Three Walking Boys at Harefield Lock on the Grand Union Canal in Middlesex

March 2013

This 8 mile walk took us through one of the few remaining areas of open countryside in the ancient County of Middlesex. The walk was entirely in what has now become the less romantic sounding London Borough of Hillingdon.
 
We parked by the Ruislip Lido, built in 1811 as a feeder reservoir for the Grand Junction Canal, now the Grand Union Canal, and to supply water to Paddington.  We followed the Hillingdon Trail westwards through fields and woodland to Harefield.

On the way we passed the delightfully rural Harefield Church, set in a quiet country lane, and described by Simon Jenkins as a ‘typically squat Middlesex yeomen’s church’.  You could be miles from anywhere except for the faint background hum of traffic.  

In the large but well kept churchyard there is an Anzac war grave plot and memorial and in another corner, some graves of children who have sadly died at the local Harefield hospital.
 
We had an excellent lunch at the Old Orchard pub in Harefield. Fortunately no reservations were necessary, but without a reservation you need to get there early to secure a table at weekends. If it is warm enough to sit on the terrace you are rewarded by beautiful views over miles of woodland and the lakes (flooded gravel pits) running along the valley of the River Colne.

In the far distance you catch a glimpse of the M25, but the pub seems to be set in an altogether different and slower world.

After lunch we walked down the steep lane from the pub to Harefield Lock on the Grand Union Canal, another idyllic pastoral setting, complete with a thatched cottage.  

We crossed the canal and walked south along the towpath for about 1.5 miles and crossed back again at the next lock (Widewater Lock) in South Harefield.

After only a short stretch of pavement walking we were back on the network of footpaths heading eastwards via Bayhurst Wood and Ruislip Woods Nature Reserve to our starting point at Ruislip Lido.

The Lido has a rather run down feel to it these days, and was in stark contrast to the remainder of this otherwise delightful country walk within 15 miles of Central London.  

To quote John Betjeman, we ventured ’out into the outskirt’s edges, where a few surviving hedges keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again’.