River Crane Walk

River walk through west London parks, woods, and nature reserves.

Easy London Short

History

Club walks since April 2015, and a summary which goes back to Jan 2010.

Club Walks Summary

Date	Option	Post	#	Weather
Sun, 05-Oct-25		The River Crane Walk	3	mostly sunny
Sun, 26-Mar-23		The River Crane Walk	5	dry afternoon

Sun, 05-Oct-25

The River Crane Walk 3

Sean

SWC Walk 376 (variation) – Hatton Cross to Twickenham or Richmond

Length: About 10 km (6.2 miles) to Twickenham, 15 km (9.3 miles) to Richmond. Toughness: 1/10

Take a Piccadilly line tube to arrive at Hatton Cross (TfL Zone 5/6) by 11:00. It's a 45 minute journey from Leicester Square; if necessary, use the TfL Journey Planner from your local station. Meet upstairs in the ticket hall.

If you finish at Twickenham (Zone 5) there are five mainline trains an hour to Waterloo, at xx:01, xx:03, xx:23, xx:32 & xx:53. These all call at Richmond (Zone 4) around five minutes later. There are no District line trains from Richmond this weekend but the Mildmay (Overground) line is operating.

On the SWC site this River Crane Walk is shown as an out-and-back walk from Twickenham, but its northernmost point isn't far from a tube station so it can also be done as a linear walk – unless it's scuppered by problems on the Piccadilly line, which is what happened when I tried posting this variation 2½ years ago.

It wasn't really designed as a club walk so there aren't any designated lunch and tea places as such. There are cafés at the Shot Tower and in Kneller Park which function as pit stops; if you want something more substantial there are plenty of eateries in Twickenham as well as some appealing riverside pubs at the start of the optional extension to Richmond.

As usual there's no walk leader so please download the GPS file and/or the route map from the L=swc.376 page since navigation isn't entirely straightforward in the few places where the river is out of sight. For the extension, simply make your way to the River Thames and turn left.

NB. The SWC page lists the main features en route but you might also like to check out the notes and directions in this pdf document produced by Inner London Ramblers, since part of the River Crane Walk overlaps with Section 9 of the LOOP.

Sean
Oct-25
On TfL's advice I took an offbeat route to Hatton Cross (train to Feltham and a short bus ride), arriving just before 11am to find that the curse of the Piccadilly line had struck again: signal failure at Green Park. One tube did show up with an SWC regular, but as there was a 15 minute gap to the next one we decided to set off. Apologies to anyone who was delayed and started late.
The first part of this walk is directly under the Heathrow flight path and the spectacle of planes roaring overhead proved so exhilarating that I wondered if I'd been too hasty in shelving plans for a Gatwick Circular around the perimeter fence. Watch this space! A more peaceful stretch along the riverside path led to the Shot Tower where we stopped for a caffeine boost. My companion told me she had a weekly gym target of 1,000 steps and we knocked off a good portion of those by climbing to the top of the tower. After some more dawdling around the island we set off for the next leg, soon bumping into another regular who'd started late from an intermediate station. So for a while we were 3 on a mostly sunny autumn day.
One chose to finish at Twickenham but the unexpectedly fine weather persuaded two of us to carry on along the Thames Path, this time after an alcohol boost at the Barmy Arms. At Richmond we stopped to peruse what must surely be an April Fool's joke gone too far, a statue of someone called Bernardo O'Higgins who it claimed liberated Chile from Spanish rule. After that I would have been happy to call it a day but in the interests of research I was persuaded to try out one of the pubs around the Green. On the journey back South Western Railway could only muster a ridiculously crowded four-coach train which had to make lengthy stops at all the following stations, but after an undignified dash across the footbridge at Clapham Junction I just managed to make my connection.
Sandy
Oct-25
Not an April Fool!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_O'Higgins

Sun, 26-Mar-23

The River Crane Walk 5

Sean

SWC Walk 376 (variation) – Hatton Cross to Twickenham or Richmond

Length: About 10 km (6.2 miles) to Twickenham, 15 km (9.3 miles) to Richmond. Toughness: 1/10

Take a Piccadilly line tube to arrive at Hatton Cross (TfL Zone 5/6) by noon. It's a 45 minute journey from Leicester Square; if necessary, use the TfL Journey Planner from your local station. Meet upstairs in the ticket hall.

If you finish at Twickenham (Zone 5) there are four mainline trains an hour to Waterloo, at xx:03, xx:23, xx:32 & xx:53. These all call at Richmond (Zone 4) around five minutes later, and this station is also the terminus for a branch of the District line and Overground trains to Stratford.

NB. British Summer Time begins this Sunday. While we all welcome an extra hour's daylight in the evenings, some of us will complain at the loss of an hour in bed this morning. Since there's no great pressure to get to a lunch pub or tearoom at a certain time, I'll try to mollify these grumblers with this one-off experiment of an Afternoon Walk starting at the crack of noon.

This walk's author tells me that the River Crane Walk made an ideal lockdown outing: from Twickenham station you could go out and back along a thickly-wooded stretch of this urban tributary of the Thames and soon imagine yourself in a much more rural environment. Noting that its northernmost point isn't far from a tube station has led me to try out this linear version of the walk, with an attractive stretch of the Thames Path as an optional extension.

As it wasn't really designed as a club walk there aren't any designated lunch and tea places as such. I suggest having a break at the first refreshment place you'll come across (a café with picnic benches in Kneller Park), although it's only 20 minutes before Twickenham station. If you want something more substantial it's not much further to the town centre where you'll find plenty of eateries. There are also some appealing riverside pubs both here and at Richmond if you do the Thames Path extension (the first of which really is called “The Barmy Arms”, no doubt the spiritual home of England supporters abroad).

Remember that there's no walk leader. The L=swc.376 page has a couple of maps showing the main walk route, plus the short link route from Hatton Cross (both also available on GPS, though might be some doubt at a few places where the river is out of sight). You shouldn't have any difficulty finding your way to the Thames if you want to carry on to Richmond. The SWC page lists the main features en route; you might also like to check out the notes and directions in this pdf document produced by Inner London Ramblers, since part of the River Crane Walk overlaps with Section 9 of the LOOP.

Matthew Justin
Mar-23
As of 11:35 the Piccadilly line is suspended between Acton Town - where I currently am - and Heathrow due to a signal failure. I’ll give it a few more minutes before calling it a day.
Daisy Roots
Mar-23
I'm starting from twickenham 12.02.
Sean
Mar-23
As others have noted this walk was scuppered by a signal failure, with no tubes making it to Hatton Cross. As it happened I was running late and was able to switch routes to start at Feltham, resulting in a pleasant mud-free walk to Richmond entirely on firm paths. Having been forewarned I was expecting this to be a solo affair, but I made a pit stop in The Barmy Arms and met up with two doing a sort-of-reverse walk from Richmond. I gather that some who were stranded too far out along the Piccadilly line gave up, but it would be interesting to hear from anyone else who managed at least part of the walk on a day of low cloud and drizzle .
Daisy Roots
Mar-23
It seems at least5 walkers did some of this walk today then.
The rain had petered out as I started walking from Twickenham so it was a dry afternoon . Following the GPS route from Hatton Cross to Twickenham in reverse, I met 1 other walker, coming in the "right" direction, who had started early from Hatton Cross before the signal failure occurred.
I left the loops around Hounslow Heath and the inner part of Crane Park Island Nature Reserve for another day and stuck to the main paths - about half of which were hard surfaces and mud-free, the rest firm earth, a thin veneer of surface mud and puddles.
It was a very pleasant, quiet route today, teeming with birdsong and greener than I had expected.
On reaching Hatton Cross I hopped on the bus for the 30 minute ride back to Twickenham (I didn't check Hatton Cross tube station but the signal failure may have been resolved by then).
Matthew Justin
Mar-23
Two of us ended up walking from Richmond and met Sean at the Barmy Arms before heading on to Feltham. Nice, easy walk. Mud situation: bearable.
David Colver
Mar-23
I did this walk alone on Saturday morning, the only time left free by other commitments this weekend. It sounds like weather and signals left that a good choice.
Worth doing once, particularly for those interested in London's more obscure rivers; I had no idea this river flowed through this region.
The route provides some interesting views at close quarters of planes landing at the airport in the starting stretch. That aside, I found it a tad samey throughout, though no doubt those knowledgeable about the nature will be quick to contrast this ignorant view with the richness of things to be seen.
As the directions indicate, there really is no cafe or pub until the walk is practically over. But at only six miles, one is not too greatly at risk of malnutrition.