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hg137
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Southall Mosque
Most of our geocaching trips involve two cars and walking between the two. As we have approached London, we have been able to use the rail network and align our walk with two stations close to each other on the rail network.
Today presented a problem. Hayes is served by trains heading West to Slough, Reading, Wales. Brentford is best served by trains heading Southwards to the coast.
No easy route connecting them. So we opted to start our day with a train journey to Feltham, and then a bus to Hayes station, with the return train from Brentford requiring a change at Clapham.
Quite a tricky day travel wise – but an easy route-finding day caching-wise.
We were following the last (or first if you prefer) 7 miles of the Grand Union Canal to its junction with the River Thames. Although the waterway we know as the Grand Union Canal has been around for two centuries, it was primarily a series of interconnecting canals with different names and ownerships between London and Birmingham. From 1929 the Grand Union Canal Authority came into being combining all the ownerships into one.
Our towpath walk had many historical noticeboards and signs for us to read. Early on, we passed a side junction of the Grand Union which would have taken us to the Paddington Basin in the heart for London.
Turn left for Paddington!
Caching wise- we got off to a bad start with 2 DNFs. Sometimes with DNFs you think ‘the cache is here somewhere, but I just can’t see it” – other times you think “it feels like the cache is not here”.
For both these DNFs we believe the cache was missing rather than our caching incompetence.
So it was with some relief we found a cache at our third attempt of the day. Named ‘The Missing Windmill’ it celebrated a picture painted by JMW Turner “A Windmill, A Lock and a Bridge” in 1811.
The Windmill has now gone, but the area nearby is still known as ‘Windmill Crossing’ or ‘Three Bridges’ since the Canal, Railway and Road all converge over on single point.
Standing on a road above a canal above a railway line!
Being late October there were not many canal boats, in fact we only saw one all day. It was going in the same direction as us, so sometimes it overtook us – especially if we were hidden in a bush, geocaching. Other times we overtook the boat as it struggled with the dozen or so locks on the section.
One such lock was near Asylum Dock, next to a now closed Asylum. Coal was delivered to Asylum through the now blocked up windows.
We continued to find caches sometimes near to the canal, sometimes we needed to cross the canal, over the lock gates. Other times we needed to climb above the canal to a road or pedestrian bridge.
For much of the journey we walking between trees and there were few buildings. Our early route had the housing and development of Hayes, which morphed into the suburb of Southall and its marvellous mosque. Urban countryside took over (i.e we were surrounded by trees and bushes, but we were aware of traffic noise and perhaps some close-by buildings. But as we got closer to the end the high rise apartments of Brentford took over.
At Brentford Lock we tried for one more canal cache, but it was blocked off by maintenance. This meant we could wave goodbye to our ‘canal-boat-shadow’ as it entered the Lock and continued its journey on the Rover Thames.
A short walk to Brentford Station (finding a Sidetracked geocache) then a double train journey home.
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