Hold on… what’s this?
A second helping?
Yes.
A little bonus.
Because this Saturday, we take the first step.
Hadley Wood – where London thins out and the countryside leans in
Hadley Wood is London at its most hesitant. The city has come this far… and then, quite politely, it stops.
We’re in the northern reaches of London, in the borough of Enfield. Cross a line – a hedge, a lane, a shift in the air – and you’re in Hertfordshire. That’s the trick of it. Hadley Wood isn’t just a place. It’s a threshold.
You think you know London.
You don’t.
Not this London.
About 1,200 people live here. That’s not a typo. Twelve hundred. In London terms, that’s a village wearing a metropolitan postcode.
And what a village. Leafy doesn’t begin to cover it. This is deep green, slow-breathing, bird-song territory. Big detached houses, long drives, mature trees that look as if they’ve been thinking about things for a century or two.
At its heart is Hadley Wood railway station. Trains from Moorgate get you here in about half an hour. One moment you’re in the City, the next you’re stepping out into a place where the loudest thing is the wind in the leaves.
And then – almost at once – you’re in the wood itself. Proper woodland. Dappled light. Leaf litter underfoot. That soft, muffled quiet you only get among trees.
The name tells you everything, if you listen to it.
Hadley.
Hadda’s clearing.
A pocket carved out of ancient woodland by a long-forgotten Anglo-Saxon.
And the word “ley” – that old English ending – means a clearing in a wood.
So when you say “Hadley Wood”, you’re really saying:
the wood by Hadda’s clearing.
A thousand years of history… tucked into three syllables.
There’s Hadley Wood Golf Club – laid out in 1890, one of those quietly prestigious courses where the fairways seem to have been there forever. And just to the south, Trent Country Park opens out into 400 acres of meadows, lakes, and woodland. You can lose yourself there. Gloriously.
Historically, you’re on the edge of something important.
You’re not just on the northern edge of London. Within minutes of setting off, you’re on the edge of the only major pitched battle London has ever played host to.
You’re in Battle of Barnet country. You can practically hear the clash of arms from here. Across the centuries. Yorkists, Lancastrians, fog, confusion, kings falling, history pivoting. This neck of the London woods has seen things.
But Hadley Wood itself has a different story. It’s largely a late 19th and early 20th-century creation – land sold off from old estates, turned into a commuter haven for those who wanted London within reach but not in their face. A place to retreat to. To arrive at.
And that’s why it’s the perfect beginning.
Because The Ultimate London Walk starts here. Not in the roar and rush, but in the hush. In birdsong. In that curious sensation that you are both in London and not in London at all.
You set off from Hadley Wood and head south. Mile by mile, stage by stage, the city gathers around you. Fields give way to streets. Quiet lanes become busier roads. The volume rises. The story thickens.
Fourteen walks. Forty-two miles. From this soft, green edge… all the way to the Surrey Downs.
So this Saturday, the first step is taken here.
At the boundary.
Where London begins.