Rivers and Parks.

‘Look here upon this picture… where every god did seem to set his seal.’
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act III Scene 4)

South West London has a reputation: neat and a little dull, endless gables with faux tudor beams and tidy driveways. Other than Wimbledon for two weeks a year, it does not trouble the tourist circuit, nor indeed any Londoner who does not have family or business there. Yet, the English Pastorale is easy to find behind the streets built with dull economy. Flower-filled meadows, orchards, the swishing tails of cattle, groves of hazel and ash, and trout-filled rivers are rarely more than a street away.

We ride the largely traffic-free Wandle Trail alongside the river which was once one of the hardest working waterways in Europe. Now it is host to water meadows as rural and as fine as any Constable would have painted. The river, historically famous for its cholera, and its speed of its flow (which turned over ninety industrial mill wheels) now glides quietly in retirement, home to gudgeon, flounder and dace as well as trout and eels.

The sky above the cycle path is filled with the purple bodkin-heads of buddleia, falling like the arrows of Agincourt whose fletchings whirl a heavy sweetness into the air. The industrial heart of these city hinterlands still beats. Unseen behind the rich green clothing of nettles, willow and elder are the high voices of industry - clanking metal, the bleating warnings of machines, the thud of something heavy being spilled. We pass William Morris’s old cloth printing mill, now a shopping mall, and the mills where Liberty silks were printed. Here was once an abbey (where Henry III was crowned), now a rosebay willow herb field in Lenten purple-pink. There, a park where Nelson lived, now a sward of grass, two bronzed cannon and a plaque.

Morden Mills used to be the heart of Britain’s snuff production. Now the old house has gone, the mills are silent and the park open to dog-walkers, joggers and toddlers on their bikes. There’s a cafe, serving snacks which we eat surrounded by rose blooms and nursery-aged children breaking free from the clutches of their mummies and nannies.

I tell the god-daughter a tale of snuff. She has never even heard of snuff, let alone sniffed the stuff. I tell her of a gardener who paused from his digging to give me (at my insistence) a pile to sniff from his ageing liver-spotted hand.")I was nine. Every summer, when cast away for long summer days to my grandmother’s house, I sneezed and wheezed as I begged him to give me more. I was never asked why my hankies had turned brown.

‘I wondered why you brought me here. Was it to buy some snuff?’ the god-daughter asks.

Memories and Nature pause whilst we pass the white-clinkered walls of the ancient cottages of Cheam, the buzz of Sutton’s shops, past the station nicely placed in case the god-daughters legs want to fail.

‘No, let’s go on’, she implores.

Which we do, to the old royal palace of Nonsuch Park. Here Henry VIII used to spend his time hunting and cavorting, and I spent my young years smoking away from the concerns of my teachers. We make, the god-daughter and I, for the old oak tree across the plains of pollen laden grass, where the King and I used to pass our time in rest - and smoke.

‘Have you ever smoked?’ I ask.
‘Never, not once’, she replies. ‘Never wanted to’.
‘It was fun’, I say, ‘to run away and do something you knew was wrong’. As we talk, the Commas and Peacock butterflies skeddadle in the heavy and smoke-free air.T

The god-daughter asks if we are still in London.
‘Oh yes. Why would you want to go beyond the bounds, when you have all this within the city walls?

She gives me the indulgent smile of the young when faced with the irascibility of the aged.

‘Shall we move on?’ she asks

There’s another short stretch of ordered suburban calm. Streets lined with kebab shops, nail parlours, and chicken houses. Backstreets filled with pebble-dashed houses fronting vivid brick-red driveways and gleaming cars. There’s a station where we could bale, should we wish. The grass verges are mown, litter-free and weedless. Lime trees offer shade and sticky roads.

My meditative state is interrupted by Wimbledon Common. Some people love this place. Benches are donated by those ‘who found peace on this heath’. I shall not be putting my bench here. The riding is harder on the small flint gravel paths. It is a place of dos and don’ts. There are warnings of fines and worse on every path running off the main route regarding cycling, dogs, Covid, ticks and golf. It’s a bossy place, an acidic heathland, with its foot-tripping heather, and sour black ponds.

Down a short hill (when did we ever go up?) along another river, and into another park. Richmond Park: where a king’s pleasure meets the cyclists’ joy. Its famous for its buzz of carbon wheels racing on the perimeter road and for its deer and ancient oaks.

We rejoin the Thames at Ham - a quintessentially wealthy - all gates and walls and flowers. Immaculate. Cars purr rather than rev and there is no shouting - and certainly no ball games on any green. We pass where last week I swam in the warm waters of the river, and choosing not to stop this time, we pedal through the village gems of Mortlake and Barnes, famous for their pubs and breweries and quaint village greens.

At the ride’s end, I ask the god-daughter what she thought of this London, rich and green and quiet, where the gods have set their seal. ‘Were we in London?’, she asks.

For the route we rode, click here

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/33195252