Below High Barnet are its playing fields stretching down to the Dollis Brook – a stream that will be a long-term friend of this walk. It’s Green Belt land which football wants to nibble a stadium out of. Cross it to follow the brook into meadows where there used to be a sewage works. Yes, such riversides do exist. Once polluted, now pleasant it has a revitalised housing estate next door to match. Cross the brook into the patchwork of ancient hedgerow patterns that enclose Totteridge Fields, hay providers for the horse-drawn city.
Emerge in Totteridge the village with its tithe barn that 200 years ago did holy duty when the next-door church was being rebuilt. Don’t miss the yew, maybe London’s oldest tree, before disappearing down the lane to Darlands. Darlands, a land London left behind. Here’s the erstwhile country estate of Copped Hall laid out in the early 19th century by landscape designer Humphry Repton. Overgrown, its shape is still apparent as you plunge from its hilltop view to the secreted lake below.
Finish with more water – the pond bordering two 17th century farmhouses. In case you were wondering – yes this is Greater London.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING
N.B. On the Sunday walk, Ann will be joining as a second guide.
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