To Richmond, to continue with my walk along the Capital
Ring. A nice day for what promised to be a waterside walk, starting with the
Thames and continuing with the Grand Union Canal. Around four miles in total.
As well as the prospect of hiring a rowing-boat, this
part of the Thames also has a riverboat service which can take you to Hampton
Court for £8:50, and that’s for a journey of one-and-three-quarter hours. Walking
along the riverside in the opposite direction, I passed the site of Richmond
Palace, another old Royal residence which I happen to know a bit about thanks
to one
of my Londonist articles – it used to be called Shene in the Middle Ages
but was renamed Richmond by Henry VII when he rebuilt it (before beating
Richard III at Bosworth Field, he’d been the Earl of Richmond; the Lancastrian
claimant with a title relating to a Yorkshire town). A favourite residence of
Elizabeth I, the palace survived until just after the Civil War, when it was
demolished.
After passing the western edge of Old Deer Park
(so-called due to its former use as a royal hunting-ground), I crossed the Thames
at Richmond Lock. This dates back to the 1890s and was built to ensure a
minimum depth of the River between Richmond and Teddington (the demolition of
the Old
London Bridge some six decades beforehand having resulted in greater tidal
fluctuations upriver); the sluice-gates are closed unless there’s a high tide.
There are toll-booths on the accompanying footbridge but tolls – one penny each
– haven’t been charged since the Second World War.
At Isleworth, the path briefly diverted inland just as the
Thames passed Isleworth Ait, one of the longest of the Thames islands. Back on
the riverside, and going through the outdoor seating area of the Town Wharf pub,
I crossed a small stone bridge over the Duke of Northumberland’s River and then
passed a row of Georgian houses by the church, where I even got to wander along
the shoreline (it was low tide) and see some birds – Black-headed Gulls mostly,
but also Teals and Cormorants. before turning my back on the Thames for the
last time on this walk and entering the Syon Park estate.
This is the London residence of the Duke of Northumberland –
hence the name of the river I’d just crossed; the grounds were laid out by
Capability Brown in the eighteenth century. After crossing the estate, I was in
Brentford – the old county town of Middlesex and a place I last visited many
years ago, when Watford had an away game at Griffin Park. My route through
Brentford this time was to link with the Grand Union Canal at Brentford Lock
(at this point, the Grand Union Canal and the River Brent are one and the same,
the Brent having been canalised as part of the Grand Union downriver from Hanwell).
For the rest of the day’s walk, it was a simple enough job
of following the towpath of the canal, through the frame of a disused warehouse,
under a railway line and then under the A4, past a lock gate (Clitheroe’s Lock)
then alongside the M4 and over to the other side of the canal at a footbridge
called Gallows Bridge (this proclaims the canal to be the Grand Junction, the
canal’s old name).
I’ve done a fair amount of canalside walking in recent
months, what with writing-up walks along the
Regent’s Canal and the
River Lea/Lee. Section 7 of the Capital Ring ends on the Grand Union just
before Osterley Lock, not long after the canal passes under the M4; I called it
a day there, half a mile from Boston Manor station, and got the Tube home.
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