10/5/11 - Capital Ring Phase 3 - Grove Park to Crystal Palace

Previous Legs - Stage 1, Stage 2
Start - Grove Park
End - Crystal Palace
Miles - 7
Caches - 2
Pubs - 1 on route, Hollywood East - Loads at end in Crystal Palace.

Capital Ring Phase 3

Another glorious night for a walk in London.  This is one of the longer stretches of the Capital Ring and I am glad that I have had such a nice night for it.

Waterloo East is just down from my hotel in central london, so its not long before I delivered to Grove Park again.  Strange start to the walk, as we head through what can only be described as a rough looking estate.  Dodge people with pitbulls and a mad motorcyclist with no helmet before being delivered at my first bit of greenery at Downham.  These wooded alley ways which bring me out onto the first major beauty spot of Beckenham Place Park.

Nice multi-cache, where the co-ords are on the greenwich meanline and are gathered by collecting clues from the park information board.  Fines for dog poo are £75 and only four dogs per walker add up to give the co-ords for a cache buried under a log.  No-one is about in this park, so I have the place to myself.  One more, simpler cache is found before I am delivered to the stately home, where everyone is limbering up for their jogs/bike rides.

I am enjoying my walks around London's outer circle but one complaint would be the lack of pubs on route.  This is stage 3, and at 5 miles into it, I arrive at Penge East Station for my first on route pint of the walk.  This is in the Hollywood East Pub.  Lots of "characters" in this place, with dialogue straight out of Martina Cole books.  When I pay for my stella, the friendly landlady says "can I wait for my change, as she's only got scores in the till".  I told her "she could owe me a monkey, but who's arsking".  She told me to get out of her pub.

Penge East leads slightly up hill to a walk around Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.  Who would have thought I would face dinosaurs on my epic adventue.... as well as the stadium and some nice waterfalls.

More Exotic South London Animals

This brings me to Crystal Palace.  Decide to have a look around the town and can see that I am going to have some special views of London on the next route from this high vantage point.  Quite liked Crystal Palace.... treated myself to a nice ruby... well it did come with a free starter.