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.

 

 

 

My Flickr Year 2024

 People like Pacers ☺

Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works

4th November

 

Back on 21st September I paid a visit to Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works as part of Open House London. I decided at the time that coming back for the full tour which includes running the Universal Testing Machine was a thing I really should do. They run full tours twice a month so I booked for Sunday 4th November. The testing works tours are  run by an all volunteer crew and the whole set up is friendly, slightly nerdy (it’s engineering after all) and informative. It runs like a well oiled machine. Which is to say that things don’t necessarily go to plan but they know what to do to coerce the machines into behaving themselves  😀

 

After a brief introduction and a safety briefing (everything you might lean on is dirty, the floor is uneven, don’t put your fingers into anything unless invited to do so) we all went down to the basement (mind your head) for an introductory video followed by a demonstration of a Hounsfield Tensometer testing a piece of steel wire (coat hanger) under tension until it became two pieces of steel wire. In a clever combination of old and new tech the Hounsfield machine was connected to a Raspberry Pi  to record the test results live and display them on a big screen.

 

 

 

 Visitors were then divided into two groups for logistical reasons (there’s limited physical space in parts of this old building) for demos of various other testing machines in the collection, breaking more bits of metal and other materials along the way. Then everyone gathered back in the main room for the highlight of the two and a half hour tour, a test run of Kirkaldy’s huge Universal Testing Machine which occupies most of the ground floor. How the machine works was explained, a thick steel test piece fitted into the machine and hydraulic pressure applied. After a couple of false starts caused by the test piece slipping in the wedges that gripped it in the machine a successful run was completed with a bang. See the video below for the moment that the test piece gave up at a bit over 18 tonnes tensile force.

 

 

 

I had an enjoyable afternoon and I’d recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in engineering, history, or breaking things. Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works is easy to get to being in Bankside, a short walk from Blackfriars station and close to Tate Modern. For more information and to book tickets check out their website here.

 

 
View Larger Map

 

 

New Boots

As the season turned to Autumn it became apparent that the soles of my walking boots and particularly the heels were wearing to the point of “wouldn’t pass an MOT”. Not so bad in the dry but a couple of slippery moments on recent walks got me thinking that if I didn’t do something about it soon I was going to end up sitting on my arse in the mud at least and possibly worse now I’m of an age when falling over isn’t funny. 

Ideally I wanted to replace them with a new pair the same as the existing. So I checked the Decathlon web site. Couldn’t find them in the current range. By chance I found them in the “offers” section as last chance, end of line and it showed 1 pair available in my size in the nearest branch. No time to waste then and since there was something else I wanted as well that was supposed to be in stock off I went.

And up and down the walking footwear aisle I went, several times to no avail. Oh well. I spent 20 minutes or so trying on the other offerings of full-height waterproof* walking boots before settling on a comfortable pair in boring all-black. Then as I headed for the till I found an “on sale” rack of footwear several aisles away from the other footwear and right there was the pair I’d come for. Quick swap, happy days. Never did find the other thing I went for though.

Just been up across country to the village for milk and bread and to “christen” them. Very comfortable, no breaking in required. Feet and arse dry 👍

Ready for the next trek.

*As an aside how can you describe boots as waterproof when they don’t have a bellows tongue? There was one pair on offer which though comfortable would have resulted in soggy socks if you stepped in any puddle deeper than 2”. 

London Loop Section 2

Old Bexley to Petts Wood

 

Looking for a shortish Loop section to do in October as the daylight hours reduce and one which wasn’t too involved to get to and from by train I settled on this section through former-Kent. It’s mostly green with few road bits, follows a pleasant stretch of the River Cray for a while and later on is mostly in woodland. It was a very nice walk and that was helped no end by having picked a brilliantly sunny Friday on which to do it.

 

Section 2 starts right alongside Bexley railway station, up Tanyard Lane and through the arch under the Dartford Loop Line before emerging to run along the edges of first Burnt Ash Hockey Club and then Bexley Cricket Club.

 

 

 

 Then it climbs gently up between the open fields of Upper College Farm, which is a landfill site in an old gravel working but you wouldn’t guess from looking at it. The cattle in the adjacent field were all lying down so obviously hadn’t got the memo about the weather forecast. Down the other side of the hill I took a left past Bexley Pumping Station into the woods to a narrow footbridge over the River Cray where I had to wait for the oncoming gaggle of schoolgirls armed with compasses, maps, and sheets of A4 and with “Sir” trailing along at the back. There were several of these groups out doing some sort of field work or map reading exercise and they couldn’t have picked a better day for it.

 

 

 

 What followed next was a really pleasant walk alongside the clear flowing waters of the River Cray through Footscray Meadows, relatively peaceful save for the chattering of the schoolgirl groups, to Five Arch Bridge over which they passed leaving me to carry on to Pennyfarthing Bridge  meeting only the occasional rambler or dog-walker. I’d have paused for a picnic lunch along here but the only benches were in the shade and therefore still too damp for comfort.

 

 

 

 Crossing Pennytfarthing Bridge, so called because it has one large and one small arch over the River Cray, I passed All Saints Church and out onto the first significant bit of road walking of the section, through Foots Cray village centre. As I crossed the busy crossroads of the A211 and A224 roads in the middle of Foots Cray I got a phone call from an old work mate. I sat on a handy bench by the traffic lights to talk with him and congratulate him on his recent transfer into idle retirement and so that’s where I ended up having my picnic lunch. Not the most scenic spot but at least it was a dry comfortable seat. Fortified by ham sandwiches I continued through the streets of Foots Cray, now sans jumper as it was actually warm enough for shirt-sleeves, emerging onto the recreation ground and past Cray Wanderers FC then between some allotments and the backs of the houses to enter a small woodland. The path climbed through this to emerge into Sidcup Place park.

 

 

 

 The way ahead to follow the Loop isn’t too clear on the ground at this point (it’s not the obvious path in the above photo) but it’s vaguely up, along the right hand side of the open space, trough the line of trees and then sort of head right-ish towards Sidcup Place house. If there are any Loop way marks here I didn’t see them which was actually unusual along this Section. Anyway I found the large London Loop Sidcup Place information sign and turned left then right to pass the grand house and walled gardens to reach the A222 Chislehurst Road.

 

 

 

 A short way south along the Chislehurst Road lie the obstacles of Queen Mary’s Hospital, Frognal and the roaring A20 Sidcup Bypass trunk road. Fortunately here the way marking is good as the route makes it’s slightly tortuous way down ramps, up steps, over bridges etc. to get to the far side of the road to Dover but once across you reach Scadbury Nature Reserve and delve into Little Wood.

 

 

 

 I continued through the woods making a short loop off the main route to see Scadbury Moated Manor House, seeing few other walkers and the odd bear. Scadbury Manor goes back to the 13th century taking its name from the de Scathebury family who later sold it to the Walsinghams, wealthy London merchants close to the royal household. This is the Walsingham family which provided Henry VIII with a head gaoler and Elizabeth I with a spymaster. After the civil war they were a bit skint despite staying on the winning side and sold the estate on. There’s a history of Scadbury here.

 

 

 

 Crossing the busy A208 St. Paul’s Cray Road, not without some risk to life, I entered Petts Wood. Part of Petts Wood is owned by the National Trust and contains a couple of interesting memorials, the better of the two being the sundial memorial to Chislehurst builder William Willett who campaigned for the introduction of Daylight Saving hours, the idea having occurred to him while riding near Petts Wood on a summer morning in 1905 when he noticed how many of the window blinds and shutters were still closed well after sunrise. The sundial is “set” to GMT+1 (BST) and the Latin inscription translates as "The hours Do Not Count Except In The Summer” or “I only count the Summer hours” depending who you ask. Daylight savings was introduced in 1916 due to the need to save energy during the Great War but by then Willett had died of the flu.

 

 

 

 The other memorial is to Colonel Francis Edlmann a former owner of the land who helped protect it from development and eventually led to it being sold to the NT by subsequent owners and namedas the Edlmann Memorial Wood. On the far side of the wood the Loop turns right alongside the Chatham Main Line railway before crossing the Kyd Brook on a wooden footbridge. The Kid Brook here being just a tiny stream running between the trees before ducking into a culvert under the railway.

 

 

 

Next follows a high footbridge accessed, slowly at this point, via many steps to cross the Chatham Main Line railway followed by another to cross the single track Chislehurst to St Mary Cray Line and then a little way into Towncourt Wood I came to the entrance to Jubilee Country Park and the end of Section 2.

 

London Loop Section 2 ✓

 

Another half a mile brought me to Petts Wood station, the train home and a welcome fish and chips supper.

 

There are a lot more photos in my London Loop Section 2 Flickr Album. 

 

 

 

London Loop Section 5

Hamsey Green to Coulsdon South

 

This six and a half mile section is largely across level ground but with some steep slopes where it crosses a couple of valleys. It was actually quite a pleasant ramble, not too long, mostly on firm surfaces, no overgrown paths, and with a smattering of points of interest along the way. I got a bus from South Croydon station to the section start at Hamsey Green which isn’t as rural as the name suggests, then walked up Tithepit Shaw Lane for about 400 yards and at the Loop signpost out onto the Sanderstead to Whyteleafe Countryside area.

 

 

 

 This was mostly level open country with intermittent bands of trees but eventually reached Riddlesdown and dropped steeply into the valley and joining an old Roman road, Riddlesdown Road, now a trackway which crosses the East Grinstead railway line before reaching the A22 Godstone Rd. Crossing the A22 I passed through a small commercial area then crossed over the Purley & Caterham railway line on a pedestrian bridge and climbed up the other side of the valley along residential streets to a bench at the top of New Barn Lane which has a good view back across the valley.

 

 

 

 This would have been a good spot to stop and eat my packed lunch except for the guy in the adjacent garden cutting concrete blocks with a petrol disc cutter so instead I carried on up the 83 steps through Hawkhurst Wood and on to Kenley Common, where I was disappointed not to find a bench.

 

I took a short diversion onto the former RAF Kenley airfield and watched some gliders being launched using a winch and a long rope. In the 1980s I went gliding at Lasham Airfield in Hampshire and we were given the option of winch launching or for a small extra fee being towed up by a powered aircraft. We all chose the latter since that way you started off higher up and got a longer flight. Seeing the steep angle the glides were launched at here at Kenley I’m doubly sure that was the right choice!

 

 

 

 I left the airfield and walked down Golf Rd. - unusually that’s the nearest section 5 gets to a golf course - and to the edge of Couldson Common as the route makes its way around the west side of RAF Kenley. They don’t seem to do convenient benches in this part of Surrey so I eventually ate my sandwiches perched on a handy boundary marker stone near the Norman Fisher Observatory with its two small white domes for astronomical telescopes.

 

 

 

 The gliders from Kenley passed very low over my lunch spot. It’s surprising how much noise a glider makes when it passes low over your head but without any forewarning sound so I never managed to get what would have made great a photo 😞

 

From the observatory I carried on along narrow lanes and on to Couldson Common proper, passing The Fox pub and the southernmost point on the London LOOP before getting to Happy Valley. This is not the same Happy Valley as that featured in the BBC TV Series which is much further north. I doubt this one gets it’s name for the same reason (The name "Happy Valley" is what local police in the Calder Valley call the area because of its drug problem) but who knows 😀

 

 

 

 In the above photo the London LOOP crosses the valley by dropping down on the path to the left then climbing steeply up to the trees on the far side before turning right to meet the path that goes straight on here. I don’t know why this pointless dog-leg is included but I followed it anyway while thinking that the direct path was probably easier. Whichever path you take you enter the sinister-sounding Devil’s Den Woods and climb steadily to emerge on Farthing Downs near the car park and Public Toilets. Just to prove that the age of miracles is not past the latter were actually open!

 

 

 

 From here the route runs along the length of Farthing Downs parallel to but separate from the road with far-reaching views to both sides. It was pretty quiet and peaceful on a Thursday afternoon in October but I’ll bet it’s not like that on a Summer weekend! From the high points of the ridge you can see central Croydon’s high-rise buildings, the radio masts at Crystal Palace, and the towers of the City of London. Including of course the distinctive spike of The Shard because 14 miles isn’t far enough away to avoid seeing this 21st century Orthanc. 

 

 

 

 From the end of Farthing Downs it’s not far through the streets to Coulsdon South station, the end of Section 5 and the start of Section 6 which I completed back in August. I caught a bus back to South Croydon to catch a train to Redhill where I had a long wait because of course GWR cancelled my intended train home. Plus ca change 🙄

 

 

 

 As ever there are more photos in my London LOOP Section 5 Flickr Album