Day 95
West Finchley - West Ham - West Hampstead - West Harrow
There's a two-word phrase, which - in my pre-Womble research into the various areas I plan to visit today - has appeared with a disheartening regularity.
The phrase is 'mainly residential' and is disheartening not because I am doubtful of the ability of the residents in question to present their homes in as attractive a way as possible, but because 'residential' areas tend to be rather lacking in anything other than houses.
No historical landmarks, no exciting architecture, no bustling commercial areas - instead (as my first stop West Finchley exemplifies very well) you tend to get row upon row of near-identical dwellings, differentiated only by the designs of their topiary and the colours of their front doors.
Ah well, I'll do my best to find a few nuggets of gold among the tons of gravel lining the well-tended driveways...
West Finchley station is a comparatively small structure for a tube station, and - thanks to its positioning at the end of a small path, with fenced off gardens either side - looks a little like an over-blown garden shed.
There are a few shops on a parade next to the station, which seem to offer either groceries or computer repairs.
To the north of the station - I've ascertained - is a small park, so I head towards this in the hope of finding something of interest.
I pass through the neatly maintained streets of semi-detached, mainly white-washed, 1920s houses and eventually reach a small road bridge crossing over a trickling brook.
The brook is Dollis Brook, and either side of it is the Dollis Valley Greenwalk, which I last encountered at Totteridge & Whetstone. Both there and here (and indeed at various points along its 10 mile length) parks and open spaces have developed alongside the Greenwalk and provide a place to walk your dog or entertain your children.
This park lies to the east of the road bridge over the brook. To the west the Greenwalk continues, but passes through a collection of allotments.
Allotments are traditionally fiercely coveted plots of land, and those in West Finchley seem to be no exception. Indeed, the high fences topped with barbed wire, either side of the pathway running through the beds of runner beans and tomato plants, give the allotment the air of a World War II prisoner of war camp. I imagine that if I continued my stroll along the path I'd be faced before too long with a wooden guard tower, from which a machine-gun toting guard would bark the word "HALT!" at me ferociously...
But that's it for West Finchley - so it's time to move on to my next residential 'neighbourhood' - West Ham.
***
If West Finchley was the epitome of artsy-craftsy suburban gentility (and it was), then West Ham tends rather more towards Dickensian squalor - at least in parts.
Not that you'd immediately suspect that from the station itself, which despite having been opened in 1901, has since undergone several upgrades and refurbishments, particularly in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. It now serves the DLR and Jubilee Lines as well as its original District and Hammersmith & City Lines, and straddles the main road (Manor Road) via a glazed walkway.
Not far from the station, however, you're soon in the kind of terraced streets that are the more familiar sight in Urban London.
From the front they're not too shabby - a lick of paint and a bit of sprucing up appears to have been applied - but it's a slightly different story if you get a chance to look at the back 'gardens', as I do a short time later, as you'll see.
West Ham is perhaps most well-known to non-Londoners for the football team of the same name.
Now making its home at the Olympic Stadium to the north of here in Stratford, after many decades at Upton Park, the club originally played just around the corner from the station at the Memorial Grounds.
Not being interested in such things however, I'm heading north-east from the station - to visit the only real landmark in the area, the local parish church. But before I get there I'm making a brief stop at a point due north of the station.
It's the next DLR station along from West Ham - Abbey Road - which, as my longer-term readers will remember, is a rather significant station for me, as it's where this whole journey began some three and a half years ago.
On that occasion I exited the station on a lower level in order to visit the nearby Abbey Gardens, but today I'm on the Abbey Road flyover that crosses the tracks of the DLR. And this gives me the opportunity to see the rear of those properties I photographed earlier.
And from the back things are definitely more down at heel. The back gardens are cramped and over-grown, with abandoned toys and rusty barbecues, broken windows haphazardly boarded up, and fence panels falling apart at the seams.
The rest of the area, on the way to the parish church, is a combination of more of the same, one or two tower blocks, and a few shops and cafés - not much of interest at all really.
And then I reach the church.
At first glance it's a fairly standard example of its kind, and indeed for the most part it's nothing more than an average parish church, although it is a Grade I Listed building.
There's been a church here since the 12th Century and parts of the current building date back to that time. Other parts of the church were rebuilt in the 19th Century by George Gilbert Scott and his partner George Dyson.
The main point of interest, however, is the clock tower, the mechanism of which was designed by Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe, in 1851. Though not much to look at from the outside, it is actually the prototype for the mechanism of the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, commonly known as Big Ben.
And with this minor point of interest, my visit to West Ham is finished - let's hope there's a little more at my next stop...
***
West Hampstead is next on the list.
Ah - but which West Hampstead?
Despite what you might infer from the tube map - which lists just one station at West Hampstead, providing an interchange between the Jubilee, Overground and National Rail networks - there are in fact three of them.
They sit in a neat row, separated by just a few hundred yards and a half-dozen or so shops - and each serves just one of the three networks listed above.
The three stations were all originally opened in the late 19th Century, although the Thameslink station has clearly been refurbished more recently than the other two. They are all on West End Lane - a busy shopping street running north-south.
There have been plans to create a kind of 'super' station to accommodate all three lines, but these are - it seems - currently on hold.
Other than the stations and shops, the area is (you've guessed it) 'mainly residential' - though rather more upmarket than my previous stop at West Ham.
West End Lane (and its wider area, known as West End Village) is therefore where I spend my time before heading off to my final stop of the day.
After a bite to eat, I wander northwards up the Lane.
The shops here are very much Hampstead chic, and - at lunchtime - are bustling with the locals.
At the north end of the road is West End Green - on which sits the West Hampstead Fire Station, opened in 1901 and still in service.
The building is Grade II Listed and is an example of the 'domestic' style of station built in this period, rather than the more municipal buildings of later years.
Across the road from the station, in the middle of the green, is an innocuous looking public toilet.
Not the most obvious things to catch the eye of the roving travel blogger you might think, and normally you'd be quite right.
At first glance it's a normal, everyday, bog-standard (ahem) Ladies' toilet - there for the convenience of the local female populace.
Look more closely though, and you'll see a small notice affixed to the wall of the steps leading down into the toilets, which - I have to say - seems to place an unfair restriction on the lavatorial practices of Hampstead's women...
There's certainly no such prohibition on the Gentlemen's side of things, which - given the daily diet of your average gluttonous male, compared with the health-conscious women of Hampstead - seems a tad counter-intuitive.
On the other hand, perhaps they have a point. After all, being so health-conscious, the women are possibly including rather too much fibre in their diet for the public toilets to be able to cope with...
Around the corner from the Jubilee Line station is the former Decca Records building, now being used by the English National Opera.
The record company Decca is most famous, perhaps, for being the company who turned down The Beatles following their audition in 1962, with the comment "Guitar groups are on their way out". It wasn't as disastrous for the company as it might have been, however, as a year or so later they subsequently signed The Rolling Stones, following a recommendation by a (by then) rather more famous George Harrison.
***
And so on to my final stop of the day - West Harrow - which is, I'm sorry to say, more of the same.
The station itself looks to have been not so much designed, as prefabricated, and seems at odds with every other station I've seen so far on my travels. It opened in 1913, when you might have expected the architecture to have been a little more interesting...
The housing here is - I suppose - something about halfway between the upmarket gentility of West Finchley and West Hampstead and the Victorian Sardine-Tin Terraces of West Ham - a sort of Genteel Sardine, if you will.
The road on which the station sits is in the middle of several residential streets, with just a small row of shops to the east. These include a newsagent, a hairdresser and a Chinese take-away, as well as - surprisingly - an arts studio-cum-gallery.
The Usurp Arts Space & Studios is actually in the building formerly occupied by the local butcher, and was set up in 2010 (though the company had been in existence since 2000) to "develop opportunities for communities to engage with artists", according to their website.
Unfortunately the building seems to be closed to the public at this time of day (though there is no indication of when it might actually be open to visitors) so all I can do is take a photo of the building and move on.
To the south west of the station is a park called West Harrow Recreation Ground.
This again is a fairly typical example of its kind, though one group of its patrons do seem a little more eccentric than the norm, judging by their behaviour as I observe them.
It looks to be a group of a dozen or so students, who have taken it upon themselves to form a sort of 'Guard of Honour' for a similar sized group of aging ramblers striding purposefully along through the park.
As the ramblers pass by, each student in turn cajoles them into giving an awkward and rather bemused 'high five' to the entire line, who then cheer rapturously.
I've no idea what the ramblers themselves think about all this, though many of them do seem very happy to join in the fun - however cack-handedly. But to me the students seem to be a little too obviously making fun of people whose only 'crime' is to be older than themselves. I'm all for having fun - I certainly did when I was a student (as my grades would no doubt tell you) - but I don't see the need to mock others in order to do so.
In any case, it marks a disappointing end to a generally unfulfilling day.
Here's hoping the remaining 'Ws' have rather more to offer. Certainly my next batch should, as it includes Westminster - the station nearest to the seat of government in this country, the Houses of Parliament, as well as the place where kings and queens are crowned, and poets, playwrights and politicians are buried - Westminster Abbey.
Until next time...
The phrase is 'mainly residential' and is disheartening not because I am doubtful of the ability of the residents in question to present their homes in as attractive a way as possible, but because 'residential' areas tend to be rather lacking in anything other than houses.
No historical landmarks, no exciting architecture, no bustling commercial areas - instead (as my first stop West Finchley exemplifies very well) you tend to get row upon row of near-identical dwellings, differentiated only by the designs of their topiary and the colours of their front doors.
Ah well, I'll do my best to find a few nuggets of gold among the tons of gravel lining the well-tended driveways...
West Finchley station is a comparatively small structure for a tube station, and - thanks to its positioning at the end of a small path, with fenced off gardens either side - looks a little like an over-blown garden shed.
 |
| West Finchley |
There are a few shops on a parade next to the station, which seem to offer either groceries or computer repairs.
 |
| Shops on Nether Street |
To the north of the station - I've ascertained - is a small park, so I head towards this in the hope of finding something of interest.
 |
| Mainly residential... |
I pass through the neatly maintained streets of semi-detached, mainly white-washed, 1920s houses and eventually reach a small road bridge crossing over a trickling brook.
 |
| Dollis Brook |
The brook is Dollis Brook, and either side of it is the Dollis Valley Greenwalk, which I last encountered at Totteridge & Whetstone. Both there and here (and indeed at various points along its 10 mile length) parks and open spaces have developed alongside the Greenwalk and provide a place to walk your dog or entertain your children.
 |
| Dollis Valley Greenwalk - Park in West Finchley |
This park lies to the east of the road bridge over the brook. To the west the Greenwalk continues, but passes through a collection of allotments.
Allotments are traditionally fiercely coveted plots of land, and those in West Finchley seem to be no exception. Indeed, the high fences topped with barbed wire, either side of the pathway running through the beds of runner beans and tomato plants, give the allotment the air of a World War II prisoner of war camp. I imagine that if I continued my stroll along the path I'd be faced before too long with a wooden guard tower, from which a machine-gun toting guard would bark the word "HALT!" at me ferociously...
 |
| Stalag Allotment III |
But that's it for West Finchley - so it's time to move on to my next residential 'neighbourhood' - West Ham.
***
If West Finchley was the epitome of artsy-craftsy suburban gentility (and it was), then West Ham tends rather more towards Dickensian squalor - at least in parts.
 |
| West Ham |
Not that you'd immediately suspect that from the station itself, which despite having been opened in 1901, has since undergone several upgrades and refurbishments, particularly in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. It now serves the DLR and Jubilee Lines as well as its original District and Hammersmith & City Lines, and straddles the main road (Manor Road) via a glazed walkway.
 |
| The walkway connecting the DLR platforms to the main station. |
Not far from the station, however, you're soon in the kind of terraced streets that are the more familiar sight in Urban London.
 |
| On the terraces at West Ham (not a place I ever expected to find myself) |
From the front they're not too shabby - a lick of paint and a bit of sprucing up appears to have been applied - but it's a slightly different story if you get a chance to look at the back 'gardens', as I do a short time later, as you'll see.
West Ham is perhaps most well-known to non-Londoners for the football team of the same name.
Now making its home at the Olympic Stadium to the north of here in Stratford, after many decades at Upton Park, the club originally played just around the corner from the station at the Memorial Grounds.
Not being interested in such things however, I'm heading north-east from the station - to visit the only real landmark in the area, the local parish church. But before I get there I'm making a brief stop at a point due north of the station.
It's the next DLR station along from West Ham - Abbey Road - which, as my longer-term readers will remember, is a rather significant station for me, as it's where this whole journey began some three and a half years ago.
 |
| Hello old friend... |
On that occasion I exited the station on a lower level in order to visit the nearby Abbey Gardens, but today I'm on the Abbey Road flyover that crosses the tracks of the DLR. And this gives me the opportunity to see the rear of those properties I photographed earlier.
 |
| Behind the façade... |
And from the back things are definitely more down at heel. The back gardens are cramped and over-grown, with abandoned toys and rusty barbecues, broken windows haphazardly boarded up, and fence panels falling apart at the seams.
The rest of the area, on the way to the parish church, is a combination of more of the same, one or two tower blocks, and a few shops and cafés - not much of interest at all really.
And then I reach the church.
 |
| Welcome... |
At first glance it's a fairly standard example of its kind, and indeed for the most part it's nothing more than an average parish church, although it is a Grade I Listed building.
 |
| West Ham Parish Church (aka All Saints) |
The main point of interest, however, is the clock tower, the mechanism of which was designed by Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe, in 1851. Though not much to look at from the outside, it is actually the prototype for the mechanism of the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, commonly known as Big Ben.
And with this minor point of interest, my visit to West Ham is finished - let's hope there's a little more at my next stop...
***
West Hampstead is next on the list.
Ah - but which West Hampstead?
Despite what you might infer from the tube map - which lists just one station at West Hampstead, providing an interchange between the Jubilee, Overground and National Rail networks - there are in fact three of them.
 |
| West Hampstead 1 - Jubilee Line |
They sit in a neat row, separated by just a few hundred yards and a half-dozen or so shops - and each serves just one of the three networks listed above.
 |
| West Hampstead 2 - Overground Line |
 |
| West Hampstead 3 - Thameslink National Rail Line |
The three stations were all originally opened in the late 19th Century, although the Thameslink station has clearly been refurbished more recently than the other two. They are all on West End Lane - a busy shopping street running north-south.
There have been plans to create a kind of 'super' station to accommodate all three lines, but these are - it seems - currently on hold.
Other than the stations and shops, the area is (you've guessed it) 'mainly residential' - though rather more upmarket than my previous stop at West Ham.
West End Lane (and its wider area, known as West End Village) is therefore where I spend my time before heading off to my final stop of the day.
After a bite to eat, I wander northwards up the Lane.
 |
| West End Lane |
The shops here are very much Hampstead chic, and - at lunchtime - are bustling with the locals.
At the north end of the road is West End Green - on which sits the West Hampstead Fire Station, opened in 1901 and still in service.
 |
| Fire Station |
The building is Grade II Listed and is an example of the 'domestic' style of station built in this period, rather than the more municipal buildings of later years.
 |
| A little harsh... |
Across the road from the station, in the middle of the green, is an innocuous looking public toilet.
Not the most obvious things to catch the eye of the roving travel blogger you might think, and normally you'd be quite right.
At first glance it's a normal, everyday, bog-standard (ahem) Ladies' toilet - there for the convenience of the local female populace.
Look more closely though, and you'll see a small notice affixed to the wall of the steps leading down into the toilets, which - I have to say - seems to place an unfair restriction on the lavatorial practices of Hampstead's women...
There's certainly no such prohibition on the Gentlemen's side of things, which - given the daily diet of your average gluttonous male, compared with the health-conscious women of Hampstead - seems a tad counter-intuitive.
On the other hand, perhaps they have a point. After all, being so health-conscious, the women are possibly including rather too much fibre in their diet for the public toilets to be able to cope with...
Around the corner from the Jubilee Line station is the former Decca Records building, now being used by the English National Opera.
 |
| Former Decca Records Building |
The record company Decca is most famous, perhaps, for being the company who turned down The Beatles following their audition in 1962, with the comment "Guitar groups are on their way out". It wasn't as disastrous for the company as it might have been, however, as a year or so later they subsequently signed The Rolling Stones, following a recommendation by a (by then) rather more famous George Harrison.
***
And so on to my final stop of the day - West Harrow - which is, I'm sorry to say, more of the same.
 |
| West Harrow |
The housing here is - I suppose - something about halfway between the upmarket gentility of West Finchley and West Hampstead and the Victorian Sardine-Tin Terraces of West Ham - a sort of Genteel Sardine, if you will.
 |
| West Harrow streets |
The road on which the station sits is in the middle of several residential streets, with just a small row of shops to the east. These include a newsagent, a hairdresser and a Chinese take-away, as well as - surprisingly - an arts studio-cum-gallery.
 |
| Usurp Arts |
The Usurp Arts Space & Studios is actually in the building formerly occupied by the local butcher, and was set up in 2010 (though the company had been in existence since 2000) to "develop opportunities for communities to engage with artists", according to their website.
Unfortunately the building seems to be closed to the public at this time of day (though there is no indication of when it might actually be open to visitors) so all I can do is take a photo of the building and move on.
To the south west of the station is a park called West Harrow Recreation Ground.
 |
| West Harrow Recreation Ground |
This again is a fairly typical example of its kind, though one group of its patrons do seem a little more eccentric than the norm, judging by their behaviour as I observe them.
It looks to be a group of a dozen or so students, who have taken it upon themselves to form a sort of 'Guard of Honour' for a similar sized group of aging ramblers striding purposefully along through the park.
As the ramblers pass by, each student in turn cajoles them into giving an awkward and rather bemused 'high five' to the entire line, who then cheer rapturously.
 |
| Rambling High Fives (sounds like the name of an old Blues band...) |
In any case, it marks a disappointing end to a generally unfulfilling day.
Here's hoping the remaining 'Ws' have rather more to offer. Certainly my next batch should, as it includes Westminster - the station nearest to the seat of government in this country, the Houses of Parliament, as well as the place where kings and queens are crowned, and poets, playwrights and politicians are buried - Westminster Abbey.
Until next time...
