Harefield Place Course Again

This lunch time, an anti-clockwise loop round the Harefield Golf Club for four of us, Bashful, M, T and me. 6.6 km walked and 388 calories burned. The good news was the pace: 16.95 hours for 100 km: first time the pace has us below 17 hours – not that it’s sustainable, just encouraging.

Sponsor wanted: 6.6km

Harefield Place Golf Club

Speed was the intention today. Doc, Bashful, M, T and I started at at noon and did the Harefield Place Golf Club clockwise walk, about 6.5 km at 17.3 hour pace (per 100 km). I managed to burn off 392 calories according to my phone.

Sponsor wanted: 6.5km

Killiney Loops

Ready to walk after a feed of pancakes and coffee on a hazy but dry day without too much pain in my foot. The iPhone being set up, the walking gear on, I set off about nine into a chilly easterly breeze. Round to Roches Hill where the crushed booze cans and general detritus make you sad and anrgy that no one cares to clean up after those who can only afford to watch the golfers in Killiney. Overcast, there's no bird song today but the bright yellow gorse somehow compensates. Cross the highest point and on down towards the sea, using mostly walled rights-of-way. An early encounter with a Black Suvdriver reminded me to watch out for the local wildlife. Overgrown pathways attest to an ongoing conflict in the area; unrestricted access might attract walkers and others into places they are not really wanted.

Reaching the beach, having passed the gum treed garden of the Canadian ambassador, I saw a Greater Breasted Ball Thrower. She was entertaining a dog where it is alleged that sandwiches were once offered to a tramp seen on successive days sitting below Bono's home - except it is said it was Bono.

Killiney beach is where Robert Mallett demonstrated in 1862 that seismic energy propagated in the near surface thereby explaining the destructive forces of earthquakes. This knowledge was used to triangulate artillery locations in the Great War and is now a fundamental tool in exploration and exploitation of sub-surface natural resources.

I watched a Blousy Backcombed Bun bird walk across the small promontory that separates Killiney and White Rock beaches. I was rock-hopping my way across the storm driven boulders, varifocal glasses inspired bone breaking noises whispering in my sub-conscious. The outcrop is the contact or metamorhic aureole between the granite pluton and the country rock into which it was injected, a fact that explains a few adits that memorialise unfulfilled Victorian ambitions. I could still see aligned, black rectilinear tourmaline crystals on some exposed surfaces of the schists.

Harefield Place Golf Club

HelperT took us up through the posh part of Harefield and down into the oozing mud below the golf course for a balmy 6.5 km walk that returned us along the canal. Doc and Bashful were more concerned about the stink than I was. Ironicaly it was the iPhone that went into a loop before I did, so to speak. So the tracking mapping failed.

Sponsor wanted: 6.5km 

Another Canal Walk

Snow White led Grumpy, Doc, Happy, Bashful, helperT and me along the Grand Union Canal for a quick-ish 5.25 km lunchtime walk that suggests we could cover the 100 km in 17 hours.


Sponsor wanted: 5.25km

Hillingdon Trail North

Having slept well, I woke to no pain, no discomfort and another beautiful day. What could I do but walk. This time I headed north along the Grand Union, deciding to do the northern half of the Hillingdon Trail. Again I had to walk a long way just to pick it up but the canal walk had its rewards. Coots, mallard, swan, geese, heron, tufted duck, cormorant, black headed gull and mergansers were the easily spotted water fowl. I heard the cuckoo, the green and (saw a) great spotted woodpeckers. Swallows appeared today, I saw none yesterday. The hedgerows were alive with chaffinches, robins, dunnocks, wrens and blackbirds all calling and singing. Chiffchaffs and tits added a wonderful counterpoint.

Unperturbed by a lack of a map yesterday, today I carried nothing - I decided that house keys and money were the only things the iPhone couldn't replace. The GPS on the phone played havoc with battery so I couldn't really use it. But I used the money to buy myself soup and a rib-eye streak at the Coy Carp on the canal, in competition with Little Britain-like hordes; tattoo's were obviously big at Christmas and many were getting shown for the first time. And sorry, I think builders bum has become the new cleavage; no gender discrimination perhaps? Feeling re-energised and re-hydrated, I headed back down to the ANZAC cemetery across from where I used to live in Harefield, passing just below Edwinns where Lia and I had lunch recently. Then climbed up to Ruislip Common which includes Mad Bess Wood and the famous Ruislip Lido. I enjoyed a 99 there along with thousands of families who thronged the banks and beaches.

Hillingdon Trail South

The weather here was gorgeous and I was trapped by volcanic ash (and that's my excuse for not helping at home this weekend). I couldn't not go walking. Especially since I'd done this walk two years ago on the same weekend.

I went south along the Grand Union Canal, going from Uxbridge to Cranford Park, a ten kilometre hike just to get get to my starting point. The weather was glorious and there was much to see. There was a little girl blowing bubbles from a narrow boat; they lit up the waterway as the bubbles glistened and changed colour in the still air. The banks were adorned with wild plums (sloe or blackthorn to you and me) in effusive and effulgent blossom. The mallard, watchful but proud with up to twelve ducklings. It was perfectly quiet under the empty Heathrow flight path. Then I headed north on the Paddington spur, having met the intersection with the Hillingdon Trail at Bulls Bridge. There was a man in the canal, or so it first seemed. He was actually in a tiny boat like a box and he had a big filter on a scoop, arranged much like a bulldozer. He was cleaning the water and frankly, the Paddington spur needed it.

I spent a few minutes on the phone while in Willow Tree Reserve and despite serious discussions about granite paving, I will admit to being a bit distracted by a cob aggressively and repeatedly waging territorial war on two disaffected Canada Geese. Someone had removed one of the signs and I took a slight detour which meant I saw what Tesco have done to Yeading (I'm not sure outsiders are supposed to) and I won't be going back. Of course, if I'd brought a decent map it might have been easier.