Today, I continued the circumambulation of London which I started last week - and did a mile and a half of last week's walk again in order to save too many bus changes and main roads. As you can see, the route did not start in rural bliss, but the shopping centres were soon left behind, and within half a mile I was in flower meadows and walking along the Grand Union canal again - the Paddington branch this time. Less of a sense of remoteness than last week, but still very green and remarkably quiet. Lots and lots of flowers, and some wildlife, like the terrapin, which shouldn't be there at all.
But this flat start was not maintained, for although we dwellers near the Thames forget it, there are hills in London, mainly in the north. The two I 'climbed' today were Horsenden Hill, and Harrow. The school and village feel of Harrow is well known, but Horsenden was was a baby revelation to me. Its about 280 feet, and while it would be an exaggeration to say I noticed the increasing cold and lack of oxygen, it did give excellent views to the west and towards central London. Joking about the harsh climate of such great heights puts me in mind of G K Chesterton's wonderful fantasy, The Napoleon of Notting Hill - in which King Auberon designs warm robes for the snow bound land of North Kensington, and a thousand other delightful absurdities. It's short, but it's perfect, especially for anyone who knows the western half of London. But back to Horsenden Hill, with some views and a glance at the delightful oak woods.
The Post Office Tower is just visible in the centre of the horizon.
From Horsenden, I worked my way up to Harrow on the Hill, by way of Piggy Lane, a gloomy green lane in which I found a cuckoo pint - or lords and ladies - arum maculatum. This has lots of popular names which are pretty rude, and many imaginative ones which are not - often based on the flower, with its distinctive spathe and spadix, rather than the berries that I can show you. "Willy lily" is a fine name I learned from Flora Britannica only today!
On through Harrow, which Churchill famously entered on the basis of writing his name, the numer 1, and a full stop on the examination paper. Churchill is such a huge figure in British modern history, that we forget his fitful career - and Rhodes James' fine book, Churchill: A Study in Failure is an excellent account of the wilderness years before 1939.
Across Harrow's playing fields, and to South Kenton station through a golf course, where I noticed mature pods on the broom already. Although it is not at all in the modern taste, broom always makes me think of A Runnable Stag by John Davidson, a nineteenth century poet who was in my school anthology.
He sets the time of year for a stag hunt in Devon with these lovely lines:
"When the pods went pop
on the broom, green broom
And apples began to
be golden-skinned.."The rest of the poem is here.
My seven and a half miles complete, home by Tube, just making it before a tremendous thunderstorm which has cleared the air wonderfully.
Comments