7 New Beckenham to Balham

Wednesday July 22, 2009
Once again, the day wears a fair face. The wind is crisp and determined, bringing energy and coolness to our walk. I hobble gingerly along beside my companion, willing my knees to stand up to the rigours of the day.

At New Beckenham we turn onto Leonard Road. The road is lined by very nice houses. Despite being the school holidays, the streets are fairly quiet.

Swollen by recent rain and ripened by the intermittent sun, the plums are ready to eat. They hang temptingly from pleasant and neat front gardens. We stop under a particularly laden tree. My companion plucks a yellow plum, the size of a grape. I munch on it appreciatively, and lick plum juice from my lips with relish.


We slip between the houses. My companion peers enviously through the fences into long gardens. She comments disappointedly on their dullness. We discuss what we would do if we had gardens that big.

Behind them is a piece of scrubby wasteland and beyond that, Cator Park, a rather plain suburban space which boasts two brooks (the Bec and the Chaffinch which lead into the Pool River, a tributary of the Ravensbourne.

Here we encounter a cheerful pink toed dog owner and prancing chiwarwar puppy. The pup dances about his owner’s pretty feet and attempts to round us up. We exchange greetings, admire the dog and walk on.

The trees wave vigorously in the wind as we leave the park between two more houses and back onto Leonard Road again. Here the houses are pebble-dashed but still a decent size. Crossing a busy road, we slip between two more houses into a school playing field. Here talkative crows cawed at each other and opposite them, a group of grey and white seagulls frolicked, escapees from the strong winds out at sea perhaps.

Most streets offer one or two more plum opportunities. Many are out of reach or firmly dangling on the wrong side of a garden wall. We walk down an unmade road in the Borough of Bromley and enter Alexandra Recreation Ground where we sink gratefully down onto a sunny bench and stoke up on nuts and raisins.


Penge East is one of those places it is fashionable to curl ones lip at. It is quiet enough. We climb over the railway bridge and encounter a cheerfully disobedient Labrador style dog called Princess and her owner who is not quite in control of the situation. An old man painting his front garden path red offers to paint the dog. Captured at last, Princess is marched off by her owner. We continue to walk down the street of variously pastel painted brick terraces and onto Penge High Street.

The Venice Café, cheerful, warm and noisy has a make shift garden restaurant in which we stop for an early lunch. We feast on huge cheese omelettes and a ton of chips whilst my companion admires the décor, a series of random pictures hung up on the garden walls all around us.

Replete, indeed positively stuffed, we waddle out onto the High street and head for the gates of Crystal Palace Park and the beginnings of the part of the Capital Ring that constitute some of my old stamping grounds.

We walk through the café and up towards the dinosaurs. I remember the pop concert and the spotty youth who was my consort that day. In my memory, the park will forever be a green grey blur and said youth, a sandy brown and tangerine vision in cords and tie dye.

We skirt the dinosaur lake, my companion waxing lyrical about their glories as we walk. I remember hearing a radio programme where some lucky souls prepared and ate a Victorian feast from a chamber inside the belly of the greatest worm on the island. Now ducks play happily amongst the huge claws and recumbent bodies of these glorious creatures.

“It’s a geological theme park”, I say as we round a dinosaur rump and come nose to nose with a slice of earth, showing strata of ages, like a huge piece of layered cake. My companion (a geography major) reels of the different eras with fluency and aplomb. I am suitably impressed and am fleetingly reminded of family holidays with my mother (a science teacher) which were really field trips in disguise.

We walk on round the park, past the old railway station and dicing with death, place our feet firmly on the lower slopes of the first of two rather fierce hills we must climb today. But I need to sit down now and subside onto a convenient garden wall in Playdel Avenue.

A dog tows its owner down the hill. A second dog hurtles past, followed at some considerable distance by the protesting voice of its owner, then its owner’s son and finally the owner herself.

“He’s frightened of a big machine outback” she pants, sounding worried, as she runs past “He never goes out normally”. She pelts after the pooch who has shot round a corner and is lost to sight. I am reminded of Herne the hunter and his dogs hurtling over the hills of South London. Perhaps the dog has gone to join Herne, I muse and hope that this thought will keep the dog safe.

We set off up the hill and wind our way between rather smart houses, across a little high street and to Westow Park, a rather feminine and curvaceous little area. The paths roll up and down, mature trees stand shaking in the wind, and we sit down on a bench and appreciate the quiet. Opposite us is a long red brick wall, formerly part of the Royal Normal College for the Blind, a dreadful institution which has since been renamed and removed to the West Country. I am tempted to lie in a sunny patch amongst the clover but resist and rise to my feet and stagger on.

This is a bit of a park crawl – crawl being the operative word as I hobble slowly along. Still determined to make the course, I stagger after my companion across another road and into yet another green space, this one a neat green park edged by charming 30s houses. We pass well-kept tennis courts, clusters of people picnicking in the sun and swathes of rather nice soft green clover covered lawn. Out on the street, we walk along Beulah Hill which is disapointingly dull with its busy road and big snooty houses set back from the road as though in distain. Beulah Hill seems to go on for ever!

We’re not finished with hills yet. Going up is a tough call but “going down is a real bugger; especially when you’ve got *knees*”, I complain to my companion. We turn into Biggin Hill and my joints start to shriek. We’re going down hill and soon I am in need of a rest on another convenient wall.

Here, the land falls away beyond the houses to the North Downs in the distance. I’m getting a bit tired of streets. But a treat is just around the corner, or so I am promised by my companion.

We make it down the “north face of the Igor” an turned past yet more tennis courts and a kick about area well fenced off from passers by. Now we are in a lovely little wood with inviting paths leading off to the left and right. This is Biggin Wood, a part of the ancient North Wood that we encountered in our last walk on the Capital ring. It is cool, shady and sheltered. The trees sing to us with their rustling leaves. I speculate about who meets in the woods to work magic, for these feel like the kind of wood to circle in.


Reluctantly, we leave the woods and turn through a 30s housing estate down another hill and into Norwood Grove Park. There’s a dog free area which we head for. We sink happily down on a comfortable bench to survey the rolling landscape and eat cherries. Below us, beyond the grey conurbation of Croydon, the North Downs roll hazily. In the foreground, a robin and a squirrel play companionably and then disappear together into a bush and are never seen again. Above us in the trees, green parakeets hoot.

There is a large white house which my companion has been fascinated by for some time. WE get up and peer into the windows. The tables are set for tea. A sign reveals rather dully that this is the premises of a bowls club. We walk on.

The book says we should pass a stand of 400 year old oaks and a little stream. Neither are in evidence as we enter the eastern edge of Streatham Common and make our way to the café in Rockery Gardens for a well-deserved cuppa.

I tell my companion about my first home, in a prefab on Streatham Common. AS we walk along the south side past some tall houses, I remember my misspent youth and an attic never climbed into and a virtue thus not at that time lost! The grass is short and rough as we march diagonally across it to the A23.

I’m still up for more walking, so we decide to continue on to Balham. WE walk down a road skirting one of many railway lines and through a subway to equally unremarkable streets on the other side.

We pass a fine Victorian building built by the water authorities. Like the one in Beckton, this one is cupullared and gloriously Moorish in design. Amongst slightly dull houses, we find a painted lady modern stain glass window as we walk slowly Northwards and Westwards towards tooting Bec Common.

The common is more varied than I remember it. There is grass and tall trees. There is still a football pitch, surely the one on which the Broadwater Junior Mixed school football team thrashed the daylights out of the punier Smallwood School team. With Jamey Stanard in goal and my twin brother on the wing, victory was a forgone conclusion.

Now the common is divided by a path shared by cycles and pedestrians. A small ancient looking wooded area is fenced off for its own protection. The grass and trees give way to a wilder common look, with rough tussock grass. Briefly I speculate about the fine necklace of common land that lies across the breast of South London.

We turn down a path between houses and begin to wend our way towards Balham station, via a network of backstreets, lined with rather pleasant tall houses, many of these divided up into flats. A man nods to us from his first floor window as I rest briefly on his garden wall. In Elmfield Road, an enterprising window sill gardener has propagated runner beans and a very fine caugette. Vines of red tomatoes hanging in a kitchen window gleam in the evening sun. The smell of Balham High Road comes to us in the aroma of spicy curry sacheting along on the evening breeze. Our destination is just around the corner. Step by step we tread on and soon, we are there.