Adventures with Kake

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 13 March 2009, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 26 column C (Brookshill) to page 26 column A and beyond (Northwood Hills Station, eventually).

As mentioned, I put the A-Z walks on hold over the winter, since I'd reached a fairly rural area and I wanted to wait until the days were a bit longer so I could enjoy them properly. Anyway, I now declare it officially Spring in England, since I did the first A-Z walk of the year yesterday.

The previous walk ended at a bus stop on Brookshill, a little south of Harrow Weald Common, so that's where this one started, with a pleasant stroll across some farmland and down to the Uxbridge Road. Top marks to the landowners here — they'd put helpful signs wherever the route of the public footpath might have been in doubt.

An uneventful distance west along the Uxbridge Road next, with a stopoff to photograph Hatch End Station, and another to sample a half of beer in the Moon and Sixpence, and then a cutoff north onto a section of the London Loop, where I managed to fall over in the mud; luckily, after I'd got through Pinner Wood, I found a kind homeowner who let me borrow his garden hose to sluice myself off a bit.

I squelched my way down Pinner Hill and onto Joel Street, where I sneaked into the William Jolle, hiding my still-muddy bits, to meet amuchmoreexotic and mjg59. While we were enjoying the decent enough range of beers, I spotted a huge chunk of mud that I'd overlooked, so popped into the ladies' to wash my trousers off properly and dry them under the hand drier. There are now three Northwood Hills residents who've seen me in my knickers.

We followed this with a good dinner at Yummy Tai Chi, and a couple more pints (with accompanying Bollywood videos) at the Northwood Hills, and then headed back home on the Metropolitan Line.

At time of writing, Google is refusing to update its cache of the KML file showing the full route so far, but here's one showing yesterday's route alone, and here's the Flickr photoset.

Next up: I've officially finished the second row of the A-Z map now, but in order to keep a continuous line (and sample a couple of Good Beer Guide pubs) I'll be walking from Northwood Hills Station to Harefield.

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 23 March 2008, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 26 column K (Chingford Station) to page 37 column K (Chigwell Station).

So after an enormous break of over three months, I resumed the A-Z walks on Monday 17 March 2008. (One major reason for the hiatus was that I'd been doing a different kind of exploring — visiting a particular area and wandering around circularly rather than linearly. I did e.g. Brockley, Sydenham, and Ilford.) caramel_betty happened to have some leave days that needed taking, so he joined me on this one. This wasn't a "real" A-Z walk, but rather a "fill in" one to get me from the eastern edge of the top row to the eastern edge of the next row down.

We started out eastwards from Chingford Station, making a brief diversion to have a look at Queen Elizabeth's hunting lodge. This diversion set the tone for the rest of the first half of the walk; mud, mud, and more mud. We squelched our way along the edge of Chingford Plain, circled around where we thought the lodge was, then headed back roughly the way we'd come, separated from the lodge by a tall fence which resisted all attempts at peeking through. We eventually identified the lodge with the help of a sign; it turned out to be smaller and rather less impressive than one might expect, and completely dwarfed by the Harvester (?) pub next door.

What should have happened next was a nice stroll through some woodland to the Warren Wood pub. It seemed quite easy, especially as there's yet another section of the London Loop which should have led us right to it. Unfortunately we managed to end up heading in completely the wrong direction, and after a good deal more mud ended up pretty much due south of where we'd entered the woods, instead of due east. Personally, I blame the fact that it was too overcast to see the sun, and there were no satellite dishes handy, so I had no idea where south was. I promise to buy a compass at some point.

Anyway; we eventually stumbled on a landmark in the form of a lovely, lovely road sign. I looked it up on the map, cursed silently, apologised to caramel_betty, and led the way onwards to Buckhurst Hill, where my intention was to have a pint and some lunch in the Three Colts. It was, of course, closed. Plus it was about to rain.

Interweb-on-mobile-phone was employed, and we decided on a plan B of Rocky's, which sounded kind of awful but would at least provide shelter from the rain, and it was just down the road. Upon arrival, we learned that Rocky's had been renamed to the Players Lounge. This disturbed me somewhat, as it honestly did sound and look like it was some kind of swingers' club. Now I have nothing against swingers, but I did worry that it might be, well, rude to walk into a swingers' club with unbrushed hair, scruffy clothes, and mud up to one's armpits. Thankfully I was completely imagining everything. It was a perfectly fine place to drink, with surprisingly good service, and they even had Hoegaarden. (I do have a strong suspicion that it's the kind of place that's utterly, utterly grim in the evenings, mind.)

Rain evaded, Hoegaarden quaffed, and lunch eaten, we headed out again with renewed energy. Skipping blithely across the M11 (and past a minor car smash), we peeled off north onto Roding Lane. This proved to be a mistake, as the pavement ran out very quickly, meaning we had to walk on the road. As previously documented, I know how to walk safely on roads, but that doesn't mean I like it — and checking the map later revealed that had we continued along Chigwell Rise we could have rejoined the London Loop and walked along an actual footpath. Oh well.

At the end of Roding Lane we passed Chigwell School, noting in passing that while in my day kids used to hang around the edges of the school grounds to smoke a sneaky cigarette and actually have conversations, these days they seem more interested in sending text messages and ignoring everyone around them. So exactly like grown-ups in pubs, then.

Just past the school was Ye Olde Kings Head, an enormous Chef and Brewer pub where we had a couple of pints of Bombardier. This is the point at which my earlier warning to caramel_betty began to become true — after a certain point, every A-Z walk turns into a pub crawl. The Kings Head was followed by the King William IV (Timothy Taylor Landlord and a couple of decent enough pizzas), and then, for some reason, the King Edward VII in Stratford. I have no idea which of us decided that we should go drinking in Stratford, but it was an excellent decision. Despite a bit of wobbling on my part when we failed to immediately discover the pub, and memories of mstevens' stories of Stratford muggings began to resurface, the King Eddie turned out to be a hidden gem, a saving grace, an excellent way to round off the day. A pint of Nelson's Trafalgar, a pleasant and spacious seating area, and some interesting music just on the right side of "too loud" — and a food menu that looked plenty interesting enough to merit a return visit at some point.

See also: Google map of our route (no Flickr photoset as I only took photos of pubs, and you can see them by following the RGL links).

Next up: Chigwell Station westwards, probably ending up at Highams Park Station.

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 17 November 2007, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 23 column K (Enfield Town Station) to page 25 column F (Ponders End Station).

I have to admit that this one was pretty much just a pub crawl. caramel_betty, my expert on the area, had warned me that it would be “fairly uneventful”, so I decided to just pick a few reasonable-looking pubs from RGL and BitE and treat it as a beer-spotting expedition.

The eastern part of Enfield seems to be less McMullen-dense than parts further west; unfortunately this didn't mean more of a variety of real ale, but rather none at all. The Southbury at least had real Greene King IPA, but the Goat had only the nitrokeg version. I really should make more of an effort to switch to my Strongbow-swigging alter-ego in situations like this. Still, even that wouldn't have helped with the total utter deadness of both pubs. (Admittedly this is partly my fault for choosing a Monday afternoon for my visits. I mean, what kind of sad no-mates alky goes to pubs on her own on a Monday afternoon?)

Thankfully, the Wetherspoons Picture Palace came to the rescue. Lovely interior, excellent atmosphere, and there was a beer festival on. Marvellous.

Light for photography was generally vile, and almost everything I wanted to photograph had the sun behind it, but I managed to get a good shot of the terrifyingly-huge Enfield Cineworld. (That photo does not even begin to convey scale. Seriously, it's ginormous, and that's only the front third or so.)

Flickr photoset

Next up: From Ponders End station round the reservoir, finishing up in the Royal Oak for a pint and some dinner with any Enfield inhabitants I can persuade to join me, then home via Chingford Station.

Note: This was originally posted on LiveJournal on 30 September 2007, then copied here and backdated. Old comments are there; please feel free to add new ones here.

Page 20 column A (the western edge of the known universe) to page 22 column B (Oakwood Station).

Did my first A-Z walk last Thursday. I couldn't have wished for a better start. Pages 20 and 21 (the first actual map pages) contain:

• at least two real ale pubs (the Sebright Arms and the Olde Monken Holt)
• two Tube termini (High Barnet and Cockfosters)
• lots of green stuff

After a dim sum lunch at the New World with various components of London.pm, I headed up to High Barnet. The station's in column D of page 20, so not quite at the edge; this meant I had to head west for a bit before I could get started. The point which I deemed to be the beginning of the walk was the point where Galley Lane joins Wood Street; I took a photo of the sign (and of the pub that happened to be there), sent commemorative SMSes to Bec, Bob, doop, and Richard, and headed towards my first landmark, the Sebright Arms.

The Sebright Arms was on the agenda because it was in last year's Good Beer Guide, and hence got added to RGL when I was doing my auto-import of all GBG pubs. Sadly, it's not in it this year; I don't know why. Equally sadly, I didn't get there until 2:50pm, and it closes at 3pm on Thursdays, so I didn't go in. Never mind; the Olde Monken Holt (on the agenda for the exact same reason) was just a short walk away, so I headed over there for a pint (for review purposes, of course), and a bowl of chips (since I forgot to eat enough food at lunchtime).

From here on, the walk was pretty much entirely countryside. I was basically walking across Monken Hadley Common from west to east. There was a very very villagey bit, and then there was woodland. I stumbled on some London Loop signs at one point, and followed them for a while. Towards the end of the walk, and the afternoon, I started to see other walkers: a young couple, hand-in-hand; an older couple, with a car and a dog; another dog-walker, alone but for his dog.

The end of the common was marked by another pub — the Cock and Dragon, which I didn't go in (but should have, since it would have meant I missed rush hour later on). Cockfosters station was just a few minutes away; I walked past it, but decided to press on to Oakwood station, since it would get me onto the next page.

Cockfosters to Oakwood was the least enjoyable bit of the entire walk. I walked along Westpole Avenue, which is basically a long, straight, tedious suburban street. And my feet hurt, because they'd just spent 45 minutes walking on nice soft ground, and now I was expecting them to put up with hard pavements (and I need new boots). If I'd realised that this part would be so dull, I'd have stopped at Cockfosters and then started the next walk with a good wander around Trent Park.

But overall it was great! Next up, Oakwood to (probably) Ponders End.

There is a photoset on Flickr, and a (rather noisy) GPS trace on Google Maps, and I've also set up a Twitter account called KakeWalk, which you can subscribe to if you'd also like to get commemorative SMSes on future walks (I only sent them to people who I knew were interested in me and/or adventures this time round, but I'm happy to share with more people) when something interesting happens, or when I find myself in a pub that I plan to stay in for more than half an hour.

Incidentally, an interesting fact I discovered while deciding how to get home is that Green Park is actually slightly to the east of Cockfosters. You would never guess this from the Tube map.