Walking 37km to West Hampstead (and then...)

This was a journey in three parts, it was meant to me two but we will come to that.

I was able to start early on my monthly walk to West Hampstead from the British Czech and Slovak Association social so I could take a very indirect route.

My regular walking friend was also going to the social but had a lunchtime appointment so could not walk all the way with me. We agreed to meet at Waterloo at 4pm which gave me plenty of time to get some distance under my belt and also to tick off a few new roads, that is the wiggles around Wandsworth and Battersea.

As always new roads brings new sights and it was a genuinely enjoyable walk, despite the various no-through-toads that I had to walk down and then back out the way I came.

My friend was running late and I was running later so we changed the meeting point to Vauxhall. From there we walked almost directly to West Hampstead where with just a few minor detours I was able to tick off a few new roads in Maida Vale.

We arrived in West Hampstead almost dead on plan at a shade after 6pm.

Then disaster struck.

My friend tripped on the cobbled entrance to a side road and started bleeding quite badly. With a lot of help from concerned passers by and a resident we were able to staunch the initial bleeding, clean him up just a little and, having got no success from the ambulance service, one of the helpers booked an Uber to  Royal Free Hospital. 

That was immensely useful as being strangers to the area we had no idea where the hospitals with A&E were. As it happens, RFH is just of Hampstead Head and we had walked past there several times, most recently on 21 January.

We got to RFH at 7pm and he had his triage soon after that. What followed was a series of fixes and scans (a head injury is always a worry) and while the treatment was good it was very slow.  Sadly the snacks vending machine was broken so my evening meal was three unremarkable cups of instant coffee.

He was admitted for the final stage of the emergency treatment, stitches, after 11pm and was not due to be seen for some time after that. He was in good spirits (considering everything) and was being closely monitored so I left him in their care and took the last train home, which left Hampstead Heath at 11:45. It was a long night for me and a longer night for him.

His adventures continued. He was discharged from hospital around 2pm and ordered an Uber home. He was tired and suffering from a head injury so he failed to notice that he was being taken to a street with the same name in Croydon rather than Richmond. He did get home eventually, sometime after 3pm. 

The fall put a rather obvious dampener on the evening which was a shame as the 37km in the seven and a half hours before that had been a lot of fun.