Day 6 (26 June 2004)

Elstree to Enfield Lock: 19 miles

Good bits: Seeing the Red Burnett moths in Totteridge Fields; Hadley Village; Turkey Brook; short station links; the most comprehensive signposting on the LOOP (but not enough to do it without the book).

Bad bits: All of the road walking in the first 4 or 5 miles, but especially the A1. The dull walking along Dollis Brook, Salmon Brook and Hadley Common, the large number of paths that had been tarmac'd (how do you spell that anyway?)

The Walk

(a) Elstree to Barnet (7 miles)

For some reason Jim and I both felt exceptionally groggy when waking up. For once we were not remotely in the mood for walking; we constantly bemoaned niggling aches and pains, and even our usual rendition of Bert Kaempfert's Surfing Safari sounded like a funeral dirge. Our sombre mood was not helped by the fact that the Chiltern Line trains pass through West Hampstead station without stopping, and we had to change at Marylebone and Baker Street before being able to return to said station to get on the Thameslink line to Elstree & Borhamwood station.

Maybe this initial mood contributed to making this the dullest day's walking yet on the LOOP. Or maybe it was the fact that we're near the end of the LOOP and the novelty has worn off; or that the skies were overcast with occasional rain (and heavy rain was forecast for the afternoon); or the high proportion of road walking (even when off-road, many paths were on tarmac) that turned me off. But I think mainly it was simply the blandness of the landscape; few good views, few decent sights.

Perhaps one of the LOOP's best features is the unusual juxtaposition of urban and rural features; on day one, for instance, Erith's scrapyards next to marshes and strange winding creeks were a startling contrast. Day 6 somehow had far less of this interesting diversity and was for the most part either a slog along roadsides or a slog through boring farmland and woods.

One of the mercies of this section is that it is easily the best signposted section on the whole LOOP (although we still could never have completed it without THE BOOK. The other mercy is the shortness of the station links. From the station, it was only a couple of minutes before we arrived at the point where we had left the LOOP a couple of months ago.

Right from the start your feet and soul are worn by lengthy road-walking. Apparently there is a possibility of a future "green corridor" leading south-east from the station, but for the minute it's an uphill roadside slog of almost 1.5 miles before you're able to give your feet and ears a rest from the tarmac and passing cars.

After this start tiny Scratch Wood seems like heaven; that is, until you hear the noise of more traffic filtering through the trees. You are coming to the A1, six lanes of screaming traffic that is without a doubt the most tiresome road crossing on the whole LOOP. After a quarter of a mile plod, we saw the LOOP heading away from the opposite side of the road into parkland full of picnic benches. We waited several minutes for a gap in the traffic, but there simply wasn't one, and clambering over the crash barrier in the middle of what was essentially a motorway seemed like a bad idea.

We had no option but to use the route suggested by the book - a mind-and-foot-numbing half mile slog to an underpass, and the same again back up the other side of the road. Still, at least we knew there were the picnic benches there, and we made good use of them. If the previous five sections had taught us anything it was to make use of benches when you find them - they are all too rare on the LOOP when you actually need them!

Up until now it had just been spotting with rain; it now started raining in earnest. Macs went on, & I zipped off my trouser legs, partly as I was quite warm and partly because I wanted to keep them dry for the journey home. I also added the "turtle" or waterproof cover to my rucksack and was shocked to discover it was bright silver in hue.

So with me looking like an astronaut in shorts, we marched on into Moat Mount Open Space. Trudging with our heads down we managed to miss a turning, and discovered ourselves at a small lake with a "tree trail". Retracing our steps we eventually found the correct path and forgave ourselves completely - both the signposting and the path were not exactly obvious, and without the book's help we may never have found the LOOP again! When we did we were astonished to find, for the first time today, several other people out walking, plus one brave girl running. All too soon we came onto another half mile of road lined with particularly opulent houses; uphill and in the rain it seemed much further. Somewhat bizarrely the running girl passed us for a second time.

At the top of the hill we turned of into the Totteridge Fields conservation area, the rain eased and my spirits began at long last to rise. I was cheered to note that we were now on a permissive path rather than a public footpath, and the owners would close the path once a year on the 28th February - to what end we could not imagine. According to signs the fields here were home to the rare Red Burnett moth (or some such name). Normally it's a real struggle to see any of the species shown on such boards, but here there were dozens of the moths flitting about - the conservation was obviously working well!

Next came a long dull section supposedly following the Dollis Brook, although it was invisible below a layer of bracken and may as well not have been there. It first of all ran through a kilometre of completely nondescript agricultural land, and then a further kilometre of an uninspiring grassy "amenity area" squeezed around the outer edge of Barnet.

(b) Barnet to Cockfosters (3.5 miles)

All praise to the LOOP designers who get the path through such a large suburb as Barnet with so little urban walking - you make use of first a park and then some rough scrubland, and barely see evidence of the town at all. That said, there isn't anything interesting to see either, and after consulting the book (lack of signposting, I'm afraid) you soon find yourself ascending a surprisingly tiring hill to the village of Hadley, where blue plaques announce that the authors Fanny Trollope (a name which gives one pause for thought…) and her son Anthony lived.

Nearby is Livingstone Cottage where the African explorer lived on his return to Blighty. If the name conjures up images of a twee little thatched tudor dwelling, put those images to one side - it's a darn great manor house, as are most of the places round these parts.

In fact, the road you follow out of the village (yep, more road-walking!) runs past mansion after mansion built on an increasingly grandiose scale. The funny thing is, whilst they are all undoubtedly impressive and look fabulously luxurious, none of them are actually very nice - these places are designed to say "look at me" rather than actually to live in.

You now enter Hadley Common through a pair of white gates. It's just a small part of Enfield Chase, which was once an enormous hunting forest. The long straight road past the mansions becomes a long straight path through the woods, and this is where one can really start to see what makes this bit of the walk so dull. It may sound nice, just you and the trees, but the point is there are no features to tell you how far you've gone, nothing to stimulate the mind. In two miles of this, the highlights were as follows: two smashed up arcade machines placed incongruously on a railway bridge; a burnt out Ford Transit; two worried-looking teenagers trying to navigate the rutted track on a scooter that frankly wasn't up to the job; and - joy of joys - a small fishing lake. Most annoying was a sign halfway along which said that we had come 6.25 miles from Scratchwood, and had 6.25 miles to go to Elstree Lock. From all available sources we had, we knew these distances to be drastically underestimated, and for possibly the first time felt aggrieved at the LOOP designers for their disregard for our heroic endeavours!

At the end of Hadley Common was Cockfosters station, the end of Chapter 11 of the book and well over halfway through our day. We decided to stop on a bench at the end of the common for lunch. Jim has taken to carrying an umbrella on our walks. Personally I feel it's burdensome, unwieldy in wind, likely to jab me in unwelcome regions (and no, I don't mean Coulsdon) and unbecoming in a serious walker. But I welcomed it now, for as we sat to masticate our homely comestibles, the heavens opened and precipitated expeditiously on the summit of Jim's patent inundation preventative rather than our own vulnerable noggins. The locals were not so lucky; as they gawked at us from the windows of their nearby abodes, their protruding sproggits were plastered back to their scalps by the sudden deluge.

As we rose to continue our perambulations, the rain eased, and in fact we had nothing more than occasional spotting for the remainder of the afternoon. We later discovered that Wimbledon had been completely cancelled for that day due to rain; I think we were very lucky.

(c) Cockfosters to Enfield Lock (8.5 miles)

From Cockfosters the path headed into Trent Country Park, where we were let down by not only the lack of LOOP signs, but also - for possibly the first time ever - by the book, which told us to bear right when the way was in fact straight on. Eventually by stumbling through the woods in a wide circle, we came across a path that had LOOP signs & continued on our way - straight to a café where on a whim, and despite the fact that we'd just had lunch, we stopped for a cup of tea. Well, it would have been rude not to…!

The heart of the Park is a couple of what I assume are artificial lakes. Now while I love water in a landscape, these particular lakes were somehow completely let down by the drab surroundings. There had been none of the usual attempts to enhance the valley setting with careful planting schemes, it just felt brown and devoid of character or life. Apart from daytrippers, that is - the place was heaving! We were amused to see a large group of kids taking turns to crawl through a large drainpipe full of boggy stream, whilst the Dad appeared to be trying to encourage them to use each other as stepping stones!

After leaving the park through woodland, we started to follow the Salmon Brook - just like the Dollis Brook earlier on, this was invisible below bushes and bracken and passed through a series of mind-numbingly dull and large fields. The latter half of the path seemed little used -we had to fight our way through stinging nettles and at one point, head high grass - it looks like this is one footpath that may unfortunately be impassable before not too much longer.

Now we finally got to a nice bit of the walk. We followed a lovely open lane down to a farm, past some large greenhouses which seemed to be being used for industrial storage rather than to grow plants, and round the edge of a cricket ground. There's always something pleasant about village cricket - it's so much a part of England and yet it's so relaxing. I was surprised that they were playing given the poor light quality and the fact that it was spotting with rain - village cricketers must be made of sterner stuff than the test teams!

We next descended into Hilly Fields Park - yup, you guessed it, it's a park containing fields with hills in. We saw a bench, but scorned using it because it was spotting with rain & looked like it could get worse (okay, maybe we hadn't learned our lesson about benches…)

The LOOP follows the Turkey Brook through the park and - hurrah! - at last it was a stream that was not just visible, but pretty too. I was finally enjoying myself, but Jim was getting tired & demanded a halt. Now of course, there were no seats at all, and we eventually decided to take a break on a particularly knobbly log, joking as we did that as soon as we started walking again there'd be dozens of benches. And sure enough there were. Isn't that always the way?

The LOOP seemed to be back to its best and most interesting form for the final leg of our journey. We passed over the now dry old channels of the New River. The "river" was originally dug to bring extra water into London in the 1600's. However, it just wasn't efficient enough for the Victorian engineers so they dug out a new straighter channel - leaving behind the old channels you see now.

We followed our friend the Turkey Brook on to the Forty Hall Estate where we were greeted by Rhododendron bushes and some pleasant fishing lakes with little islands in the middle.

Finally we came to the outskirts of Enfield. Here we found the new cut of the new river - strangely it had been buried underground to allow the Turkey Brook to flow unimpeded above. We crossed a busy dual carriageway via a footbridge that, though steep in hiking boots, would have been exceptionally welcome over the A1. A particularly pleasant cemetery was next - full of trees and flowers and with graves hidden away in little glades around the edges. I would have liked to explore a little, but unfortunately the LOOP is kept to the edge by a chain link fence.

After a little road walking, some parkland and a couple more footbridges over the railway & the Turkey Brook (now sadly confined to a deep concrete channel) we came to our journey's end. From the map and the top of the footbridge the station looked very close to the LOOP. In reality, it was a longer walk than expected - though you could see the station was tantalisingly close through a row of houses, you actually had to walk past, round the end of the houses and back again to reach it.

In the end this section of walk turned out okay - the weather was far better than forecast, and the end section was actually rather nice. If you're not actually trying to complete the LOOP, and just fancy some rural walking in the area, you could do worse than walk from Cockfosters to Enfield Lock (about 8.5 miles). But the initial section from Elstree to Barnett is simply dreadful, and only for completists. The sooner "they" can get a footbridge over the A1 the better!