This is the longest B Road I've walked since the B108 and almost hits two miles. It's also the furthest from home so far, snaking up the Lea Valley within the London borough of Enfield. It used to start on Tottenham High Road and sweep round towards the North Circular, then got extended north to Ponders End, but today only the extension is still classified. It's very suburban. It has its moments.
The B137 starts within earshot of the North Circular at its first junction west of the River Lea. If you ever made a dubious trek to Angel Road station, that's pretty much where it is. Montagu Road bears off the tarmac maelstrom at the foot of a tower block beside a busy Turkish corner shop called Oz Tonbul Supermarket. The handful of parking spaces outside are a favourite rendezvous point for commercial drivers taking a break from the A406, maybe clustered in conversation, maybe surreptitiously swapping goods or maybe popping into Mums Cafe for a fry-up. I gave the dozen huddled men a wide berth and set out on the latest leg of my quest.
At this end of Montagu Road the terraces are compact and the front gardens just about big enough for your bins. One resident considers it classy to balance two stone dogs on their wall, both of whom are eyeing up a similarly petrified rabbit. Slicing across here is a disused railway that until 1964 connected the two Lea Valley Lines, and which has recently been snazzed up and reopened as a footpath to deliver Edmontoners to Meridian Water. The next brief shopping parade is bookended by Montague Supermarket (with its superfluous 'e') and Hammond Cafe (which is still using Internet as a customer lure). Should you ever wish to celebrate your nuptials in a vast warehouse on an industrial estate, be sure to book your reception at Prince & Princess Wedding Hall.
And now for a tale of three cemeteries. The earliest two are Victorian, opened to serve the overflowing needs of inner city synagogues rather than any local population. Together they constitute the largest surviving (and most densely-packed) Jewish burial ground in the UK, which somehow stretches back as far as what's now Edmonton Green shopping centre. I had hoped for a look deep inside Edmonton Federation Cemetery but it was Saturday and the gates were firmly locked. Montagu Road fact: This end of the B137 was originally Jeremy's Green Lane, but was renamed after Samuel Montagu, the benefactor of the larger Jewish cemetery.
Instead I had to make do with the smaller, younger, Tottenham Park Cemetery which was originally Christian and now caters mainly for Muslim burials. Its headstones commemorate mostly Mustafas and Mehmets, occasionally Fatimas, and appeared to be squeezed into every available space. The gravedigger, who was hanging around in his van waiting for an interment, told me they have room for another 350 burials because a lot of people who bought plots have never used them, and after that they'll be filling 400 acres over at Sewardstone. The chapel at the heart of the site is no longer used, indeed is now derelict, pigeon-infested and used for storing wheelbarrows.
This is also where the Salmons Brook crosses the road, as an attractively fishy gate confirms. It then flows across a recreation ground as a minor landscaping feature before escaping under the railway and merging with Pymme's Brook. I'd know this if I'd ever walked its full length but that's eight miles of unlost river for another day.
The area ahead was once known as Marsh Side and was home to a few cottages and a moated farm, then a sewage works because the centuries come at you fast. Further evolution has brought a modern housing estate in place of filter beds and allotments, whose finest feature is a horse called Monty constructed from recycled metal. He was sculpted by Iain Nutting and is protected by what must be Enfield's least visible Please Do Not Climb notice, dropped flat into the grass. The food store across the road really needs to take down the two glittery reindeer above its front entrance. For those who like to know which bus route we're following it's been the 192 up to this point and will be the 191 from the next paragraph onwards.
There's been a pub at the top of Picketts Lock Lane since at least Tudor times. The twin-chimneyed building you can see today is a 1930s rebuild and retained the hostelry's splendidly evocative name - The Cart Overthrown. Alas it closed in 2017 and the interior is currently occupied by a Turkish charity bazaar, while Freddy's Hand Car Wash squirts out a living in the corner of the car park. In further evidence of unstoppable progress the Claverings business park is named after the medieval farmstead it squats across, and that is one mighty tower block erupting at the end of Bounces Lane. I thought Walbrook House resembled a 22-storey prison, but it turns out the bars covering the exterior are temporarily exposed while cladding panels are replaced.
It's here that Montagu Road becomes Nightingale Road, which is named after another swallowed farm, and the quality of suburbia climbs by a notch. The road is lined by 1930s homes with prominent gables and front gardens large enough to park in, and served by a quintessentially copper-roofed shopping parade. The Turkish barbers and the Spar off licence seem to be thriving but, as business decisions go, calling your taxi company Airports Only Limited looks to have proved financially disastrous.
A broad and intermittently busy road stretches ahead. Its main secondary school has been shielded behind a screen of semis so doesn't dominate, whereas the massive campus of primaries was postwar infill and is merely fenced. If I tell you that one of these schools is called Cuckoo Hall Academy you'll no doubt be able to deduce the name of yet another farm that once existed here. On the final bend some of the houses have additional geometric designs across their frontage, be that interlocking hoops, bold diagonals or a retro flash, which is a nice Betjeman-friendly touch.
The B137 draws to a close between a Bulgarian bakery and a house clearance hub at traffic lights on the Hertford Road. This is the A1010 and was formerly the A10 back when road numbers made some geographical sense. Next stop Harringay.
