I spotted a leaflet from the London Borough of Hillingdon, in which four local sites connected with the Polish Air Force were linked into a trail … by bus. I decided that the route should be walked, so I devised my Polish Air Force Heritage Trail to complement the council’s leaflet.
2018 in review
As noted earlier, the highlight of the springtime (hah! setting out at -4°C with a 100kph wind whipping off the Baltic) was the crossing of Schleswig-Holstein from the Bülker Leuchtturm to Büsum on the Nord-Ostsee-Wanderweg.
Three days on the Trekvogelpad to the east of Utrecht made for a very pleasant long weekend.
The hot summer made for an enforced lay-off, but the Coal Tax Circuit route was still completed within the calendar year: Purfleet to Erith, and then a re-walking of the route between Purfleet and Chadwell Heath using a better route.
The Germans continue to impress with their marked routes and their guide-books: the publisher Rother goes from strength to strength. Recently, I lit upon walks in the area west of the Rhine and east of Luxembourg: the Pfalz.
After an exhausting end to the year at work, I still have to determine plans for 2019, though it is likely that my local energies may be put towards the nine Get out of London! routes, all starting next to those nice lions in Trafalgar Square.
Station-to-station along the Chiltern Line
The Chiltern Line runs out of Marylebone station, through John Betjeman’s famed Metroland. The Chiltern Railway Walk links consecutive stations, trying to find paths and parks through north-west London.
Chasing Brunel round West London
Brunel University London celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2016, and I devised a fifty-mile route as a celebration, taking in all present and former campuses in one circuit. Where else would King Canute, Bill Bryson, John F Kennedy and Bob Hope come together in one walk?
The Capital C
That’s the London Summits Walk. About 320km, starting and finishing at Chancery Lane Tube station, and linking up all the borough summits in the capital. That’s Horsenden Hill, Havering-atte-Bower, and Westerham Heights for three, and although they might seem more exciting than Mare Street, Marks Gate, and Willesden Junction (the station isn’t a summit, but there are two just down the Harrow Road), it’s the way that the route sews up the built environment and the green environment into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of London life that makes the London Summits Walk so different from other London routes. It visits every borough, and does not shirk suburbia.
Pop over to the route’s homepage to discover the walk … and why its other name is the Capital C.
Lwalks.London 