Capital Ring

Grove Park > Crystal Palace

TREPIDATION is exactly what we felt about this part of the walk, probably because we started out later than we’d planned to complete this gruelling 8.2 mile section (we didn’t get to Grove Park til 2-ish). Also, going by previous Ring walks we know that you always walk longer than the stated distance, taking into account the links from public transport at the start and end of each section and the detours that we do round large parks and en route.

We picked up this section of the walk at the start of Railway Children Walk, named after EE Nesbit’s famous book (she lived nearby). I almost expected to see Jenny Agutter waving from one of the houses close by (no such luck). This is quite a pleasant little walk though nothing prepares you for the truly hideous footbridge that takes you over the railway lines linking London and Kent. The other side of the bridge is massively overgrown - we’d never seen banks of nettles that big! (and we certainly didn’t see them in the Railway Children film!)

From here, you walk along quite a boring part of the walk mostly round housing estates, before entering Downham Woodland Walk, a remnant of the Great North Wood. We did pass a chav family who asked for a light for their ciggies but they were quite harmless, walking their dogs and drinking cans of carling. Although you’re essentially walking along the back of terraced houses there’s enough little features (sculptures and carved wooden hobbitesque leaf seats) to make it pleasant enough. The wooden animal sculptures reminded of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe where the evil queen turns all the little animals to stone.



Out of the walk, we crossed Bromley Road and entered Beckenham Palace Park, a massive park and nature reserve, heavily wooded with a public golf course in it. This is a great part of the walk as you really feel like you’re out of civilisation. After walking through some woodland, it’s not long before you have an 18th century mansion and farmhouse in view. It looks nice from a distance but is a bit shabby close up. The mansion contains the golf clubhouse, which is also open to the public. There’s toilets and a cheap bar – we felt obliged to have a couple of drinks and sit outside on the wooden bench seats as it was such a super day. Bar was quite busy with some kind of community golf competition and we had the added bonus of the Biggin Hill air show with jets flying overhead – deafening, though it looked spectacular. Lots of people had dogs with them, as it was so hot there were lots of water bowls being passed around. Two drinks at the bar was a definite mistake, we started the next part of the walk and it wasn’t long before toilets were required. The only plus side of this was that we tended to walk a lot faster!



Exiting Beckenham Palace Park you come to a part of the walk that sends you through back streets in residential areas and small parks and sports fields. We passed rows and rows of some very posh mansions, under a subway and into Cator Park (the path into the grounds is between 2 houses so keep your eyes peeled for the signs). Cator Park is very nice in a sculpted kind of way, lots of sporting activity taking place. A few streams meet in this park to form a huge pool. The next point of note is Alexandra Recreation Ground – we had our terminator vision set on the pavilion to use the public toilets. CLOSED!! Damn you guide book for toying with our hopes (and our bladders!)



We arrived at Penge East station, where you have to cross a railway line using the footbridge, the signage could be a lot better here – it’s never clear that you actually have to do this and we wandered around like idiots for a bit. At this stage you’re within spitting distance of Crystal Palace, however a v rough looking bar (Hollywood East) provided a necessary toilet break. It’s the kind of bar you would never normally go into, and as we used the toilet we felt obliged to have a drink. We stayed for one and saw that it was as dog rough as we suspected, complete with numerous “Don’t deal drugs pls thx” signs in both English and Chinese! Nothing happened, thou the horned locals definitely knew that we weren’t. You walk up Penge High Street under some bridges, apparently this section is one of earliest rail sections in London and the trains used to operated by atmospheric traction where trains were vacuum drawn through a pipe – how cool!! Shame it’s not still like that. All sounded very Willy Wonka-esque!



Make sure you leave plenty of time to take in as much of the splendour of Crystal Palace Park, which is huge. The Palace burnt down in 1936 but you get the idea of how massive it must have been with the foundations! I can only imagine how spectacular the fire was as it must have been viewable from the whole of London. The park is also home to the huge and famous sports/athletics centre, though this basically looks like a 1960s new town. There are capital ring signs directing you round the park, though I recommend just making your own way round it. The park is landscaped with lakes, moats, a maze, etc… Avoid the maze - hugely disappointing arrangement of straggly hedges. Must sees are the huge concrete concert hall stage simply for its design, the transmitter mast (if only for the views as this is one of the highest points in London), the stone Sphinxes and the cool Victorian dinosaur statues. The prehistoric section is magical – Mark remembered seeing these on Blue Peter when he was a child (a v long time ago then) and they defo lived up to his expectations - for any kids or kidults they would be one of the highlights of the whole capital ring walk. They’re fenced off so people can’t deface them and this works surprisingly well as they’re placed amidst greenery beside lakes and streams to fit in with the surroundings.





Before getting the train from Crystal Palace we headed into the village and were pleasantly surprised really by the choice of bars and restaurants (though not so pleasantly surprised by the massive hills, as we were knackered by then). We had a drink in the Holly Bush, which was OK, but definitely recommend Black Sheep, we got a window seat looking onto the busy street and happily sat with a cocktail or two, hic!! What a brilliant way to end this section where we must have covered at least 10 miles, yikes!!!!

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Next the joys of Streatham…..