June 1st
I got up early to do section 9 as the forecast was warm and sunny and I wanted to avoid the hottest part of the day. As it turned out the forecast was wrong, it was mostly cloudy but dry and with a cool breeze. Ideal really for walking ten miles. I got a bus, a train, and another train to Hampton Wick and made my way down to where the section starts near Kingston Bridge.
Kingston Bridge to Hatton Cross
The first bit from the bridge is just a bit of road walking but only a few hundred yards and through the metal gate into Church Grove Passage which leads into Bushy Park. Section 9 leads right the way across Bushy Park to Teddington and this is probably the nicest bit of the section, starting with traversing an open meadow that’s Skylark central so you are accompanied by their singing as you walk.
It’s also the busiest bit of section 9 especially today as it’s Bushy parkrun day and this corner is full of energetic, colourful people of every size and shape running, jogging, or plodding the main paths near Heron Pond. Now the “musical” accompaniment was someone rhythmically bashing what sounded like an old saucepan and yelling encouragement to the flagging parkrunners. I preferred the Skylarks.
I timed my crossing of the sweaty stream of bodies crowding the main path, passed the pond and carried on across Chestnut Avenue, carefully as the lycra-louts were out in peloton-style force, and on to the area called The Pheasantry Plantation, where I spotted an interloping heron.
I suppose he should have been at Heron Pond but perhaps he didn’t appreciate the saucepan player either. I was now into the Woodland Gardens where there was a welcome loo by the cafe. Dogs aren’t allowed in here so there’s an alternative route for loopers with dogs. The people just in front of me decided No Dogs Allowed didn’t apply if you picked it up and carried it through to the car park beyond 🙄
The path here wiggles its way through the gardens, under the trees and near the water and the birdsong here is mainly provided by London’s resident Ring Necked Parakeets, occasionally glimpsed in the canopy above. So for birdsong read loud, penetrating screeches 😀 Passing through two gates I entered the next, less busy part of the gardens, too late in the season for daffodils however.
I followed the path out of the gardens, through the trees past a pond to Cobblers Walk and then right and left to the wide open space where the deer roam, and along by the Longford River where indeed the deer were roaming. Well largely they were lying in the long grass pretending no one could see them.
Or trimming the lower branches of the trees to an impressive horizontal line at maximum deer-tongue height.
I passed out of the park through the large metal gate designed to keep deer in and traffic out and for the next quite a while it was back to pounding the pavements. Hampton Road, King’s Road, Connaught Road, Burton’s Road, over the railway to Shepperton and past Fulwell golf course to the busy Uxbridge Road. Then thankfully through a gate into more green space. Slightly muddy green space with a rough overgrown games pitch containing one set of miniature goalposts made from flaking blue-painted steel tubing. The day was warming up a bit and it was time to take off my long sleeved top. Squeezed down the alley between the golf centre car park and the sports centre car park and through a woodland to Staines Road. Back onto suburban streets again for a while.
At Hospital Bridge Road I crossed the River Crane and turned into Crane Park, under the very low subway under Great Chertsey Road, and follow the River Crane for a while, along muddy paths past the remains of the old gunpowder works, or the earthen banks that surrounded them at least. If you can spot them that is. I think this is them behind the wild Lime Bike.
A bit easier to spot, although not from the direction I was was walking, is the "Shot Tower”. The last remaining building from Hounslow Gunpowder Mills and thought to be used to make musket balls by dropping molten lead from a great height into cold water. Except it might not have been. It was quite likely a windmill, there are millstones next to it and gunpowder was milled in a similar fashion to flour but with larger bangs if things went awry. The door was open but I didn’t have time go and climb the tower today. Ian visited earlier this year though and you can read more about the tower here.
I carried on through Crane Park and out onto the Hanworth Road where I was able to pick up something to eat at the shops, which I’d forgotten to do in Hampton Wick, for lunchtime was approaching. As was Hounslow Heath. Up Hanworth Road past the cemetery with it’s boarded up chapel, over the Waterloo to Reading railway, and left through a recreation ground, through a strip of woodland, out of the Borough of Richmond and into that of Hounslow. Up onto Hounslow Heath, a nature reserve now the haunt of Adders (see warning notices) but no longer of Highwaymen (at least, there are no warning notices). Sit on a bench to picnic on felafel wrap and watch the jets pass overhead.
Those planes will feature prominently on the rest of this walk as it passes under the flight path of Heathrow’s southern runway (27L), at times they will be only 300 feet above and I was taken back to my schooldays at Springwell where lessons were punctuated by pauses every few minutes to allow them to pass until the teacher could be heard again. Also to my childhood back garden where in the summer (which of course was always sunny back then) you could see a line of as many as 5 planes coming in to land, two going away from you, one directly above, and the lights of two more approaching you. When the Boeing 747 came in it was so much bigger than the others it almost looked as if the wheels would touch the chimney pots. I digress. Back to Section 9.
The path takes a zig-zag route off the heath through woods and along brambly, narrow paths along a gully next to a high bank, over a footbridge and eventually to the River Crane again. I had to reference the directions and check against GPS on the phone quite a bit to follow this section. Crossing over the Crane I turned left and followed it along its southern bank through Brazil Mill Woods, where there is occasionally what looks like evidence of former industrial use of the river.
It should be hard to take a wrong turn while following a river but I still managed to come out on a street unexpectedly and had to retrace my steps 50 yards to regain the correct route 🙄 eventually bringing me to Staines Road, crossing it by a clothing donation container wrapped in hazard tape and “Environmental Crime Scene” notices. No idea, there weren’t any details. I crossed over in a break in the traffic and entered Donkey Wood for the final stretch. Through Donkey Wood the route still follows the River Crane but along one of its marshier stretches so there are a number of little footbridges and a long section of boardwalk, the boards made of recycled plastic but firmly supported, unlike a stretch near home which is disturbingly bouncy. Passing under a road bridge and then up some steps onto it, it was immediately clear that I was now standing directly under the runway 27L flightpath 🙆 I crossed the river, turned left through the gap in the fence and along Causeway Walk through the woods with the River Crane on my left until I came out on the A30 Great South West Road where section 9 ends, opposite the start of Section 10 where I’d been back on April 19th, although the impenetrable barrier of the Great South West Road means that’s nearly a mile away on foot.
I turned right and walked to Hatton Cross Station, got the tube to Heathrow Terminal 5 and two buses and an hour and three quarters later was home with the kettle on.
London Loop Section 9 ✔︎
My Section 9 Flickr Album is here.
The Inner London Ramblers guide to Section 9 (PDF) is here.
