London LOOP Sections 12 and 13 – Uxbridge to Moor Park via Harefield West 29th January 2012

Not being creatures of habits, we decide to eschew the delights of the London transport system and opt for a drive around the M25 to our start point at Uxbridge. As mentioned before, there are sometimes benefits attached to this means of transport. Public transport on Sundays, especially in the winter, is less reliable than during weekdays. In theory the M25 and other roads are quieter on a Sunday. We calculate that we will save a lot of precious daylight walking if we drive to Uxbridge from Romford, walk to Moor Park Station and then take the tube back to Uxbridge.

All is not well with the M25 when we encounter a traffic jam. I can understand a Sunday in July or August being jammed with holiday-makers, but not February. However, our gloom is lifted once we realise and pass the wide load causing the problem. I suppose it is better that a load takes up 2 lanes of the M25 on a Sunday in February, than a Monday morning.

Once we arrive near our start point just outside Uxbridge, we make our way to the Swan and Bottle public house, where the next leg of our journey begins. The Grand Union Canal looks pretty much as it did last time. But then canals have a timeless look about them. We make our way up to Uxbridge Lock, admiring all the narrowboats gathered together. Not too many weekend commodores out sipping their gin and tonics. Then again, even a warm February day is probably too chilly for most of the owners.

Shortly the blue ribbon of the canal passes under the A40. This is probably the most enjoyable crossing of all the London arterial roads. Soon the roar of the M40 is behind us and we are into one of those stretches of canal that could be set in the 18th or 19th Centuries. Refreshingly a local gravel quarry has elected to use the canal to transport its product at this point. London abounds with Thames river gravels that are scraped out to form the myriad of lakes used by local speed boaters, birders and country park walkers. The majority of gravel is probably distributed by lorry, so it is all the nicer to find a narrowboat moored at the wharf awaiting a load of local gravel.

The age of commercial narrowboats has long passed, but a handful of enthusiasts still love to eek a living out of delivering cargoes of coal, diesel and gravel. Perhaps this is just such a one. Most canals are utilised by pleasure-boaters, so it is particularly nice to see a working boat. A little further up the canal we encounter another working boat. This one however is not a cargo carrier.

This large boat stands adjacent to the tow-path but is carrying a second boat, a narrowboat, in the bowels of its hold area. It is a dry-dock boat. This large craft has the odd distinction of being designed to be sunk. Once sunk smaller boats are able to float into the confines of its hull through a hinged stern. This is then closed and the sunken dry-dock boat is re-floated by pumping out the water. Hey-Presto! Our narrowboat is now sitting in dry-dock on two lumps of timber, ready for its below- water steelwork to be worked on. Brilliant!

A dry-dock boat

At this juncture we have the option of heading off to Colne Valley Park Visitor Centre to sample the delights of their refreshment and toilet facilities. Being well stocked with food provisions and light in waste water, we eschew this diversion opting for the promised delights of Fran’s Tea Room at Denham Deep Lock. Alas Fran is not at home, or at least not serving tea. We do however espy a couple in the back garden studiously ignoring each other, but worse than this they appear selfishly ignorant of our desire for a hot beverage. We suspect they may have had a falling out. However, we don’t take it personally and proceed with the main purpose of our passage, past their charming retreat – walking The Loop. I suspect business in February is at best light and doubtless is the cause of many a tiff in a tea room.

Soon we discover the promised Bridge Number 182 and cross it to the other side. I don’t know how a ton or more of 18th Century canal-boat-towing horse-flesh negotiated the steep slope of the bridge in days gone-by, but it certainly presented my aging calves with a real challenge

On the opposite bank of the canal we soon encounter a muddy path alongside which we find what appears to be some sort of grave. Perhaps of one of the lost souls lost in the quagmire, which lies in all directions. More likely a beloved dog which perished chasing ducks across yet another gravel pit lake and bit off significantly more than it could chew, drowning due to over-enthusiasm and a flawed doggy paddle technique.

A muddy path and the dog grave?!

The sea of mud reveals itself to be a poorly maintained track with a deep duckweed-strewn ditch to the left hand side. The thick grass-like appearance of the duckweed at one time gave rise to the charming name “Jenny Green Teeth”. Many a small child would have been warned to beware of her in areas where ditches abound. Those walking on her lawn were sure to fall victim to her clutches!

“Jenny Green Teeth”

A little further along, adjacent to the canal which lies to our left, we come across the wreckage of a boat. In the 18th and 19th Centuries the canals would have been the motorways of Britain. Inevitably some of the boats would have fallen into disrepair and been dumped by the side of the canal. The remains of these casualties are commonplace. How strange that they were not recycled, as we are so often told was one of the virtues of our forebears. The rotting corpses of lorries littering motorway verges is non-existent today, so why so many discarded boats adjacent to their predecessors? Perhaps we are justified in the comment “It would never happen in my day” (unless you had a SORN statement of course).

The wreckage of a boat

Drawn to the canal I gaze across to the far tow path, where two beautifully turned out narrowboats are moored. Looking back towards our muddy track I can’t help but wonder why the LOOP follows our muddy track. Perhaps in the summer this is a beautiful diversion, but in the wintertime I would recommend staying with the canal.

A brick rail viaduct crosses our path before encountering Harfield Marina. As we skirt the marina we come across yet another rotting hulk. This time the deceased is a large wooden hulled vessel. Evidence for the length of time she has sat rotting here can be found from the age of the trees currently growing through her shattered timbers. The current vertical living trees stand in stark juxtaposition to the long dead horizontal wood of this boat from a bygone age.

The Rotting hulk, with the tree growing out of it

Eventually we arrive back at the Grand Union Canal and rejoin the towpath, heading north. We pass Black Jacks Mill a beautifully located bed and breakfast establishment sandwiched between the canal and a watercourse which we are told has been providing water power to a mill on this site since the 11th Century.

At the end of this section we pause to admire the opulent canal-side residences with their boat moorings. It is interesting to note that despite the inflated bank balances of the residents, the canal still attracts all the flotsam and jetsam of canals the world over. A discarded mid-February Christmas Tree floats forlornly in mid canal.

Opulent canal-side residences with boat moorings & Christmas Tree floats mid canal

We decide to press on towards Moor Park, at the end of the next section of LOOP. This entails leaving the canal as the LOOP heads due west. As we leave the canal we can see an enterprising canoe club has suspended slalom poles across where the torrent of river water enters the canal at this point.

Section 13

As directed by the LOOP directions we go along Summerhouse Lane for a hundred yards or so and turn right into Belleview Terrace. This takes us up a steep track before we turn left at the kennels and into mature woodland (Park Wood). The day is sunny, with the winter sunshine a welcome companion as we climb the well worn track through the woods and across meadowland before emerging onto Hill End Road.

The village pub has long closed and been turned into a privately owned nursery. How many small village pubs have called “last orders” for the final time over the last 30 years? The crackdown on drink-driving back in the late 70’s did for many. More recently, smoking restrictions have had an impact, as has access to cheap alcohol from supermarkets.

We may lament the loss of these focal points of village life, but times change and many of us prefer to stay at home with our oversized TVs, satellite dishes and DVD players. One wonders how such a small local community could possibly have served a pub. Once again this building is a focal point for the community, a place where up to 50 small children can learn through their play and their parents can form friendships with each other, as they pick their little darlings up each day, or take turns to send out birthday party invitations.

The route takes us right, up Plough Lane to the open countryside at White Heath Farm. The rolling countryside beckons us to stretch our legs across open fields, to the jeers of farmyard geese, which have picked up our scent.

Open country and the remnants of an old laid hedge

Once again the LOOP disappears across country, away from human habitation. The only obvious signs of human activity are those representative of his agrarian past.

First we pass an old laid hedge. When it was laid sometime in the last century, older stems or trunks would have been removed by the hedge layer, leaving a few younger and more flexible stems that would have grown since the last cut and layering. These younger stems would have been woven between uprights, giving a newly laid hedge, which was to all intents and purposes horizontal. Over the coming years these young stems would have sprouted new vertical growth to give a criss-cross of stems and a hedge well suited to preventing the sheep getting into the meadow and the cows into the corn. The current hedge is long overdue further attention, being comprised of a loose collection of 30 year old trunks of little value for retaining livestock.

Next up we encounter what appears to be a farm machinery museum. Peering over the fence we can make out all manner of venerable tractors, cultivators and other such like. However, it appears to be a private collection since no-where can we find a sign broadcasting the delights to be found within. Perhaps one day someone will depart this life and leave the machines in their will. Then some lucky rural life museum will suddenly find itself the beneficiaries of some delightful antiquities.

Farm machinery museum

The next bit of human activity is not favourable to those of us discovering outer London on foot. We follow a road which when built doubtless was only used by horse and cart. Today it is inhabited by speeding cars. The absence of a footway gives cause for concern as we hasten along this walkers nightmare with all due haste.

With some relief we complete this nerve wracking section of the LOOP and are back into the tranquillity of open fields, with not another person in sight, when coming in our direction we espy a man with a whole pack of hounds. Not being doggy people we quicken our pace through the field of grass and overshoot the footpath into the woods. However, this is not the first or last time we will deviate from our route and it is not long before we realise our error and backtrack to the obscured finger-post and the correct route.

In the distance I can make out the sterility of yet another London fringe golf course, which the LOOP guide writer thinks fit to tell us about. Much more interesting is the boggy track through the thick woodland in which we now find ourselves.

Anyone thinking The LOOP is probably just a pleasant stroll along well metalled tracks has got another thing coming. In Bishops Wood any walker faces the prospect of having their boots ripped off their feet by the clinging mud. It makes walking hard work and certainly extends the duration of our promenade around the capital.

Eventually we find a smaller, less boggy track off to our left, which takes us past a winding stream and slowly uphill. Our solitude is suddenly interrupted by the unwelcome sight and sound of a motorbike and 2 quad bikes. Watching these monsters (and the machines they bestride), grinding their ways through the thick mud of the path makes me want to beret them for their folly. There is little surprise that the path through these boggy woods is barely passable to walkers.

Following the directions and map provided by the LOOP website we find the requisite electricity pylons before coming out at Batchworth Heath and the A404 London Road. There is little sign today of the extensive area of heath land that doubtless dominated the view back in Dick Turpin’s day. Today this mugger of travellers is something of a legend, but it is worth considering that he was primarily a poacher of deer in his early life, followed by a period of burglary, before he became better known as a highwayman. The Old Greene Manne pub claims to have a close association with Turpin.

The Old Greene Manne pub

A little further down the road is the Prince of Wales pub. The LOOP follows a footpath opposite. We follow the suggestion of the LOOP guide and visit the cast iron coal post at the roadside. However, to do so is to risk ones life as the busy A404 traffic zips past.

Returning to the footpath we head away from the roar of the A404 traffic and return once again to the tranquillity of the countryside. The path here is unusual in that at one time it was paved with substantial stone slabs. For some reason these have been removed and left piled up next to the path. It was only a year or so later, when considering the purchase of some similar slabs for my garden, that I discovered what their true worth was. Doubtless, if Turpin was alive today he would be loading them all onto the back of a lorry and selling them to a garden centre for cash.

As the February sky darkens we find ourselves at the prestigious Moor Park Estate, where those with more money than anyone should be allowed to have are to be found tucked up inside well appointed houses, complete with sweeping driveways populated by some of the better known brands of luxury car. These garden suburbs are amongst the least attractive places traversed by the LOOP. Their owners have everything they want close at hand including three golf courses and their own London Underground Station. Amazing what selling a few packets of soap will get you!

Moor Park Estate

From Moor Park Tube Station we take a train to Uxbridge. The chill of the February night greets us as we exit Uxbridge Station and return to our waiting car and yet another drive back to Romford. One more leg of our circumnavigation completed. Just two more sections left. It occurs to me that we’ll soon have to find a new challenge.