My journey begins at the source of the eastern branch of the river Fleet (or at the sources, for there are in fact several). With the aid of a good map I located as many sources as possible and then yomped around the Kenwood area to try to take a photograph of each one. This proved tricky because most of the sources were hidden away in shady undergrowth, and some of the tiny streams had dried up in the summer heat. But the top of Hampstead Heath is the only place left in London where you can still see the River Fleet on the surface, as a river, so it was well worth the effort. And I was ultimately successful, as my Flickr photostream reveals:
I bet you'd like to see where these photographs were taken, especially if you remember how successfully I geoblogged all the photographs on my "Go West" walk (oooh, a straight line!). Alas the Geobloggers website has been playing up recently and is suddenly completely useless[8 Aug update: it's better now - ahhh, THAT'S better!]. So, what to use instead? I was tempted to use a site called gmaptrack, especially after I saw onionbagblogger's utterly brilliant map of every London webpost he's ever written. But instead I've gone with a new service called MapBuilder, which is sort of straight forward-ish and lets you tag photos around a map of your choice. So, here are the sources of the River Fleet, pinpointed on a map, with photos. And here's my differently-tagged map of Fleet-related photographs in the Kenwood area. I could even import these maps into my webpage, if I felt like it. Clever, eh? Let's see if I can keep it up for the rest of the month.
Reviewing the Fleet
Reviewing the Fleet