Capital Ring

Following the completion of the Ridgeway last year with our new walking converts Justin and Cat and with the new year upon us, it was high time we got back on the trail…

But which trail? Jus and Cat proposed the Solent Way. How about bagging all the marilyns in the south-east, said I? The brand-new Shakespeare Way was briefly mooted, but everyone said “hmm... maybe sometime in the future”. In reality Jim and I knew all the time why we were turning down all other suggestions – we wanted to walk the Capital Ring.

So what is the Capital Ring? Well, in the same way that the London LOOP could be described as the walkers’ M25, the Capital Ring might be the walkers’ North and South Circular. The Aurum Press guide to the trail summarises it as “78 miles of footpaths through inner London’s green spaces”. This seems a concise than saying the Ring attempts to link rivers, parks, woodland, reservoirs, crematoria, commons, lakes, golf courses, canals, open hills, and docks, keeping off of roads as much as humanly possible whilst staying between 4 and 10 miles from the centre of London – no mean feat!

Inevitably, though, there is a fair amount of tarmac on the Ring – especially as the designers have tried to pick a route which is generally suitable for people of restricted mobility. So you may well ask why Jim and I were so keen on this path rather than a rural one. Well, we’d done the LOOP a couple of years ago, and had enjoyed it so much that we couldn’t wait to walk in London again. Not for us the dull trudge through miles of featureless farmland, hauling our hefty post-Christmas stomachs over stiles every two hundred feet. No, we wanted points of interest at every turn, and according to the Aurum Press Guide the Ring would offer us statues, palaces, mansions, a sphinx, a castle, deer, churches, a windmill, a giant ships bell, great views of London, monuments, petting zoos, statues of dinosaurs, and the Thames Flood Barrier.

Jim and I were convinced and started to plan our strategy; our starting point on the circular route; whether we could make use of the vagaries of the oyster card to save us money. Jus and Cat started to plan ways of getting out of it. “There’s too much tarmac” said Cat. “It’ll be too cold” said Jus. I said they could do their Solent Way if they wanted (which incidentally also looked quite tarmaccy), but why didn’t they come along and try the Capital Ring with us; if they didn’t like it they could always leave at the first station.

We were set… another circuit of London awaited us, although whether Jus and Cat (or, for that matter, my father-in-law Dave) would come remained to be seen.