Capital Ring 7 – Richmond to Osterley Lock

We are back on the London Walk, here is what we found…

This section of The Capital Ring goes from Richmond Bridge to Osterley Lock but strangely we saw neither of these sites.

We started at Richmond Station and walked down to Little Green, across to see if we could walk through the grounds of Richmond Palace – It turns out you can’t! So we quickly turned around instead of going back to the bridge and started on Cholmondeley Lane with a friendly Heron, who stood very still for his photo to be taken, then walked as the rain started.

This was when the dog began to pull as per usual, aiming to plunge into the water even if it meant jumping from a 2m bank (we stopped her) We started the walk passing under Twickenham Bridge and past Old Deer Park where there is the highest rated Obelisk in that park (seriously the reviews on google are raving) we continued on to a very confusing unmarked side of the bridge so we crossed the weir.

The other side of the bridge had A LOT of signs not all pointing in the direction we needed – this is one of those sections that shares the route with the Green Walk, Thames Path and The River Crane Walk.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about this section with the exception of the path led to multiple steps down to the water so the dog jumped (Literally) at the chance and flew down the stairs in to the river.

We continued passed a big shipyard full of rusty boats with Geese aplenty nesting and watching the world go by. We walked past old work cranes and onto The London Apprentice (A Pub) and thankfully used their toilets (thank you!)

We walked on and off a path detouring round creeks and main roads trying to avoid the continual ‘Stay on concrete and main roads’ We eventually found our way to the entrance of Syon Park whilst planes flew overhead coming in to land at Heathrow.

Whilst at Syon Park we noticed that there was the option for Coffee in the garden center area, if this had been a nice day this may have been lovely but being that the Dog was freezing, we were cold and wet and the staff seemed in no rush to do anything – it wasn’t great.

As we walked and drank our weak coffee and on to Brentford, Pets at Home and a blanket for a cold dog. After wrapping her and cuddling her for a while till she dried off we continued walking.

There wasn’t really any pretty sights at the Grand Union Canal, graffiti, dirt and building work. There was a creepy tree encapsulated with webs – like something out of Eight Legged Freaks.

We kept walking past a beautiful Cormorant and then wandered around lost for a while as there were no signs. Finally we made it to Boston Manor Tube and then all the way home!