London 2026: Part 6--Capital Ring Segment 11

 This is part 6 of a series...

Though we try our best to stay on the path, the Capital Ring and London Loop are full of places where mistakes are easily made.  Today's mistake was a huge one, but only about 30% our fault.  Signage had been good so far on our walks, but today a very important intersection was not signed and instead of turning right we marched straight on, ending up miles out of our way.  Such are the hazards of walking London in a big circle.  Sometimes one marches straight on instead of arcing.  Thus it took us two days instead of one to finish Capital Ring Segment 11.

 

By now we were old hands at using Thameslink trains to get quickly from East Croydon, deep in the south of London, to our walk far to the north.  We probably did this much faster than a car could have done it, once we knew the ropes.  We had ended the last segment at Hendon Station, so we were heading there again this morning (see the actual itinerary of our trip at the bottom of part 1 of this blog series).  That meant taking a train that passed through London Bridge Station, then crossing the Thames at Blackfriars Station, then on to West Hampstead Station and finally to Hendon.

 

Our northbound train crosses the Thames River at Blackfriars Station before heading underground until the far northern suburbs are reached.  The Shard towers over the area around London Bridge Station. 

 

Leaving the station we retraced our steps through a remarkable uninteresting High Street before turning east along a city road.  Within a mile we came to a short detour that led us to a major shopping centre, Brent Cross, where morning tea and rest rooms awaited us.  We would have preferred a coffee shop near the station, but nothing near there tempted us.  Leaving the shopping centre we returned to our city street and continued on to our first park of the day.  We walked the extreme south end of large Hendon Park, then back onto city streets until we reached Brent Park.  This was a riverside park, and we would end up following it for far too long.

 

Crossing Tube tracks on the Capital Ring.

 

West entrance to Brent Park, on a riverside ramble.

 

Wild garlic provided a unique sensory experience along this part of the trail.

 

We entered Brent Park at the bottom of this trail map.  See the "You are here" marking?  See the branch river that leads to Hampstead Garden Suburb?  That was the turn off we missed, thanks to a missing route sign on the trail.  We marched all the way up to Whetstone instead, then had to go to Mill Hill to find a tube station to get us back on track.  It was a low point of the walk, realizing we were several miles off our path.

 

There was a silver lining in our mistake.  We came across the Dollis Viaduct, something we would have missed otherwise.  It was rather impressive, and carried Tube trains over the Dollis River and a busy road.

  

The Dollis Viaduct.  We ended up about half a mile from Mill Hill Station, a small branch of the Northern Line.  We hoofed it to the station, finding a large grocery store along the way.  We stopped for some vegan yogurt and a ten minute sit down. 

 

Walking left to right we began at Hendon Station, detouring near bottom to a large shopping mall.  We mistakenly kept walking north on the river path, missing our turn (shown corrected by us in the 3 o'clock position.  We ended up at Mill Hill instead of East Finchley.
 

 We eventually made it to Mill Hill Broadway Station and were soon on our way to the correct stop.  We were supposed to have walked to East Finchley Station, but had badly messed up.  Just around the corner from the correct station we settled in to the While Lion to cry in our beer (Sharps Doom Bar).  This was quite a lovely pub just beneath a train bridge and separated by it from a lively High Street.  We finally figured out where we had gone wrong, now determined to make it right.  We decided to walk the missed part of the route from the station, thus doing it in reverse.

 

This should have been our halfway stop for today.  It became the only pub visited today. 

 

We managed to walk the missed part, ending up at a small playground where our mistake had been made.  It wasn't a long walk to fix the mistake, less than 3 miles.  Once complete we headed to a nearby bus stop.  It was near rush hour and traffic was heavy, the bus slow.  The driver was an Arabic lady, very friendly and obviously well liked by the regulars, who stopped to chat with her when getting on or off.  After a long ride we made it to New Southgate Station, a Thameslink stop, and were soon on our way home by fast train.

 

We walked the corrected version of Segment 11 from right to left, after taking the train down to East Finchley Station back towards our missed turn.  Once we had joined up with the main path we backtracked a short distance to a bus stop, to wherever it would take us.  We ended up at New Southgate Station.  From there it was an easy journey home. 

 

The next day was to be another out of town trip (see next entry), but the day after that we headed back north to complete Segment 11 of the Capital Ring.  We arrived at East Finchley Station again, fresh and ready to walk.  We explored the busy neighbourhood a little bit, then headed out into the wild woods of London!  Our final destination today was Highgate Station, after exploring Highgate Wood and Queenswood.  These are two of our favourite parks in London and we hadn't visited in many years.  Because we'd done more than half of the walk yesterday we were able to slow our pace and really enjoy the forests.  Both parks had cafes and we stopped at each.  The one in Queenswood had been visited many years ago, on a magical damp and dreary day.  This forest is the scene of a big event in my second Dulwich horror novel, as well as the pub at the end of today's walk, the Woodman.

 

The completion of Segment 11 took us through some of London's oldest and most impressive woodlands.  We ended up at a pub near Highgate Station. 

 

We broke from the official path through the woods, choosing to explore a wider area of the forests than we would have if we had completed the walk yesterday.  Queenswood has some serious hills to climb, and the final pull up to our finishing pub had one as well.  Highgate Station is only a few steps away from the pub, so we headed for central London after our refreshment stop.  Ring Segment 11 is a real corker of a walk, one of the best so far!

 

An archer draws his bow atop East Finchley Station, where we had left off our walk from two days ago.  He is aiming towards Highgate Station, our goal later today.

 

Deb stands outside an historic theatre near East Finchley Station.  This was a very cool area and we explored a bit before resuming our walk.  They were showing first run movies and art house ones.

 

This little park was well used and offered washrooms and a small cafe.

 

Highgate Wood is enormous.  We visited its centrally located cafe.

 

Highgate Wood.

Highgate Wood. 

 

 

Highgate Wood.

 

Highgate Wood Cafe.

 

Our ultimate destination is Woolwich Foot Tunnel, when we will have completed the Ring.  4 more segments to go.

 

Highgate Wood. 

 

Another view of our route through Highgate Wood (left) and Queenswood, above.  Our route ended at the Woodman Pub.

 

Queenswood Cafe, a truly magical place.  We sat alone in the circular room beneath the tower, windows shown.

 

View from our table looking back outside.  The cafe boasts an organic garden and beautiful outside seating areas.  It was coffee time!
 

 

Our cafe bench had beautiful square pillows.

 

There was a lot of wood in Queenswood.

 

The Woodman Pub, Highgate, the end of our walk.  The two ladies are sitting at the exact table where Reema and the wood witch go after Allie mysteriously disappears.

 

The Woodman, Highgate.  We ended up having Brixton Pale Ale on handpull, and more Jubal Peach Session on draft. 

 

The clock was winding down.  It was Thursday afternoon and we would be up very early on Saturday to catch our flight home.  There were two big stops in central London that we had put off till near the end of the trip, and it was now time to visit.  Standford's Book Shop specializes in travel books and maps, and is my favourite bookstore in the entire universe.  However, they have moved.  We did not know this.  We found the old store, then had to use phone data to locate the new place.  Luckily it wasn't very far away.  The nearest Tube stop is now Covent Garden.  I must remember this.  We had coffee at the store cafe and browsed happily for a long time.  Deb bought a book about octopus research, and I, of course, bought maps.  How can we be married?

 

After the book shop we headed towards Farringdon Station and to a new pub for us.  I was seriously in the mood for some Belgian Ale, and The Dovetail was a serious place to go.  They had everything Belgian on tap and in bottles.  We snagged a table just before rush hour and ended up splitting three incredible half pints of Westamalle Trappist Dubbel, the absolute best, Delirium Tremens, the absolute absolute best, and a lesser but delicious Brugse Zoot.  We also split an entree, a dish of vegan Moules, described thusly on the menu: Roasted button mushrooms in a nori infused white wine and vegan cream sauce served with frites & bread.  Deb died during the meal and went to vegan food heaven.  It was certainly the best thing we ate while in London.

 

Finest beer in the world supplied by the Dovetail, London. 

 

We had a big day ahead of us tomorrow, so after rush hour was safely gone we returned to Farringdon Station and caught one train all the way home.  the only way to go, especially after drinking Belgian ales.

 

to be continued...