Sunday, July 15, 2007
Falconwood > Grove Park
We headed back to south east London and back along the path by the railway path and busy road to rejoin the start of the walk. We walked across a heavily graffittied concrete footbridge and found ourselves in Eltham Park South, a large open space lined with trees, and deserted but for an elderly couple trying to get their elderly dogs to pay fetch. The path then took us across a road and down a footpath running around the edge of a leafy residential area and some meadows. We walked between some large houses and came across a little triangle of grass with a sort of weird little hobbity red brick building (Conduit Head, surprisingly a Grade II listed structure) that turned out to be an old medieval sluice gate for nearby Eltham Palace – no water passes through it now though and if you peer through the grilles you will only see a few crisp packets and empty tins. It definitely could be better maintained.
After the sluice gate, we walked down another quiet residential street past a lovely church to a huge roundabout, ah civilisation – take care to follow the signage crossing the road as it’s a bit confusing - and up the hill passing a school (some v big houses – a bit Footballers Wives in places) that runs parallel to Eltham High Street – we didn’t check out the shops but it would probably have been a good idea to get some snacks for a picnic in the Palace grounds. Sigh - oh well! We passed a big church and finally (even though it had been signed as ¼ of a mile away for the last two miles…) we came to Eltham Palace! It’s a saving grace that this section of the Ring walk is so short as we’re rarely in this part of London and planned to have a good look round while we were in the area.
The palace was built as a royal lodge in the 14th century and was used by royalty until King Henry 8th decided that he wanted to move up west and abandoned it. It fell into ruin and neglect until the 1930s, when super rich textile magnates Lord and Lady Courtauld used the remnants of the great hall as the basis for a fantastic new house. Even though they spent a small fortune on it, they buggered off to (the then) Rhodesia towards the end of WW2. It was used by the army until recently and has now been restored and is open to the public. Phew!
First of all we looked round the beautiful gardens – complete with picturesque medieval ruins, a moat and bridge, rockery and waterfall and lots of beautiful plants and flower beds, all of which were in bloom due to the early hot weather. Lots of people had brought picnics, which made us very envious. I can’t recommend these gardens enough and the whole palace is worth a day trip wherever you live.
After lazing around in the sun for a while, we went into the palace itself to check out the fantastic art deco interior. The entrance hall is amazing – a large two story circular room lined with wooden panels and with a fantastic domed skylight over an art deco rug and coffee table. You could just imagine having a nice martini in there before popping off for a game of croquet with a smashing young gel called Lettuce. We had a look round the rest of the rooms too, notably a dining room with panelled doors and a curved aluminium ceiling, bedrooms with built in curved wood bookcases, complete with built in speakers and vents for a house-wide vacuum cleaner system, a centrally heated den for a pet lemur and Lady C’s roman nymph grotto of a bathroom. As well as the modern house, you can also get into the medieval great hall, a high ceiling, churchlike pace with an ornate wooden vaulted roof. It’s apparently not v authentic (more like the set of an Errol Flynn film apparently) but I wouldn’t mind having it as my dining room.
We got an ice cream and carried on our way, though everything after the palace was a bit of an anti climax. The route next takes you along King Johns Walk – an ancient hunting track that takes you by some paddocks and meadows with horses and ponies! It feels like you are right in the country now, even though you can occasionally see Canary Wharf and the Gherkin in the distance. Unfortunately you end up being fenced off by 6 foot barriers on both sides for quite a long way, which we did not really like. You walk by some woodland on one side and sports fields on the other. The path crosses a concrete drainage ditch and we then found ourselves in deepest suburbia, leading all the way to Grove Park; a station, row of dingy shops and a rough looking pub (Baring Hall Hotel) that looked chavtastic. Instead we hopped on the train to Charing Cross and went to the Retro Bar instead.
You can check out rest of the pics here
Next: the longest section on the whole walk (Grove Park>Crystal Palace)! Yikes!
We headed back to south east London and back along the path by the railway path and busy road to rejoin the start of the walk. We walked across a heavily graffittied concrete footbridge and found ourselves in Eltham Park South, a large open space lined with trees, and deserted but for an elderly couple trying to get their elderly dogs to pay fetch. The path then took us across a road and down a footpath running around the edge of a leafy residential area and some meadows. We walked between some large houses and came across a little triangle of grass with a sort of weird little hobbity red brick building (Conduit Head, surprisingly a Grade II listed structure) that turned out to be an old medieval sluice gate for nearby Eltham Palace – no water passes through it now though and if you peer through the grilles you will only see a few crisp packets and empty tins. It definitely could be better maintained.
After the sluice gate, we walked down another quiet residential street past a lovely church to a huge roundabout, ah civilisation – take care to follow the signage crossing the road as it’s a bit confusing - and up the hill passing a school (some v big houses – a bit Footballers Wives in places) that runs parallel to Eltham High Street – we didn’t check out the shops but it would probably have been a good idea to get some snacks for a picnic in the Palace grounds. Sigh - oh well! We passed a big church and finally (even though it had been signed as ¼ of a mile away for the last two miles…) we came to Eltham Palace! It’s a saving grace that this section of the Ring walk is so short as we’re rarely in this part of London and planned to have a good look round while we were in the area.
The palace was built as a royal lodge in the 14th century and was used by royalty until King Henry 8th decided that he wanted to move up west and abandoned it. It fell into ruin and neglect until the 1930s, when super rich textile magnates Lord and Lady Courtauld used the remnants of the great hall as the basis for a fantastic new house. Even though they spent a small fortune on it, they buggered off to (the then) Rhodesia towards the end of WW2. It was used by the army until recently and has now been restored and is open to the public. Phew!
First of all we looked round the beautiful gardens – complete with picturesque medieval ruins, a moat and bridge, rockery and waterfall and lots of beautiful plants and flower beds, all of which were in bloom due to the early hot weather. Lots of people had brought picnics, which made us very envious. I can’t recommend these gardens enough and the whole palace is worth a day trip wherever you live.
After lazing around in the sun for a while, we went into the palace itself to check out the fantastic art deco interior. The entrance hall is amazing – a large two story circular room lined with wooden panels and with a fantastic domed skylight over an art deco rug and coffee table. You could just imagine having a nice martini in there before popping off for a game of croquet with a smashing young gel called Lettuce. We had a look round the rest of the rooms too, notably a dining room with panelled doors and a curved aluminium ceiling, bedrooms with built in curved wood bookcases, complete with built in speakers and vents for a house-wide vacuum cleaner system, a centrally heated den for a pet lemur and Lady C’s roman nymph grotto of a bathroom. As well as the modern house, you can also get into the medieval great hall, a high ceiling, churchlike pace with an ornate wooden vaulted roof. It’s apparently not v authentic (more like the set of an Errol Flynn film apparently) but I wouldn’t mind having it as my dining room.
We got an ice cream and carried on our way, though everything after the palace was a bit of an anti climax. The route next takes you along King Johns Walk – an ancient hunting track that takes you by some paddocks and meadows with horses and ponies! It feels like you are right in the country now, even though you can occasionally see Canary Wharf and the Gherkin in the distance. Unfortunately you end up being fenced off by 6 foot barriers on both sides for quite a long way, which we did not really like. You walk by some woodland on one side and sports fields on the other. The path crosses a concrete drainage ditch and we then found ourselves in deepest suburbia, leading all the way to Grove Park; a station, row of dingy shops and a rough looking pub (Baring Hall Hotel) that looked chavtastic. Instead we hopped on the train to Charing Cross and went to the Retro Bar instead.
You can check out rest of the pics here
Next: the longest section on the whole walk (Grove Park>Crystal Palace)! Yikes!
