Banstead Downs to Berrylands

I completed most of two more segments of the LOOP walk yesterday. It wasn't the best day for walking -- gray and rainy -- but I had to seize the moment because the train station where the walk began, at Banstead, doesn't have service on Sundays. So it was Saturday or nothing, and because I have some busy weekends coming up, it was pretty much now or December.

I began walking on Banstead Downs, where I had to navigate a golf course (the golfers were out yesterday too, despite the rain, and one of their balls landed worryingly close to me) before walking through a suburban neighborhood to Nonsuch Park (above).

There was some kind of foot race going on in the park, with a lot of cheering and people running a path that seemed to circle a field. Apparently the park is known for its "Park Runs," and I suppose this was one.

Nonsuch Park is home to Nonsuch Palace, or what's left of it -- which is, precisely, nothing. Henry VIII began building Nonsuch Palace in 1538, and it was supposed to be without equal in Europe. But he died nine years later, before its completion, and it passed through several owners, apparently growing less and less grand with every passing year. Finally, in the late 1600s, it was torn down and sold off piecemeal for building materials, to pay off the gambling debts of Lady Castlemaine.

There are stone markers along a path in the park showing the former position of the palace and the floor plan. The area was excavated by archaeologists in 1959.

Henry VIII also had a banqueting house in the park -- somewhere in the area of this raised platform, now planted with trees. I'm not sure whether this is an actual remnant of the banqueting house or something else entirely.

Anyway, from here the path passed out of Nonsuch Park and into the town of Ewell, where I walked along the high street and eventually stopped for lunch.

I ate at a cafe in the extremely groovy Bourne Hall Museum and Library, which opened in 1970 and looks vaguely like Space Mountain at Disney World. I was there, eating my cheese-and-onion toastie, just in time for a local official wearing a gold chain of office to show up and pose for some pictures with uniformed flag-bearers and volunteers manning a table for the Poppy Appeal. Yesterday was Remembrance Day, and I wore my own poppy all through my walk.

The path led out of Bourne Park and along the Hogsmill River, which apparently was used by painter John Everett Millais as the site for Ophelia's untimely drowning in his famous painting. The path followed the river and although by this time it had mostly stopped raining, the going was muddy and occasionally difficult.

At one point, I'd been slogging along and came to a bridge I was supposed to cross, only to find...

...this unwelcome surprise. So I had to double back and cross at a point farther upstream, then walk down the other side of the river. (I happened to pass another group of LOOP walkers on the way, so I warned them about the bridge being out, saving them the same slog.)

The path continued on through woods and beside athletic fields through the community of Old Malden. At one point the map gave me a choice of walking through a neighborhood or continuing along the river -- and I tried to continue along the river, but if there was any path to do so I couldn't find it. I wound up hoofing it through the neighborhood.

Some parts of the river showed an obvious degree of human impact. There are four balls in that trash!

Anyway, this LOOP segment continued onward all the way to Kingston, but I bailed a bit early in Berrylands, where there was a train station. I was muddy and exhausted, and I'd strayed off the path at one point (the map said "cross the wooden footbridge," and I did so, but it turned out to be the wrong wooden footbridge) so I wound up walking a bit farther than expected. I'll go back to Berrylands -- where happily, I believe there is train service on Sundays -- and pick up the path another day!

Leaf Outtakes

I mentioned not too long ago that I had embarked on a weeklong project to post "A Leaf A Day" to Facebook. That only meant seven leaf photos, so it wasn't any kind of huge undertaking, but it did require some attentiveness on my part as I was walking the dog every morning. Not surprisingly, I wound up with more leaf photos than I could use.

Here are a some of the pictures that didn't make the cut.

First of all, I did use the top photo -- it was my "finale," actually, the last shot of the series. But when I took it, I was doubtful about putting my hand in the photo. None of the other leaf pictures featured anything other than a leaf lying on a plain surface. Including my hand seemed inconsistent.

So I took some shots of just the sumac leaf (which, incidentally, I picked from a large, colorful sumac outside a church on Finchley Road). In the end, though, they seemed too plain. I liked the shot with my hand much better -- for one thing, it gave a sense of scale to the large leaf. So I went with it.

Here are some other perfectly good leaves that I just didn't have room for.

And finally, a leaf on an instantly recognizable background...

Mums and a Lemur

Olga and I found these very impressive chrysanthemums on one of our recent walks. At a time when the petunias are thinning and the nasturtium leaves fading to dull yellow, the mums are looking like fireworks! These made me want to get some, too, but I haven't been ambitious enough to stop by Homebase.

Here's another odd item I found a several days ago on one of my walks to work. When I first spied it on the sidewalk, I thought the animal was a raccoon. But looking more closely I realized that it's a lemur -- and when I turned over the heart, it said "Madagascar" on the other side. This freaked me out a little bit, because I've been to Madagascar. What are the odds I'd find a Madagascar souvenir lying on the sidewalk in London? I think I'll turn it into a little Christmas ornament for our tree.

Yes, we're actually getting a Christmas tree this year, believe it or not! For the first time in six years, Dave and I are staying in London for a Christmas on our own. Air fares are so insane and the experience of traveling at Christmas is so miserable, we decided against flying to the states. I'll probably go to Florida early next year to make up for it.

I got lots of Joni Mitchell reading done at work yesterday. And I stayed away from the newspapers. I'm not sure this is a permanent change -- having worked in journalism I don't think I could (or should) give up news entirely -- but it's a nice break.

A Fridge Cleanup, and Dispiriting News

I made perhaps the most pathetic dinner in the world last night. We've had a million little tiny jars -- two containers of capers, plus mustard, créme fraîche, chutney and other stuff -- in the refrigerator for weeks and weeks, and I am about crazy trying to move it all around. So last night I made a watercress salad (with some watercress that had to be eaten, and I'm not sure why Dave even bought it because he won't eat it) and I added a container of pickled ginger that we got weeks ago when we ordered some sushi, and I made a peanut butter sandwich with a generous helping of grapefruit marmalade in order to use that up. And I threw away an ancient jar of chicken liver paté that, believe me, you wouldn't want to even look at, much less eat.

So I succeeded in reducing the fridge clutter, but Dave, seeing my culinary choices, decided he didn't even want to eat dinner. Which I then felt guilty about. (He'd wanted to get takeaway, but I argued that we had plenty of food in the house already.) There's still an egg in there with his name on it, and some tuna fish.

It's kind of a game to me -- open up the fridge and see what kind of meal I can whip up. It usually involves peanut butter, because that's the glue that holds many of my meals together. Left to my own devices, I still eat like a college student.

The news continues to be awfully bleak these days. I think I've become the most cynical person on the planet. The gun situation in the USA disgusts me and the "Paradise Papers" confirm what we've known all along -- that rich people hoard and conceal their wealth in order to avoid paying for a civil society. Even the Queen has offshore investments -- the person who's supposed to embody duty and service to country! The person in whose name taxes are collected! And then there's Brexit, which is grinding on and on toward an obviously grim conclusion, and I keep thinking, "Why are we doing this?!"

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, like Trump, just says whatever comes to his mind and winds up thwarting diplomacy and imperiling people's lives.

Maybe I really should just stop reading the newspaper.

On a positive note, I did finally finish that novel I had to read for work. So that's something. It was about an Iranian refugee family and it was well-written, but I felt a lack of dramatic tension -- there wasn't much pulling me through the story. Maybe I felt that way because it was basically assigned reading. Anyway, now I can move on to my Joni Mitchell biography, which hopefully will be more compelling!

Oh, and the council removed our extra recycling bin yesterday. Prompt and efficient!

(Photo: Croydon, on Sunday.)

Return to Sender

This is our West Hampstead tube station. I love the little waiting room with the curved glass wall, where that woman is sitting and applying her makeup. It's very deco, isn't it? I've never spent a moment of time in that waiting room -- I've never even stepped inside it -- but t's a nice architectural feature.

Yesterday was a busy day, but mostly routine. I had to call the local council office because, for some reason, an extra recycling bin has shown up in the alley beside our house. I swear, managing our trash bins is practically a full-time job. I suspect it's Mrs. Kravitz's and she doesn't want it anymore, so like any good neighbor (!) she's shoved it onto our property. We now have five bins, which is entirely too many, so I asked the council to take the extra one away. I'll put a sign on it so they know which one to take, and as fair warning to Mrs. Kravitz (or whoever owns/owned it) that it's about to disappear.

We had a couple of letters show up in the mail to previous tenants of our address. They seemed like they could be bills or financial statements or something important, so I wrote "Return to Sender" on the envelopes, circled the recipient's name and wrote next to it, "Not at this address." Then I dropped them in a post box on the way to work. I'm not sure that really does anything, but I learned many years ago that's the way to deal with misdirected mail. Do you suppose the post office actually returns it?

Popeye and Handel

I came across this Popeye mural in Croydon on Sunday morning, across from the West Croydon bus station. I was waiting for a bus and having an interesting high culture/low culture experience, listening to Handel's Fire Music over the bus station's PA system and gazing at Popeye.

Is he knocking the vitamins out of that spinach? What's going on there?

We've had frosty mornings the last few days. I brought in the geraniums -- which badly need trimming -- but otherwise we're going to let our outdoor potted plants do their own thing for the winter. I'm tired of hauling them in and out and frankly some of them need to be culled anyway. Once the fig tree loses its leaves, I'm planning to tuck it into our shed, where it will overwinter. (Apparently it needs to go through a dormant period and shouldn't be brought completely indoors -- at least, that's what I read.)

Sunday was Bonfire Night, the peculiar British holiday that involves setting off fireworks and lighting fires to celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up Parliament in 1605. We'd been hearing pops and bangs from firecrackers for several nights, but on Sunday evening our neighbors set off real fireworks that flew up into the sky, showered colorful sparks over the adjacent gardens and flashed on the walls of our house like lightning. I sat on the living room floor and watched them through the windows. Olga, surprisingly, didn't seem fazed. She lay on the couch and half-opened her eyes at the particularly loud bangs, but otherwise took everything in stride.

Hamsey Green to Banstead Downs

I tackled another leg of the LOOP walk yesterday -- actually, two more sections, for a total of about 10.5 miles. I've been feeling much better in recent days, like my "post-viral syndrome" (or whatever it was) has departed. So I decided to go for it.

I started in Hamsey Green and walked westward, past a 200-year-old quarry at Riddlesdown (above). The quarry was in operation until 1967, and there are still huge stone blocks visible around its base.

I crossed Kenley Common -- becoming momentarily confused by a map direction to walk "diagonally across the field," which sent me straight into a fence -- and came to the Kenley Observatory. It looks like a collection of farm outbuildings and is situated at the corner of a horse farm, but it is, in fact, a working observatory with a telescope and everything.

From there the path led me to Happy Valley, a green, rolling area that in certain times of year is home to the Greater Yellow Rattle, a rare plant in the UK. (I didn't see any myself, not that I knew what to look for. I don't think it's the season for them.) The name "Happy Valley," ironically, made me think of that rather dark TV show Dave and I watched a few years ago of the same name.

The path led through a forest and up to Farthing Downs, a long ridgeline which offered dramatic views of London. I hiked past lazy cows and down into Coulsdon, where I had a vegetarian English breakfast at the Poppy Cafe in the park near the train station. (The name seemed appropriate, given that this is poppy-wearing season.)

I could have ended in Coulsdon, but that would have been a rather short-ish hike, so I kept going. I passed this historic old mile-marker underneath a railway bridge -- marking the distances to Westminster and to Brighton -- and wound through town and back onto the path alongside ancient hedgerows and even a cornfield.

I came to a lavender farm, where the fields would be brilliant purple at certain times of the year. These farms are magnets for tourists and photographers when they're in full bloom. Now, in November, they just look brown. (I have no idea why that phone booth is standing out in the field. I think it's just there for a bit of fun.)

Finally, as the sun began to sink and the light grew golden, I crossed Banstead Downs and a couple of golf fairways, where I had to keep an eye out for flying balls. (I did see some golfers, but fortunately they weren't moving in my direction.) I eventually came to Banstead rail station, the end of my journey.

Or it would have been, if I weren't walking on a Sunday -- because trains don't run from Banstead on Sundays. (I confess that I did have prior knowledge of this fact via the LOOP map.) So I had to schlep another third of a mile or so into the community of Banstead, where I caught a bus to Sutton and then a train home.

I'm finding that the biggest challenge on this LOOP walk is getting myself to and from the trail heads. Reaching Hamsey Green yesterday morning took me almost two hours from home -- two tube rides, a train to West Croydon, and then a 20-plus minute bus ride. It was after 10 a.m. by the time I got walking. Fortunately, I walk fast!