Richmond to Vauxhall via Streatham

I like it when a plan comes together and this one certainly did, though admittedly it was a rather simple plan.

Streatham had come up in conversation on an earlier walk. It is a place we had both been to a few times but only to specific areas and neither of us knew it at all well so I was tasked with planning a route that took us through Streatham.

We had walked in the Wimbledon area not that long ago and on that occasion we had finished at Clapham Junction so it made sense to aim for Vauxhall this time. The first draft of the route came out at something over 20km so that was job done.

I mapped the walk from home but we met at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, as we often do, which accounts for the odd spur just after the start. Having met up we followed the road (mostly closed to cars) across Richmond Park to Robin Hill Gate.

Normally we follow Beverly Brook through Wimbledon Common but this time we followed the map's instructions and cut across. Some of the route looked familiar but some were definitely new for us, and that's always good.

Wimbledon looked wimbledony which was good too, and then we were in new territory and hunting for a coffee. Natas Coffee Bar in (probably) Tooting did just what we wanted, which included an almond croissant.

The entrance to Streatham from Tooting Graveney Common was impressive with large house which were built in parkland and still manage to maintain a sense of grandeur despite the busy road.

Streatham itself was a pleasant walk helped a lot by the consistently wide pavements and the lack of traffic on side roads. I like to compare neighbourhoods and would love somebody to invent a simple model which captures the cultural mix and the prosperity or an area but, before then I'll work on instinct. In this case my impressions of Streatham were that it has a vibrant cultural mix and has a reasonable economy but it is a bit middle-of-the-road with few, if any, trendy (does anyone say hipster anymore?) cafes and few scruffy shops selling phonecards for Africa.

Somewhere Streatham became Streatham Hill but the change was not obvious and probably only matters if you are buying or selling a house.

The rest of the walk was familiar territory for me as I worked in Brixton from 2003 to 2006 and it was interesting to see what had changed over the last almost twenty years, obviously that included several new tallish blocks of flats. The street art in Brixton also lived up to expectations though it was sad to see that one had been vandalised.

The final part of the plan also worked brilliantly. We were looking for a basic cafe for lunch and I knew of one near Vauxhall that I had walked past several times when not looking to eat. It turns out that this is Kennington Lane Cafe and the Veggie Brunch was excellent. A great way to end a great walk.