Exploring the Feltham Loop (badly)

I have walked along River Crane several times, and written about it here, but there is always something new to learn and having been alerted to Feltham Loop by Twitter I had to give it a go.

The basic plan was to swap a right turn to Hounslow Common for a left turn that took me to another section of River Crane Walk,  one that I had not known about. That's the little zig-zag just to the right of "Feltham".

There is no signage in that section, or I missed it, and I got a little lost, and very muddy, before I joined Capital Ring, a section I was familiar with .

On a previous walk I had mistaken Duke of Northumberland's River for River Crane and had ended by climbing over a pile of rubbish and a fence to get on to a main road. This time I was on the other side of the road where a new path had been created alongside the river and I followed that. Partially because it was new to me this was my favourite section of the walk.

After that it was time to find a coffee (Costa, sadly) then head home.

Unfortunately the Feltham Loop map had not made the jump from my Apple Mac to my iPhone (it has now) so I took the wrong route and missed most of the Longford River, though I did pick it up in Feltham. That's another excuse for trying the route again.

In the late 90's I worked at IBM Bedfont Lakes, which meant catching a bus from Teddington Lock to Feltham Station and then the shuttle bus to the business park, so I had some knowledge of bits of this route and it was good to be able to retrace some old steps slowly.

I meant to go through Hanworth Park and that was a good decision. Hampton Common / Buckingham Park was more an accident and a good one. Then it was autopilot through Bushy Park and home.

With a little bit more planning beforehand, and fewer distractions on the day, it would not have taken seven hours and covered 34 km. I shall try to improve on that soon.

To close, a couple of photos taken along the way.

This is when I knew that I was wearing the wrong shoes.

This is when I knew I was on the right route.

This is when I crossed the Duke of Northumberland's Rover turned for home.