please empty your brain below

When we lived in Stroud Green, we used to follow the Parkland Walk up to Highgate to get to the wonderful secondhand bookshop up there. Never did see the spriggan, though.

You finally made it - if briefly - along the New River. A longer account sometime, perhaps?

dg writes: The New River opened in 1613, so maybe I'll celebrate its quatercentenary with a special feature.

Not the Finsbury Park but, but you can't mentioned the Northern Heights without watching Jay Foremans great video on it ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anHLOwH2HWU

I'm sure I've seen those fenced-off tunnels in a number of TV dramas, usually used as the site of a particularly gory murder.

Your being asked “What is the Salvation Army” reminds me that I was asked the same question about 6 weeks ago. I had volunteered to help the Salvation Army in my area do some door to door collecting, - approaching one house two ladies were weeding in their front garden, I approached with the Salvation Army Collecting box, “What’s the Salvation Army”! they enquired. They did however donate.
Maybe with such a multicultural mix in London some of our established institutions are becoming unknown to the younger generations. I think of The Boys Brigade, British Legion and Women’s Institute as a few examples. Ask some teenagers what these names represent and they may well not know.
Even well established organisations like the Freemasons are losing members and closing Lodges.
I guess us older folks grew up in an age where to belong to an organisation or club you went out and met people in a hall somewhere, nowadays you socialise sitting at home joining Facebook or Twitter.


Great post! I LOVE the Parkland Walk and the New River. Once I walked along the latter from Palmers Green to Enfield Town, a very nice summer stroll!

That "footpath-cum-nature reserve" in Mill Hill ran at the end of the garden where I grew up. As a tiny tot of 2-3 years old, my earliest memory is of running down to be lifted up to wave to the goods trains as they passed, and then later as an older child it was my own private payground ripe for exploring from the platform at Bunns Lane to as near to Edgware station as I could get. Aaah memories!

I know complaining about graffiti is like spitting into the wind, and sometimes it's brilliant, but I do wonder if any of the aerosol brigade noticed the craftsmanship that went into that brickwork.

I've done a few walks along the New River in the past, but I've never done the Parkland Walk. I really must do it one day…

Wait, wasn't "that unfeasibly hot weekend" the same weekend you toured Hammersmith & Fulham? How the hell do you do it?

...Also, I think Parkside is more local to me in Wimbledon than Highgate.

My 'home' stretch, as it were. You timed the New River walk well - the part of the path that runs past the West Reservoir has been closed for over a year, and was still closed the last time I looked (a couple of weeks ago?). Very much looking forward to taking a walk along there again.

It's not *quite* Stroud Green that you see from atop the former Stroud Green station, it's Ferme Park Road, although it's pretty close to actual Stroud Green Road.

I'm afraid the Stephen King thing is an urban myth. The short story Crouch End was first published in 1980; Marilyn Collins's spriggan wasn't sculpted until 1993. http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/the-mystery-of-the-parkland-walk-spriggan-solved










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