302km — completed 2020-21
Go to the outermost end of a Tube line. Make for the next extremity clockwise. Repeat until you are back where you started, without crossing the public Tube lines in any place.
No great problem there — Stanmore to Edgware, or Amersham to Chesham for a bit of rurality. But there’s also Epping to Upminster (28km; may be split at Havering-atte-Bower or at Noak Hill), and the biggest of all, the 44km between Upminster and Brixton (which splits almost evenly at Woolwich, where you take a different kind of tube — the Woolwich Foot Tunnel). There is a higher percentage of streetwork in this circuit when compared with the London Summits Walk or the Coal Tax Circuit, but there are still lots of parks and paths, and some outright fields and forests. Of course, there are lots of public transport options with which to tailor your days. There are two large diversions from an orderly progression round the suburbs: a deep gash between Morden and Wimbledon will take in Battersea Power Station station (yes, that is its official title, even if the Google Maps algorithm fails miserably), and though you can almost see Uxbridge from Heathrow Terminal 5, there’s the small matter of rounding up Ealing Broadway on the way. In addition, the northern traverse dips inward to pick up Walthamstow Central between Cockfosters and Epping.
You are advised to read the introduction to the route first: this will help with context and conventions.
- Upminster to Richmond (88.88km; 679m ascent)
- Richmond to Amersham (88.89km; 668m ascent)
- Amersham to Mill Hill East (51.00km; 512m ascent)
- Mill Hill East to Upminster (78.18km; 852m ascent)
Note that it is only the termini which protrude from the rest of the network which qualify, so no Kensington Olympia, and neither Elephant and Castle nor Stratford qualify, because the Northern and Central Lines respectively make the station non-terminal.
The circuit total comes out at a little over 300km; with little diversions for sustenance and such, you will push towards 320km in total. The ascent total is about 2680m, so you’ll be doing the equivalent of two ascents of Ben Nevis from sea level at Fort William.
Disclaimer and advisory notices
Note that lwalks.london can accept no responsibility for content on an external site or in an external publication, nor for any action by an external site which renders our content or link outdated or unworkable. Furthermore, lwalks.london retains the liberty to unlink external content at any time if the content loses relevance to the linking page(s).
Images used on the lwalks.london site are either owned by lwalks.london, or are subject to a licence-to-use held by lwalks.london. These images must not be further used by any third party without the explicit permission of lwalks.london, or of the original image licensor. A small number of images are in the public domain.
Routes are to be followed entirely at the walker’s own risk: lwalks.london can take no responsibility for any inconvenience, damage, loss or injury caused by attempting to follow a route, which is no more than a mere suggestion of a possible enterprise.
We should be happy to learn of any changes to the line of a walk and/or its attendant facilities, or to consider an image which you own for inclusion on the site, lwalks.london thus being granted a free and non-exclusive licence to use the image anywhere on its site. Please contact us.
Lwalks.London 