Adventures with Kake

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 1 December 2007, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 25 column F (Ponders End Station) to page 26 column K (Chingford Station, give or take).

It turned out that much of this was actually on the London Loop. Again.

My plan had been to walk around King George's Reservoir until I ran out of footpath. The walk along the reservoir was quite pleasant; there were trees and swans and amusing signs. However, when I rounded the top and prepared to walk back down the eastern edge, I found that the footpath that was clearly marked on my A-Z was blocked off with hazard tape. However! There was a very clear gravel path leading off vaguely northeastwards, and a sign proclaiming it to be the way to Chingford Station — three miles, which sounded about right. It all got rather organised-looking at this point; not just the nice gravel path, but benches every fifty yards and even picnic tables. This, it seems, was the bottom edge of Lea Valley Park.

About 500 m later, I reached Sewardstone Road. This was the part I hadn't been looking forward to, since it was basically a long trek down a main-ish road, and Google's satellite images had suggested that there wasn't much pavement involved. (My previous footpath plans would have had me coming out onto this road about a kilometre further south than I actually did.) I was momentarily cheered by seeing a sign for "Freddie's Free House", but it turned out that this was in fact an ex-pub, not a pub. I did see a foreign bus, though, and what seemed to be some kind of llama petting zoo. And of course ended up in a pub.

Flickr photoset.

Next up: I've actually finished the top row now, but I'm going to try to keep a continuous line, so I'm walking off-map from Chingford Station around to Chigwell Station. I had to purchase an extra map (from Stanfords) — it was very exciting.

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 10 October 2007, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 22 column B (Oakwood Station) to page 23 column K (Enfield Town Station).

Did my second A-Z walk yesterday. The first one ended at Oakwood Station, which is reasonably convenient for me to get to, so that's where I started the second.

My original plan was to head pretty much straight across to Ponders End Station via a few pubs; but once I'd made a little Google map to help me figure out the route, I decided it would be silly to go all the way up there and not take the opportunity to wander around Trent Park. So I did. I got a bit lost, several times, due to entering the park slightly to the west of where I'd intended to, and to thinking that the line between Oakwood and Cockfosters points north, which it blatantly doesn't, and I knew it doesn't because I walked parallel to it the other week, sigh. But it wasn't particularly serious getting-lost, and I'm fairly sure I knew exactly where I was about half of the time. So far, so fun. (Squirrel count: approximately 15, all grey.)

Not wanting to have to retrace my footsteps at any point, or go in too obvious a circle, I'd decided that the best route would be straight up through the park, circle around the university campus, head up to Hadley Road, and then get back down to Enfield Road (and the Jolly Farmers pub for lunch) via this track marked here on streetmap. Now, my A-Z only marks the first and last thirds of this track, but streetmap definitely implies there's a way through. Still, when I got to Vicarage Farm there was no sign of footpath markings, and enquiry at the farm revealed only that there was "probably a way through to Oakwood down there, I think that's the way the police go, yes, just climb over that little fence".

Over the little fence was a field of uncut grass, with vague signs of previous pedestrians heading south; so I followed them. I quickly arrived at a tarmac track which led south ahead of me, but which obviously led back up to the farm in the other direction. At this point I realised that the people at the farm had probably misunderstood the direction I wanted to go in, since otherwise why would they have diverted me over the fence and through the grass? But I decided to press on and see where the track went.

It went on for a little way, then petered out, leaving me halfway along the edge of a field. I didn't really have much option other than to carry on walking along the sides of the fields in the same direction. I think I might have been trespassing at this point, though it could be argued that the people I'd spoken to earlier had given me permission. I'm quite sure I wasn't on a footpath, especially since I had to climb over a locked gate at the other end, when I finally did reach Enfield Road.

Although the main pub I wanted to visit was the Wonder, since it has an RGL entry by merit of being in the Good Beer Guide, it doesn't do food. Happily, Beer in the Evening came to the rescue, with the Jolly Farmers. A nice enough pub, decent food, real ale, and very friendly staff. Here I made the tactical error of ordering sausages and mash and attempting to finish it. This was silly because (a) I can never finish pub portions of sausage and mash; (b) I had a fair bit more walking to do; and (c) the pub has a very sensible policy of offering smaller portions of selected dishes, which I could easily have taken advantage of.

So the next part of the walk was rather slow, as I was digesting. It also wasn't very interesting — just streets of houses, basically, though I did divert in order to get a photo of Gordon Hill Station. By the time I got to the Wonder I was quite ready for another rest. Unfortunately I didn't feel very welcome there. I'd known in advance that it was going to be a bit of an old man's pub, which I'm quite fine with, and it may have been partly my own fault for asking to take a photo of the beer pumps, but I really did feel as though the landlady and the other customers were quite perplexed by my presence, and I had rather a feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there. So I didn't stay long, and I couldn't quite face the possibility of having the same experience in one of the other pubs I'd been planning to try out, so I cut the walk short and came home via Enfield Town Station.

There is a photoset on Flickr and a slightly noisy GPS trace on Google Maps (second half of the route only, alas, due to the app getting confused). I also sent a few SMSes to the KakeWalk Twitter account.

Next one should have been from Ponders End Station round the reservoir and home via Chingford Station, but I think instead it will be Enfield Town to Ponders End via some pubs. I didn't get a photo of Enfield Town yesterday, since it had roadworks in front. Hopefully that'll be over by time I get around to the next walk.

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 22 September 2007, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

OK, it is time to reveal what I've been up to since January.

I have been Tubewalking. I don't think anyone guessed what I was up to, even though there was a bit of a giveaway trail on Flickr and RGL. I did have a bit of a near miss when hoshuteki commented that some of my recent photos looked familiar because he'd been on a Tube walk in the area. Sorry for not being straight with you right there and then, but I really wanted to catch up with the official community before I actually told people what I was doing.

So, yeah. I caught up. I started walk 1 (Acton Town to Chiswick Park) on Friday 19 January this year, and finished walk 43 (Charing Cross to Embankment) this afternoon. The next walk is Chesham to Chalfont and Latimer, and unless something very very important gets in the way, I will be doing it with the tubewalkers on Sunday 30 September.

I kept notes on some of the walks, and even got as far as writing some of them up. For some of the walks, I took the scenic route; for others I took the route that intersected places that needed RGL photos; for still others I took the route that went past a good pub; and for the rest I just took the quickest route from start to finish. It has been an awful lot of fun, and I hope it's going to be even more fun when I'm walking the remaining 139 walks with everyone else.

This does mean that I'm going to want a new walking challenge to do on my own, since (a) I am an antisocial bugger really, and I like walking on my own, and (b) the official tubewalks don't happen as often as I like to walk. Happily, I have already figured one out.

I'm going to walk across the A-Z. All of it. The regular size, not the mini one. Every page.

This will involve crossing London ten times, for a minimum mileage of around 225 miles. I think that should keep me busy for a while.