A walk in the country

If you are looking for the HO HO HO hop click HERE

As those of you who read my blog regularly know, John (my husband) and I like to go walking or maybe it's hiking when we get the time. Although we live in London UK there are a vast number of walks available within the area. Not that long ago we complete a long distance route around London called the London LOOP - London Outer Orbital Path which circles the whole of London and covers a distance of around 150 miles. Obviously we did it in stages and because of work, family, other hobbies and other reasons such as bad weather it took quite a while to complete. Now we are walking a shorter route which once again circles London, the Capital Ring. This is only 78 miles long and goes through the suburbs of London so in some parts you are walking along roads but it also travel through parks, gardens and along the banks of rivers, canals and streams.

So on Saturday we set out on the 3rd section (for us) of this walk from Greenford to Hendon Central. The weather was beautiful, sunny but not too hot. The journey to Greenford on the tube was very long but I made good use of the time to catch up on some reading.

Once we left Greenford station it was a short walk to Paradise Fields Wetlands which was created on the site of a former Golf Course. A number of rare bird species nest 
there but we didn't see any on our walk. At the end of Paradise Fields we joined the Grand Union canal tow-path. From the bridge the canal looked very quiet.

As we walked we saw several families of Mallards. 

and several long boats went past us. This one was like a mobile garden centre as its roof was covered in pots and containers bursting with plants.

Just before we turned off from the canal we came across an area with a lot of moored boats. The weeping willow trees were beautiful.

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At Ballot Box Bridge we turned away from the canal and headed towards Horsenden Hill. The hill is 275 feet above sea level and gives great all round views of London . During World War I, the summit of the hill was a site of an anti-aircraft gun. Horsenden Hill was populated by iron age people 2,500 years ago and large amounts of pottery from that time has been found here.

I took the photo just down from the summit of the hill. With the eye you can make out landmarks but the camera doesn't pick them out.

This walk was a one of hills with Sudbury Hill next and then on to Harrow on the Hill.

Harrow on the Hill is the home of Harrow School which occupies most of the village. Harrow School was founded in 1572 by John Lyons, a local farmer and landowner. Harrow is one of Britain’s foremost public schools and  it has educated many well known people, including Winston Churchill, Pandit Nehru, Lord Byron, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Anthony 
Trollope. 

The buildings were beautiful. Non of the pupils were around as it is the summer holidays but the buildings were in use for short courses . Most of the students attending seemed to be international students.

These were just some of the buildings that caught my eye. We left Harrow on the Hill and Harrow School via their sports fields

The next part of the walk took us past Northwick park Hospital, which is huge and has even more building work being carried out. As we reached South Kenton we had walked only five and a half miles but because of the heat it felt much further and we were tired so we decided to stop at this point.  It was nice to sit on the tube and read my book on the journey back home.

On Monday and Tuesday I had to clear some work but today I managed some sewing and I'll tell you more about that tomorrow, I hope you are having a good week and you are finding time for sewing or other hobbies.

Lyndsey