Following the Brent to Perivale

The plan was even rougher than usual and was little more than "follow the Brent".

That was the middle part of the route more or less sorted and the first part, getting to the Brent, needed no planning as it was the very familiar route to Brentford and then the not quite as familiar route along the Grand Union Canal. The final part, heading home was left deliberately vague but was always likely to include Ealing Broadway where the 65 bus could take us both home.

The weather, as it often is, was another unknown part of the plan and we largely chose to ignore the threat of heavy rainstorms. And is often the case, we were proved right.

The walk was simple enough, as we knew it would be, until we hit Hanwell and turned off the Grand Union Canal to start following the Brent. We had been that way once before when following the Capital Ring and my recollections of that included mud and getting lost. This time was much the same though as we were following a river rather than a trail it was usually obvious to choose a path.

In Perivale Park we parted way with Capital Ring and continued to follow the Brent as it turned sharply east into Pitshanger Park.

We had been walking for about three hours by then and another vague part of the plan became firmer, a return to a cafe we had discovered on our first visit to Perivale forced on us by the closure of the footpath along the Grand Union Canal. Sadly we had forgotten it's name and the technology, Google and Foursquare, was quite hopeless in helping us to find it again. The first road that I went for because it appeared to have several cafes in turned out to be a massive industrial estate but on exiting that, eventually, we found ourselves in the right road, Bilton Road, and almost facing The Lunch Box, as we then found it was called. I deserved and thoroughly enjoyed Vegetarian Breakfast 2 which came with tea and toast.

The route down to Ealing Broadway looked easy enough so we set off to walk there rather than take one of the convenient buses passing by. This meant rejoining the Brent for a short while as it passed though Brentham Meadows. We got slightly lost here too but we are used to that.

That took us into the magnificent Brentham Garden Suburb which alone justified the decision to walk, despite the hill.

Approaching from the north, the commercial centre of Ealing appeared suddenly but before we caught the bus home we paid a short visit to The Haven Arms where I had a pint of Proper Job, a fine way to end a fine walk.

The statistics of the walk were 21 km in something over 4 hours, a reasonable pace given our leisurely intent and the regular mud.