in the summer will be overgrown. It runs downhill (hooray!) and then along the edge of Mossy Hill Shaw with views over fields and woods to the north,

before going back uphill again (boo!) through the trees to then pass along the edge of a large field to a shiny new kissing gate erected in memory of a former chair of Croydon ramblers. Here the Loop turns left onto Kingswood Lane where there were a lot of horse riders heading into Kings Wood from the Equestrian Centre. The fella at the back rode head down scrolling on his phone while allowing what looked to me like a cart-horse he was on to take care of the navigation 😀
Kingswood Lane eventually morphed from paddocks to suburbia and at the junction with Limpsfield Road I completed Loop Section 4 by Hamsey Green Pond.

It was about 5pm and since I was still roughly three hours from home I celebrated completion with a can of beer and a sandwich from the Co-Op, sitting on a bench by the pond with the other dodgy-looking characters. Then I got the bus to South Croydon station. Of course Thameslink was in disarray so my trip back via Redhill meant in all I was out for nearly eleven and a half hours. I slept well.
London Loop Section 4 ✅
A Flickr Album with some more photos.
That's now Sections 1 to 15 done, about 99 miles out of the route distance of 154 (including station links).