Capital Ring 9 – Greenford to South Kenton

We are back once again on The Capital ring Walk and we are up to Section 9 Greenford to South Kenton. Here is what we found…

We headed across London again back to Greenford and prepared to start the route, which didn’t begin for about 1/2 a mile from the station (again). We found a nice little coffee shop at the station and set out walking along a wet and muddy industrial estate road, to get to the start point at the corner of the Westway Shopping Park, aka the McDonald’s drive Thru.

The route starts off following along a path the side of the Paradise Fields and “Wetlands and Nature reserve”, this is in “speech marks ” because this does not exist there is a field with nothing in it and at the end is TKMaxx. We went back and followed the path until we got to the Grand Union Canal and followed the winding waterway until Ballot Box Bridge. It was a rainy day and so was pretty quiet, we got to see some wildlife, heron, ducks etc before leaving to cross over the canal and head towards Horsendon “Farm” again Bunny ears because this is not a farm, it had a pair of goats and apparently a pair of chickens and a pig, but you can’t see these as they are hidden and only open to volunteers.

There is also a closed brewery and crystal shop that only opens on Thursday between 8-10am, the staff of the “Farm” Don’t even know that the Capital ring route goes through their yard but there is a Gruffalo Trail atop the “Farm” which is a series of muddy paths, with some plaster statues in them, of a mouse, a snake and a ‘Gruffalo’ – which was a 1960’s kid’s book (we have never heard of it).

In our opinion, don’t bother with the “Farm” Detour there is no point.

When you rejoin the main path, there are signs pointing in every direction, up hill, down hill, left right, up and down, we took a guess and after one wrong turn, found some cows and the right direction.

At the top of the Hill that gives the area its name we sat and had a snack and took in the view, before descending the hill into a forest and a round-about route through a park, for no real reason than because the route had nothing better to do!

Then it’s a lot of roads towards Sudbury Hill and up Piggy Lane. At the top of this hill it started to rain, like really rain and we got very wet. After this you enter the village of Harrow and past the Boy’s School. We chatted with a couple of the boys as we descended the steep in towards the playing fields and then were shouted at by rude Russian workmen for daring to walk on the footpath. Apparently we should have flown over the fields even though there are signposts pointing you down the path between the rugby pitches and the tennis courts.

After the school grounds it’s mostly an overgrown foot path around the side of a Hospital Car Park and a very shoddy Public Golf Course to finish by a Rugby Club and the wonderfully weird Uneeda Drive.

So that was it, the highlight for us were the birds in the Canal and the Boy’s School, the downside was the usual lack of direction and the rubbish detours, basically if the CR tells you to take a detour, don’t, they are always a waste of time.