Four London locations I stumbled upon recently Four green spaces I'd not previously visited Four places of interest only to local people Four vignettes or go read something else
1)Beeline Way(Kingston/Merton)
I discovered this while trying to cross the Beverley Brook near New Malden, which is quite tricky unless you're driving, on a train or playing golf. I stepped down off a railway bridge onto a lengthy ramp and discovered a broad straight tarmac track stretching off into the distance with woodland to either side. It's got to be a former railway, I thought, and then realised there was an actual mainline railway running parallel through the trees so it couldn't be that. It turns out it's former Thames Water land opened up for public use, and last year was given the name Beeline Way after a local vote. It runs for almost a mile from New Malden station to almost Raynes Park and is a great way to get from one to the other without spending £2.90 on a train ticket.
I passed families out for a ride, patiently padding dogs, shoppers lumbering home with bags and a few small beehive signs confirming I was on the right track. It felt a little remote in places, there being only two access points along the way, one of which was up to the thundering A3 viaduct. Also you can hardly see the Beverley Brook at the point you pass over it which felt like a wildlife opportunity missed. At the eastern end the Beeline Way opens out into Raynes Park Recreation Ground, where I got to chuckle at rugby players performing grunty ball exercises, then disappointingly dissipates into the car park and a residential street. Thus far the Beeline Way website promises much and delivers little, suggesting it's quite new, but the track's very much worth bearing in mind next time you need a direct connection.
2)Hale Field Park(Hillingdon)
I discovered this while walking through Stockley Park, the pioneering business park on a former landfill site north of Heathrow Airport. Stockley Park combines anodyne corporate HQs with contoured landscaping, much of which is golf course but with an arc of public woodland around the northern edge. You'll know it if you've ever walked London Loop section 11, it's the non-canalside bit. I reached the asymmetricalfootbridge over the dual carriageway and then, to dodge the golf balls, wandered off down a lacklustre lane instead. Welcome to Hale Field Park, the sign said, from beneath a veneer of fresh red graffiti. This being Hillingdon the sign was quite informative, revealing that these 26 acres had previously been the site of Colham Green Nurseries and (long) before that part of a field called Hale Field. Fairly obviously.
Hale Field Park is very new, having been opened by the Mayor of Hillingdon and a girl on a pink bicycle in summer 2019. It's also a bit dull. Imagine a site quartered by footpaths which meet in the centre, and each quadrant is a fenced-off meadow or paddock you can generally only walk past. Yes the footpaths are lined by burgeoning saplings, and yes there is a bench, but there's not much to do other than walk in one entrance and walk out another. It's OK for a dogwalk if you live locally but not many do and only really on one side, the other flank being mostly main road, and what I learned is that just because somewhere's called something park doesn't mean it's worth a detour.
3)Spring Brook(Bromley/Lewisham)
I discovered this brief stream in Sundridge down a road called Brook Road, so that was a clue. The name Spring Brook sounds almost poetic until you realise it means a brook rising from a spring which is totally generic. That spring is long lost under the pitch of the Downham & Bellingham Cricket club, but take the shady alley up the side and you'll find the stream crossing Shaftesbury Park. It is, to be frank, the park's only interesting feature. The brook trickles through a deep woody channel (which could be picnicked beside in better weather) while the rest of the space is flat and green with a couple of unkempt benches. Even the playground is somewhat austere, though it was keeping three kids shriekingly happy.
On the other side of Valeswood Road the river flows from Bromley into Lewisham and the surrounding stripe of green becomes Downham Park. It's entirely signless, because some boroughs don't care about that kind of thing, but it does boast a central pavilion to cater for all the football pitches shoehorned along the flood plain. The river now hugs one side with a pleasant but undistinguished tarmac path alongside and the occasional footbridge leading to a patch of studded mud. If you lived round here and liked jogging you'd know it well, perhaps as part of a circuit with Downham Fields and the Woodland Walk, but by the time the brook reaches the main shopping parade it's been relegated to a pipe and there it stays until dribbling into the Ravensbourne behind some blocks of flats.
4)Cheam Park(Sutton)
I discovered this while waiting for a bus on Malden Road. It's a long wait until the next 213, I thought, I have time to nip up Tudor Close and see what Cheam Park looks like. It looks like a big park, it turned out, although on a bit of a slope so the views get better the further you walk. Originally these were the grounds of a big house called Cheam Park (whose outbuildings were roughly where the gardeners' compound is now), but that got hit by a flying bomb during WW2 and was demolished. The most popular building these days is the cafe, or rather Caffè because it's a tad on the pretentious side, proudly offering afternoon tea boxes, pizza and prosecco. Dogs are also very welcome.
The strangest thing about Cheam Park is that it rubs up against a much more famous park, but which is a completely separate entity because it lies on the other side of a county boundary. Nonsuch Park (where Henry VIII once had a palace) hides just beyond a screen of trees called 'The Wood', but the two are only grudgingly connected via a pair of muddy footpaths. This larger neighbour offers better promenading and an alternative eatery, the Nonsuch Pantry, but that's even more up itself so I recommend the cheaper Cheam option. By detouring into Surrey I missed my bus but hey, I thought, I might squeeze two paragraphs out of this.
