Bedfont and back, almost according to plan

I think I am getting the hang of this route though there are still a couple of loose ends that I want to fix before posting it formally on the Ramblers website.

The basic route is fine; River Crane to North Feltham, Duke of Northumberland's River to Bedfont and back along Longford River via Feltham.

The first part I am not happy about is trying to follow River Crane as it runs alongside, but not in, Hounslow Heath. The maps on the information boards suggest that there is a path that follows the river closely but I have not been able to find it and I was further away than I would have liked at times, though never that far. It does not help that the river runs underground for a while.

The second part is on the way back and it is where to go once Longford River hits A316 where it then disappears behind houses more or less all the way to Bushy Park. This time I trekked along A316 to revisit River Crane but I don't want to advertise that as the best route.

That is also the section where a White Van Man inexplicably chose to swerve and drive at me when I walking on the other side of the road.

The statistics of the walk, slightly underestimated by me forgetting to start tracking, are good for one of my long walks, 25 km and 5 hours, and the final polished route will have multiple join and escape point so that people can pick the amount of walking that they want to do.

An unexpected high-point was soon after I entered the problematic section, somewhere between Hounslow Heath and Pevensey Road Nature Reserve, where I saw a wild deer. Judging by its small size it was a muntjac, there was no parent nearby to suggest that it was a fawn but I am not even a novice let alone an expect.

That was also the quietest section of the walk, it always is, despite providing wonderful scenes like this.

It also helped that it had not rained much at all in recent weeks and so a lot of the mud had gone. There was enough left to remind me just how wet it can be.

Two of my favourite sections of this multi-part walk are not on any of the maps that I use, including Ordnance Survey. One is a clearly new path that follows the Duke of Northumberland's River west from A312, which runs north from Feltham, to Bedfont.

The best thing about the various walks taking in River Crane, Duke of Northumberland's River and Longford River is the range of possibilities offered by these rivers and the many parks along the way so that no two walks need be the same. The worst thing is that the rivers have a habit of hiding from time to time forcing you to walk along main roads and through urban areas.

Overall though, there are far more good bits than bad bits and, in my opinion, these routes are the best walking routes in West London.