Weather: Hot and Sunny
Distance Walked: 8.7km
Distance By Tube: 7.24km
Stations Visited: 2
Fantastic Plaice: Ever Fresh Fish Cricklewood
The second leg of the Metropolitan Line starts, unsurprisingly, from where I left off. The challenge this time for a walk that only includes two stations was two fold. First to avoid the Jubilee Line stations that lie on the long stretch between Finchley Road and Wembley Park and how to get across the North Circular road without going too far out of my way. Leaving Finchley Road and heading north past the wonderfully named Finchley Road and Frognal overground station I was glad to swing west off the busy A41 and enter the shaded and rather attractive side streets of this part of hilly Hampstead. Returning very briefly to the Finchley Road I spied across the busy thoroughfare one of my favourite eating places, Koi Sushi. Many a happy evening has been spent there after a long D&D session and it can be highly reccomended.
Heading down hill past many attractive Edwardian(?) mansion blocks and a very picturesque fire station dating from 1901 you reach Mill Lane which has a very nice village feel. That is something that you pick up when you walk through London, although everything at first appears to be one huge homogeneous metropolis, on the ground many places have kept a part of their original village feel. Hampstead is one of these and even within Hampstead there are different sub-villages and districts.
As the road turns north-west to follow a deep railway cutting there is a small nature reserve tucked into the side of the road. Westbere Copse is quite small and I should have spent a few minutes exploring it but I wasn't sure at the time if there was another way out.
The further north-west I walked along Westbere Road the less attractive the buildings on either side became, you really feel a sense of leaving Hampstead behind and moving into Cricklewood. Ah Cricklewood, this was one of those place names that had a magical attraction for me in my youth as it was the home of The Goodies. I had no idea where it was or what it was like so I made sure that today's walk passed through it. It is quite a busy, bustling place built around and along the A5, the old Roman Road that became in Anglo Saxon times, Watling Street. No sense of ancient history remains in the shop lined street of today though one shop Ever Fresh Fish had one of the finest displays of fresh fish I had ever seen. Fish from all corners of the globe (OK why do we say 'corners of the globe'? Globes have no corners!) bright eyed and very fresh looking. Didn't buy any as I think they may have been a little less fresh by the time I arrived at the end of the walk - it was beginning to get very hot indeed now and the shelter provided by the tall blocks either side of the road was balanced against the fumes from the lorries, buses and cars.
Beyond Watling Street the walk became more peaceful, with parallel streets of residential terraces running south of Olive Road, one of the houses had a very fine dragon finial on their roof which I coveted. I've seen them for sale in reclamation yards, including one near my office in Vauxhall, but they are too expensive (and too heavy to pop in my rucksack) so perhaps in our next house. One of these side streets had my favourite name so far, Dicey Avenue. It would be interesting to find out why that name was chosen, there is no pattern that I could determine; Sneyd,Wren, Dawsons, Blackstone and Heber are the others nearby. It all seems like a difficult Only Connect wall.
A very pleasant walk through Gladstone Park followed, lots of nice trees and . This is one of the numerous municipal parks that are dotted throughout London and which made walking the Capital Ring and this latest project so pleasurable. We are very lucky in London to have so many of them and we need to make sure that in this era of austerity we don't lose them or let them fall into disrepair.It had an interesting bird sculpture which reminded me a bit of some of the art in Barcelona's Park Guell.Leaving the park, with great views of Wembley Stadium ahead, you enter Neasdon and not far ahead the drone of the North Circular starts to make itself heard. After all my worries it was actually very simple to cross. Following Neasden High Street leads to a very attractive underpass (yes they do exist and not all smell) with tiles depicting canal boats, trains and other forms of transport. I realised as I emerged back into the sunlight that I had been across the top of the underpass on the North Circular hundreds of times but never thought anything of it. A slow climb and walk along a rather busy main road followed before diving south west again towards the station at Wembley Park which has a very attractive frontage. It has obviously been upgraded recently to accommodate extra visitors for the new Wembley Stadium and this has been done very nicely giving the station a nice open feel.
That completed this leg of the walk and next time I need to make a decision as to which branch of the line to tackle first: south to Uxbridge or north to Chesham, Amersham and Watford.
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