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Capital Ring

Circular walk linking the parks and greenspaces of inner London

History

This is a list of previous times this walk has been done by the club (since Jan 2010). For more recent events (since April 2015), full details are shown.

Date Post # Weather
Sat, 25-Jun-22 Saturday Walk: Capital Ring - Woolwich to Beckenham Place Park 3 sunny and pleasantly warm
Sun, 06-Jan-19 Sunday Walk – Capital Ring §6: Wimbledon Park to Richmond 12 cloudy and mild
Sat, 25-Jun-22
HollieB
Saturday Walk: Capital Ring - Woolwich to Beckenham Place Park
Woolwich to Beckenham Place Park
13 miles
This is the first part of the Capital Ring - a 78 mile circuit around London. This section starts at Woolwich and heads past many interesting places - Thames Barrier, Charlton House, Woolwich Common, Severndroog Castle (climb the tower for great views), Oxleas Woods, Eltham Palace (English Heritage, well worth a visit) - on the way to Beckenham Place Park.
The Capital Ring route guide has recently been revised by the Ramblers and the latest walk directions are here:
(you will need sections 1, 2 and part of 3)
Starting point: Woolwich Arsenal station, 10:30
Some suburban rail services may be running with a reduced service.
The nearest station to Beckenham Place Park is Beckenham Hill.
The no 54 bus runs along Beckenham Hill Road outside the park, and will take you to Catford, Lewisham and even all the way back to Woolwich.
The route heads through several parks which have cafes - the Oxleas Woods Cafe and Eltham Park South Cafe will be the most useful for a lunchtime stop. Beckenham Place Park has the Homestead Cafe and the Mansion Bar and Cafe.
You can swim in the lake at Beckenham Place Park, but will need to pre-book a slot here
t=ldp.23
  • 26-Jun-22

    Arrived a few minutes late but started walking and soon found two others so just 3 - perhaps all the other SE Londoners had enough of walking this area during Covid? The route has changed slightly since the SWC GPS (continuing along the Thames to the Thames Barrier now) and there were a couple of places where temporary works required a short deviation from the route but all were easily overcome.

    One dropped out at Eltham Palace, the other two continued to Beckenham Place Park where a couple of pints of Peckham Pale went down particularly well.

    It was sunny and pleasantly warm throughout the walk which uses some road walking to connect the many green spaces in the area.

Sun, 06-Jan-19
Sean
Sunday Walk – Capital Ring §6: Wimbledon Park to Richmond
Section 6 of the Capital Ring – Wimbledon Park to Richmond
Length: About 11½ km (7 miles). Toughness: 2/10 T=ldp.23

Take a District line tube to arrive at Wimbledon Park by 11:00 and meet in the booking hall. It's a 15-minute journey from Earl's Court, with tubes every five minutes. You could also take a train to Wimbledon and go back one stop on the tube. The Wimbledon stations are in TFL Zone 3.

At the end of the walk there are frequent trains, tubes and Overground from Richmond (Zone 4). London-bound trains are terminating at Clapham Junction on this line today, but you can change there for other services to Waterloo or Victoria.

On several Saturdays in 2017 DAC posted sections of the London Loop for SWC walkers, just one of several waymarked walking routes in the capital which seem ideal for Sunday walkers in winter: not too long with a short journey time, so no need for an early start or the prospect of finishing in the dark. As a trial, here's a section of the Capital Ring with a high proportion of green spaces (Wimbledon Park, Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park, Petersham Meadows) and not too much in the way of road links. It's well described and nicely presented on the Transport for London website.

For lunch you'll reach the Pembroke Lodge cafeteria in Richmond Park at around 1pm, but it's not much further into Richmond if you want to do the whole walk in one go. And if seven miles isn't enough, you could easily do an extra hour or so's walking along the Thames Path, either to Kew Bridge or (in the other direction, on the other bank: a street map would help) to Twickenham or Strawberry Hill.

As always, there will be no leader for this walk. You'll need to download the directions from this TfL Walking page.
  • Anonymous
    05-Jan-19

    Unable to come this weekend, but definitely recommend this walk. Sometimes muddy through Wimbledon Common, I did this walk about a week ago and it was fine. Plenty of lunch options in Richmond. There's a café by the windmill, on the common, but that's only half an hour into the walk, so you may want to walk right through.

  • Anonymous
    06-Jan-19

    IF COMING BY TUBE. PLEASE ALLOW EXTRA TIME:

    TFL Notice:

    DISTRICT LINE: Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 January, no service between Aldgate East and East Ham. Replacement buses operate.

    Replacement buses operateService A: Tower Hill - Aldgate and Aldgate East - Whitechapel - Stepney Green - Mile End - Bow Road - Bromley-by-Bow - Canning Town (For Jubilee line and DLR) - BarkingService B: Canning Town (For Jubilee line and DLR) - Plaistow - Upton Park - East Ham - Barking.

  • Anonymous
    06-Jan-19

    Well I didn't do this but just looked at the tfl directions and they seem excellent with a very nice map and notes- well doen tfl

  • 06-Jan-19

    Ten met up in the tube entrance hall (inc two newcomers) and we picked up two others en route so 12 in all who trundled round this pleasant parkland walk in cloudy and mild weather. The paths were supernaturally dry for this time of year, good for walking but if this high pressure weather system continues for much longer then you wonder what will be the impact on vegetation and insects as spring approaches?

    The best part of the walk is through Richmond Park and a large herd of red deer were obligingly close for photographs, seemingly oblivious to the groups of people approaching them.

    A very good lunch was served at the Pembroke Lodge cafeteria and as it was so mild eating at an outside table

    with good views over London was perfectly comfortable. There is a huge amount of seating both inside and outside so getting a seat should not be a problem.

    After lunch two walkers got a bit lost after missing an enclosed path. The rest of us quickly reached Richmond with all going on to the station (no Tube or Overground to-day!) whilst I lingered for a coffee. An excellent convivial but short day out and I hope the two newcomers were encouraged to come on other SWC walking adventures