Baby's First Walk (not on own feet, we're not that advanced yet)

Yes, I now have a baby.  Obviously this has had a slight impact on my walking, i.e. I can no longer do any.

The pram is unsuitable for any terrain more adventurous than a suburban pavement, the sling is not waterproof, my hiking rucksack doesn't have enough space in it for all the baby stuff....

Today I decided that these were all lousy excuses and I needed to re-start my walking.  Due to all of the above, my first walk as a bona fide mother took place in Central London, just in case it started raining and I had to take refuge, non-waterproof sling and all, in the nearest Starbucks.  As my rucksack had no space for the baby stuff, I had to take a tote bag, which must have looked slightly incongruous with my serious hiking attire (I was wearing walking boots), making people think I always dressed like that and was just a fashion no-hoper who wears hiking boots just for everyday life, rather than saving them solely (check out my hilarious pun!  Did you see what I did there?) for my epic Himalaya-style treks.

Anyway, my little Piglet (not his real name, obvs.) seemed to enjoy his cosy position in the sling, from which he could see a good deal more than just my face, which he is condemned to look at for eternity when he is in the pram, and which is indeed the only thing he can see from there, except the occasional death stare from members of the Great British Public on crowded tube trains as they wish he would stop yelling and attempt to move to a different carriage.  For my part, I also enjoyed my view of him, which was only partly like this.

Why the phone could only manage to fit one of his eyes into the photo as I gazed down at his lovely visage with radiant maternal love God only knows, but for the record, he is not a cyclops, contrary to what I had feared just before my 20 week scan, when someone at work breezed into my Year 10 Classics lesson on Book 9 of the Odyssey and exclaimed "ooh, it's the scene with the cyclops.  A friend of a friend of mine used to be a midwife, and did you know, she once delivered a cyclops baby!"

Anyway, you get my drift, Piglet liked his "slingy time" (since having Piglet, I have felt the need to refer to everything he does as "*insert activity here and attach a Y to the word that describes it* time"- to be said in a voice that makes it sound much more interesting than it actually is-such as, for example "foody time!" "sleepy time!" "pooey time!" "X Factory time!")  The only point when Piglet did not enjoy his slingy time was when he decided to let out an enormous scream on the Jubilee line on the way home, for reasons I can only assume involved his first experience of having his ears pop in a tunnel.

One interesting observation I was able to make on today's walk, which was supposed to be the Jubilee Walkway, except that I couldn't find any of the signs for it and didn't want to spend hours walking round Leicester Square staring at the ground looking for them (the signs are on the pavement.  Very useful when you have an 11 week old baby attached to your front and don't particularly want to crash into any of the passing hordes), was that when you have a baby, all of a sudden everyone wants to talk to you.  Or at least they want to talk to the baby.  Because he is such a great conversationalist.  When I sat down briefly in St James's Park, people were quite literally queueing up to sit next to us.  One old man sat down, examined Piglet thoughtfully, and came out with "What's your earliest memory?" which was presumably aimed at me, rather than Piglet, whom I was unsuccessfully trying to get to show some interest in a passing pigeon.  When the old man told me that his involved a bike he had received as a present from his parents, I had to silently chastise myself for imagining a penny farthing.  Now that I'm a parent, Piglet doubtless already thinks I used to live in a cave and keep a dinosaur as a pet, as though I was Pebbles Flintstone in my own babyhood.

Piglet will almost certainly never watch The Flintstones.  It isn't even on CBeebies.  These young 'uns don't know what they're missing.

Anyway, the day out was so successful, with no rain and-surprisingly-no backache for Mummy from wearing the sling for hours (I must have finally learned the trick of positioning it correctly) that I will doubtless do it again, only I may be a bit more adventurous next time and head out into some actual countryside.....

Bristol Walks: "Brunel's Footsteps"

So with one week to go until D-Day (a.k.a. my Due Date), I naturally decided that now might be a good time to start walking again.

Only this time the aim was to get labour started.

Needless to say, it has now been two days since this walk and all attempts to smoke out the little critter have come to naught.  I can now definitively say I have lost the birth date sweepstake.  Oh well.

I have to admit, I was somewhat ill-prepared for this walk, since I had none of my usual hiking gear with me, and even if I had I very much doubt that any of it still fits.  However, luckily we were able to find an urban walk, as in my precarious condition one can never be too far from public toilets, cafes or, just in case the walk unexpectedly turns out to be a little too successful, a hospital.  Therefore the chosen walk was one called "Brunel's Footsteps," which I found on a local website.

Now I'm not sure if the said Isambard Kingdom Brunel ever walked such a route.  He probably had someone to carry him in a huge litter, which I would have also appreciated on some of the steeper climbs, but if he did I'm sure he would have appreciated this picture of my dad that someone appears to have daubed onto an abandoned steel anchor which we found posing as modern art near one of Brunel's inventions, namely some lock gates.

May his legend live on.

The other principal highlight of this walk was when, whilst crossing the bridge over the Cumberland Basin, which to those of you unfamiliar with Bristol is essentially a bridge over a river that fades to non-existence at low tide, revealing a vast unsightly ditch of mud littered with rusting shopping trolleys dating back over several hundred years, or at least to whenever shopping trolleys were invented, my brother and I witnessed the most distressing act of child abuse ever inflicted.

Yes, we actually saw a child with an exact replica of the Pat Sharp on Funhouse circa 1989 haircut.  We didn't take a picture of the child, as to do so would be to be complicit in the abuse, but I will tell you it looked like this.

I only wish I had been able to capture the full emotion of my brother's horrified face as he gawped at the unfortunate child and declared him "the worst thing I have ever seen."  Speaking of which, my brother has currently just popped out to have his own hair cut.  May we pray that the gods of hair design do not wish to take revenge for our merciless laughter at the plight of this poor child, who surely did not choose this look for himself.

Finally, we ended up taking Brunel's footsteps to the top of a huge hill to enjoy a reinvigorating lemonade in the sight of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which Brunel definitely didn't walk across as he was dead by the time it was completed.  As I also very nearly was when a man who saw me take this photo asked if I wanted him to take one with me in it, and offered to take only my top half in case I didn't want my great fat baby bump to spoil the view.  Admittedly he didn't actually use the words "great fat baby bump" or "spoil the view," but it was definitely implied.

And after all that, the big fat baby bump shows no sign of going anywhere.  

London Loop: Hatch End to Stanmore a.k.a. I Get Knackered and Stop at Every Single Park Bench

Really starting to feel the effects of the extra God-knows-how-much weight I'm currently carrying.

Today, by the time I got to Hatch End Station I needed a sit down, and that was before I'd even started walking properly.  In Ye Olden Days, before I was pregnant, I used to clock in a good ten miles on these walks, and now I'm struggling with four.  What has become of me?

I decided to go and sit in a cafe for a bit before starting the walk-a fact that would also ensure that I was able to use the toilet facilities before any major emergencies arose.  Finally, I set off back onto the path and found to my distress that it looked like this.

What is this?  A booby trap for local burglars?  Worse was to come.  There was an equivalent level of overgrowth further down the path, but instead of these relatively harmless white things, it was STINGING NETTLES.  Frankly it's a miracle I managed to get through without having to be carted off to hospital by helicopter and treated for Acute Nettle Stings (is that a thing?  Probably.  Still, it didn't happen so probably best not to dwell on it).  After this, walking through a field with horses in it-one of whom was literally RIGHT ON THE PATH-held no terrors for me.

Before long, however, I was beginning to feel the stirrings of another impending toilet dash, and had to stop again at a nearby garden centre (and use the toilets, that is.  Wouldn't want you thinking I just cocked a leg up against the ornamental laughing Buddha statues.  I do have an iota of respect).  Thus, before I had walked a mile, I had already had to stop twice, catch my breath, put my feet up, have a coffee and enjoy the facilities.  I can no longer call myself a Serious Hiker.  Bear Grylls would probably facepalm me and refuse to speak to me.  Not that I speak to him anyway, as I've never met him.  Although I would quite like to, as apparently he owns a private island somewhere in Wales and has built a water slide on it, which I would quite like to have a go on.  Although maybe not at the moment.

Urgh.  Sorry just have to interrupt there to let you all know that I have just pulled A BIT OF TREE out of my hair for the second time since returning from today's walk.  This is what happens when you are forced to walk down ridiculously overgrown paths.

Anyway, after leaving the garden centre I had to walk up a hill (knackered.  Needed a rest at the top) and across yet another golf course.  With the amount of golf courses on the London Loop, I honestly don't know how they all survive.  Surely not that many people play golf?  Although I suppose those that do pay about fifty thousand pounds a year in membership fees, so maybe that's how they all manage to stay afloat.  Anyway, I liked this golf course, as when I gingerly attempted to walk across it, some friendly golfers showed me the best way to get across, whereas usually they are launching golf balls at me and practically chasing me with their nine-irons shouting "Get off you lower class vagabond!  You haven't paid your fifty thousand pounds membership fees!"

OK maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.  Anyway here's a picture of the nice golf course, so you can see the nice view.

Yes that sign does say "public footpath."  One of these days I'm going to waltz right up to a game and start cheering "come on you in the gingham tank top!  Make it a hole in one!" just to see how they react.

The rest of the walk seemed to take absolutely ages, as they always do when walking at around the same pace as a group of soldiers slow marching behind the coffin at a state funeral, and involved a lot of woods, as they always do (see previous post for my thoughts on excess woodland action).  Still, it seemed that I was getting closer and closer to home, passing this picnic spot from which I could see clearly the St George's Centre in Harrow, scene of many a disappointing trip to the Smallest and Most Pointless Topshop in The World that lies inside.

This would have been a far better photo if I had stood up and walked closer to the viewing point, but I was too knackered.  If you have particularly amazing vision, you may spot Wembley Stadium, symbol of home, in this one.  It's on the left or, as us Serious Hikers call it, the South (probably.  Didn't get the compass out to check).

Anyway, hopefully you can definitely see it here, albeit I was using the zoom facility-such as it is-on the camera phone, a bit further on in the walk.  In fact, the end point of today's walk was Stanmore Station, which felt like a luxury indeed, given that it's only a few trifling stops on the Jubilee Line away from home.  Granted I had to traipse through the wholly unnecessary "Stanmore Country Park" to get there, but still, I can't see any of this walk getting any closer.  It's all downhill from here.

London Loop: Moor Park-Hatch End a.k.a. I Meet Another Walker

The great thing about today's instalment of the London Loop was that both the beginning and end points are some the mercifully easier places along the route to get to, being not too far from the lovely Wembley, my humble abode.  In fact, at one point during today's walk I could even see the stadium.

Don't all get the magnifying glasses out at once.

The not so great thing was that most of today's walk was through woodland.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like the woods.  Hanging about in the woods made up a great part of my childhood: playing badminton and getting frustrated when the shuttlecocks blew off course (at that point we hadn't quite realised that badminton was supposed to be an indoor game), searching for places to cross the river via stepping stones, running up vertical slopes and trying not to slide back down again.  These were all fundamental experiences of my youth.  Now, however, as a walker, the woods are nothing if not a constant disappointment to me.

For a start, they are not the same woods I scrambled around in as a child, but even if they were, I probably wouldn't be able to tell, as they basically all look exactly the same.  A few trees here, a bit of mud there, a coarse track there and a few streams running through.  Same-old, same-old.  And when you have travelled a considerable distance to get to the said woods, you want them to be different.  Perhaps one wood could be magical, with elves and flower fairies; another could be the home of the wicked witch/stepmother or whatever incarnation of evil the inevitably female villain was in Hansel and Gretel.  You know, the one who had the house made of sweets.  Another one could even be home to the three bears, of Goldilocks fame, and you could wander in and eat their porridge.

Given that most woods I've come across are pitifully short of toilets or facilities providing food and beverages the latter would be particularly appealing.  Even if porridge is basically just a fancy middle class name for the gruel that used to get served up in Victorian workhouses, which has now been reinvented as a healthy breakfast option sold in little tubs in such normally respectable establishments as Costa Coffee.

Anyway, you get my drift.  I have yet to meet Hansel, Gretel, the Three Bears, the Big Bad Wolf or even a flower fairy.  Woods are boring.

Fortunately, however, these were at least well signposted so I couldn't get lost.  Although there were a few dangerous moments with mud where I thought I was going to need to call the coastguard to winch me out with a crane as I sank deeper into it, never to be seen again.

Beware.  It may look innocuous, but dangers lurk beneath.  And I don't mean the Big Bad Wolf.

There were also the inevitable hair-raising encounters with the animal kingdom, which have a horrible way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.  You come to a stile, leading into a field, relieved that you are finally, quite literally out of the woods, and can see things other than trees again and what do you know, there's a field full of horses.

Completely unguarded, unfenced, possibly about to kick you to death, HORSES.

They may look harmless here, ladies and gents, but I had to walk RIGHT PAST THEM.  What if they had started neighing?  What if they had reared up?  What if they had got spooked and started running after me in a great herd????  Yes folks, I could have been killed.  You're all lucky I'm still here to tell the tale.

The highlight of today's walk, however, which narrowly beats my miraculous escape from certain death at the hands of a field of horses, was that I actually met another walker.  Yes, met AND had a conversation with!  I honestly thought I was the only person who randomly goes on a jaunt on their own through the woods and across fields for no reason at all of a weekend.  No reason at all.  No dog to walk, no children to entertain, no group of walkers with walking poles to hang out with (shame.  They always seem to know where to find the toilet stops).  Just completely on their own, AND (this is even rarer) under the age of sixty-five!  Yes, a young walker.  Now I hope it's not too presumptuous of me to continue to place myself in the "young" demographic, but by the standards of the walking world, I am so young it's a miracle I can survive outside the womb.  And yet now, here was another person just like me, striding across a golf course in hiking attire with a London Loop guide book glued to his hand.

The Other Walker stopped briefly to compare guidebooks and then challenged me to a race to the finish, albeit one I had to politely decline on account of the unfair disadvantage I had of carrying around another human being inside of my person (well, I hope it's a human being.  It looked sort of like one in the scans.  Difficult to tell though at that age).

Anyway, I think we can categorically confirm that The Other Walker did beat me, despite my catching him going the wrong way and having to backtrack slightly further along the route.  I didn't find his rotting carcass in the field with the horses, having been kicked to death by rampaging equine monsters. Nor did I have to fish him out of the mud, despite his not wearing wellies, unlike me (prepared for every eventuality).  Thank goodness for that.  One would hardly want one's walk to be littered with the bodies of those who've gone before.  I imagine that would be slightly off-putting.

London Loop: Harefield-Moor Park a.k.a. Beware of the Scary Animals

And so off I went this morning for the latest instalment of my Very Long Walk Around the Edge of London.  After fortifying myself with lunch at the Jimmy's World Buffet in the not very aptly named London Designer Outlet (not part of the route) my journey started back in Harefield (disappointingly, no sign of travellers this time).  After a couple of wrong turnings down suburban streets and a hill of somewhat alarming gradient (shown below.  The bluebells almost made up for the trauma of climbing it)

I found myself in what seemed to be genuine countryside.  

Put it this way, there were animals and everything.  

Yes, animals.  SCARY animals.  Not like wolves or yetis, or the Beast of Bodmin Moor, although I suppose in medieval times there may well have been a few of those peppering the English countryside.  Along with all those dragons and unicorns and things.  These were cows.

Now cows are quite sweet really.  They always look nice and friendly when they're on Countryfile.  Even the boy cows.  The difference of course, being that everything looks better on TV, even my rabbit-fur coat, which one of my students said made me look "posh" when I appeared on TV (don't ask) wearing it, but which in real life resembles a selection of soggy dead rabbits strung together in the 1970s, which of course it is.  And that's why I love it.

Anyway, up close, cows are, of course, terrifying.  This is because:

a) They are animals, and hence inherently unpredictable.

b) Although you usually only see lady cows, recognisable from their huge great udders, one always suspects that there must be a boy cow lurking somewhere nearby.  And I have an orange jacket.  This could surely be mistaken for red by a cow.  Also I have seen cows try to mount each other on previous expeditions, so one can never really be sure what goes on.

c) They are ridiculously enormous and more than capable of crushing to death little me.  This happens kids.  I have read about it in the papers, but for some reason these unfortunate deaths always seem to be hushed up.  Probably some sort of conspiracy on the part of the dairy industry.

Anyway, I got past the cows without incident (they were quite far away, and so probably more interested in chewing bits of grass than they were in me), only to cross into another field where there was.....

.......another enormous cow!  And this time it was stood right in front of me!  My entire life flashed before my eyes in a way that it hadn't since 2009, when I found myself halfway down a grade of ski slope that was slightly too difficult for my modest abilities.  

I was going to take a picture but I thought the cow might get angry and think I was trying to steal its soul or something, and my main aim was total non-provocation of the cow, whilst looking like a pro who deals with farm animals all the time, like I will have to if I am ever to fulfil my dream of becoming a Countryfile presenter (being from the West Country, I can do a pretty good farmer accent, and thus consider myself eminently suitable for the role).  Therefore I regret to say that there is no documented evidence of this cow, nor of its scary nature, but needless to say, the cow did not react to me-nor my orange jacket-at all, except to look at me briefly to see where I was going.  And thus ended my encounter with the cows.  I then came across a few fields of horses, who are possibly more scary than cows.  I'm not sure of the exact statistics, but I'm pretty sure that more people get killed by horses in one way or another than get killed by cows, but maybe that's because people are always trying to do ill advised things around horses, like ride on them, whereas very few people attempt to do that to cows (not sure why?  Perhaps I should attempt to popularise cow-riding as a sport.  Although come to think of it, I probably wouldn't be that good at it if I tremble with fear at the sight of one in close proximity in a field).  Anyway, here are the horses, safely behind a fence I'm happy to say.  A fence that they could probably jump over if they wanted to, but a fence nevertheless.  A nice psychological barrier between me and the Scary Animals.

Speaking of scary things, it was shortly after this that I found myself in the Actual Middle of Nowhere. Look!

There is literally nothing here (apart from my finger getting in the way of the camera).  And it was like this for AGES.  It occurred to me that if something bad happened, like for example if I suddenly went into premature labour, there would be nothing and no one to help.  FOR MILES AROUND!  What a terrifying day this was turning into.

And then, to cap it all off, I got lost in these woods.

Totally lost.  Fortunately, I did eventually manage to find my way back to the path, after the usual unwelcome hike along a main road with no pavement, which is what always happens when I get lost.  Why do they make roads with no pavements?  Does nobody spare a thought anymore for the humble pedestrian who finds herself in the middle of nowhere?

Once back on the main trail, and after a long period of time with no human company or interaction whatsoever, I finally stumbled across none other than some other walkers.  Other people go walking!  Around the London Loop!  Who'd have thought it?  They weren't Serious Hikers like me though.  Even though one of them had in his possession what looked suspiciously like an Ordnance Survey map, I noted that they were wearing jeans.  Jeans!  What if it had rained?  No Serious Hiker sets out in a pair of jeans.  They were definitely no match for me.

Serious Hikers not pictured in the distance here.  Just amateurs in jeans.

They did get to the end before me though, even though their wives were lagging somewhat behind having a bizarre conversation about what happens when you die.  Apparently, your "energy goes up to the stratosphere."  I shall be looking out for all those energies, next time I'm travelling by plane.  That is, if I'm not too busy worrying about my own impending death, as I usually am on planes.  And when stumbling across animals in fields.  And when finding myself on slightly too challenging ski slopes.......

London Loop: Uxbridge-Harefield a.k.a. Wandering around for ages in the blazing heat, looking for a bus stop

So I now know what Harefield is like, having actually visited such places as "Mount Pleasant," which one normally only sees emblazoned on the front of dire-looking buses which mostly do the rounds of grimly boring suburban streets.  And surprisingly, Mount Pleasant is actually quite pleasant, if not technically a mountain.  In fact, Harefield in general is lovely, though in mitigation I will say that 

a) the weather was very nice today, which may have made it look better and

b) there was still a generous smattering of enormous England flags flapping in gardens and Dappy from N-Dubz lookalikes talking about selling drugs on the bus (as in, they just happened to be discussing the selling of narcotics whilst sitting on the bus, not actually setting up shop on the back seat.  Harefield definitely would have gone down in my estimation if that were the case).

Anyway, today's journey started in Uxbridge, a place well known mainly for housing large numbers of my students, some of whom seemed frankly astonished to see me pounding the streets of their local shopping centre looking for the toilets (as usual).  I'm not sure whether the gasps of "Oh my God!" as I walked past were due to the fact that they could scarcely fathom that I had a life outside school and do not in fact reside in a cupboard marking books all through the Easter holidays, or whether they simply couldn't believe that I would actually spend my time in a shopping centre where the most interesting shop was a stall in the middle selling balls of wool in a variety of different colours.

Naturally, I hastily left Uxbridge as quickly as I could and headed off down what seems (judging by the last few sections of this walk) to be a never-ending stretch of canal towpath (probably because it goes all the way to Birmingham, although mercifully I was not planning on going that far).  Not much to report here, except that at one point someone who'd clearly had a bit too much of the Special Brew shouted out "What are you having?  A baby?" at me, in what I presume is the pregnancy version of being leched at by a leering sexist.  I answered that I hoped I was indeed having a baby, to which he demanded to know if said baby was a boy or a girl.  Speaking of which, I have noticed that large numbers of people tend to ask me the question "What are you having?" apparently with the assumption that I will know they mean boy or girl.  Not only is it somewhat presumptuous of them to assume I will know the answer to that, given that I can't actually see what's in there, but surely there are a range of answers that could be given to such an open line of questioning.  Next time someone asks me this I may say that I am having a gastric band operation, for example.  Or possibly that I have been impregnated by an alien, or am acting as a surrogate for Tian Tian the giant panda from Edinburgh Zoo.  Although if the latter was actually the case, surely I would not be so fat, as I have seen panda babies and they are SMALL.

Anyway, not much else to report, except that I think I found the remnants of Noah's Ark lying next to the canal.

Well it might be.  It looks more convincing than the boat-shaped rock I saw being passed off as the remains of the Ark on a Channel 5 documentary once.

In other news, there are some really nice parts of Hillingdon (who knew?) including this sailing club in Denham, which I admit you can barely see through the trees in this picture, but it was the only spot where there was a seat.  And I'm pregnant goddamit.  I need to sit down.  

And look at this lovely tree, complete with idyllic thatched cottage.

Group of chavs to the left peering at a car just out of shot.

The biggest disappointment of the day was that after a thoroughly pleasant walk where I had not been desperate for the toilet even once, and had only spent the first half of the walk urgently seeking something to eat (at one point even passing food-related flotsam, such as discarded fast food containers and a fleeting glimpse of a packet of oatcakes through the window of a passing barge started to look appealing.  After all I am pregnant, and therefore allowed to eat large pieces of chocolate cake whilst watching Secret Eaters without shame) I then spent half an hour wandering the streets of Harefield looking for a bus stop.  

I totally should have got a lift with the small child who thundered past on one of those pony trap thingys people are always racing on Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.  Sadly he was going far too fast for me to whip out the camera and take a picture of this marvellous moment, where I thought I might get a cameo in Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, and have to christen my baby Prince Precious Paddy Doherty Excalibur Michael Jackson Humpty Dumpty the Third and dress him in the biggest rhinestone-studded Christening gown ever made, and then get drunk in a limo whilst throwing cake around and feeding the baby Lambrini in his bottle to celebrate the momentous event.

But anyway, it appears that I am not destined to be a traveller, and instead I found the bus stop (eventually) after someone thoughtfully pointed out that it might be on the main road rather than in the middle of a car park, and hence I returned home safely.  

Until the next instalment of my thrilling round trip of the London hinterland.

London Loop: Hayes & Harlington/West Drayton-Uxbridge a.k.a. Mythical Creatures Take Over Hillingdon

I cheated a bit here as this walk was actually in two stages.  The first, from Hayes and Harlington (which one is it actually?  Hayes or Harlington?  And where is Harlington anyway?  Is it a real place?) to West Drayton, was so pathetically short that it barely seemed worth posting about.  It was basically just a walk along a canal for a bit, then across a golf course.

Oh, and through this business park, which was eerily deserted on a Saturday.....

....then across this weird bridge that appeared out of nowhere.....

.....and then over the top of this hill, which apparently had a "stunning view."  I wasn't very stunned, although you could see that weird factory thingy near Heathrow (sadly not pictured as too far away for camera phone).  You know the one.  I'm going to google it now so I can get a picture.

OK epic fail.  If you google the words "weird factory near Heathrow" you get the following headlines:

"Biriyani on pre-flight menu at Heathrow"

"Haunted places near Heathrow."

Weird Factory probably isn't haunted (too new) and I doubt it has any connection to biriyani.

AHA!  FOUND IT!

It's this one!  Apparently it's a "large multi-faceted waste plant."  I won't say how long it just took me to sift through a multitude of images of planes, Terminal 5, factories and-funnily enough-biriyani.

Anyway, isn't it a great building?  I basically love it.  It is totally the best large, multi-faceted waste plant that has ever been built.  Just look at those swans basking in the glare of its great beauty, trying to get a piece of the action.

You are probably thinking by now that if spotting this edifice from a great distance was the highlight of my walk, then it was probably pretty dire.  And you would be correct.

Fortunately, the second part of the walk, which I did today, from West Drayton to Uxbridge, was a bit more interesting.  It started here, on the canal.

Now you may be wondering how I managed to go for such a walk on a School Day.  The answer is, of course, that we are on strike.  This is obviously brilliant.  I felt very militant, sticking it to The Man (Michael Gove), off on an intrepid adventure on a Wednesday, when all around me people were at work.  Except in Starbucks in Ealing, where most people were either in pushchairs, or were spending their day off school reading heartfelt text messages to their friends and discussing how yah, I know who hacked my Facebook, yah.  Some other items which were presumably not at work today were these:

Have you ever seen such a collection of cranes in one place?

Anyway, highlight of today's walk, other than the fact that it was able to happen at all, thanks to the sheer, unbridled joy of being off work and it all being rather militant and 1984, was the range of strange animals that can be spotted in the wilds of a place called Little Britain Lake.  Yes, it is a real place.  Apparently so named due to the fact that it is sort of in the shape of Britain, rather than out of any homage to Matt Lucas, David Walliams or Dreadzone, makers of popular 1996 hit Little Britain, after which this country is surely named.

Unfortunately I did not manage to catch any of these creatures on camera, mainly due to the fact that I was very, very scared.  It started with something resembling a whale spouting water through a blow hole on the lake.  Well, I think it resembled a whale.  Put it this way, some water shot up in the air suddenly and there appeared to be nothing under the surface that was responsible for it.  It may have been the Loch Ness Monster.  Then, seconds later, two dogs appeared on the horizon.  Except that they weren't dogs, and I know this because THEY HAD HORNS.  Fortunately they ran away as soon as they saw me.  

I then spotted them eyeing me from a safe distance.  They may have been goats.  Who knows?  Do wild goats roam in Hillingdon?  It appears that they do.  Unless this is some mythical, horned, dog-like creature hitherto unknown to science.  

At one point I believe I even saw a bird that was blue.  BLUE!  Have you ever seen such a thing?  Clearly I have led a very sheltered life where the animal kingdom is concerned.

Next instalment: I go hunting for unicorns.

London Loop: Hatton Cross-Hayes and Harlington a.k.a Where I try to circumnavigate Heathrow Airport and fail miserably

Firstly, this walk began in a ludicrous location.  Walking out of Hatton Cross tube station is basically like walking into Heathrow Airport, except that you have got off the tube one stop early and seem to have ended up on the actual runway with planes landing on your head, while the occasional pack of plane-spotters (invariably middle aged men.  Funny how you never see a woman with such an utterly pointless hobby) roam around looking a bit dazed, like that paparazzi bloke from Airport (surely the most amazing documentary series ever.  Or at least of the entire 90s) got lost and ended up outside the perimeter fence, desperately trying to find a way back in.

I haven't quite captured the moment here, mainly as every other time a plane went past, I didn't have time to get my phone out before it headed straight for me and I had to run away screaming like the cartoon air traffic controller in the opening credits of Jimbo and the Jet Set.

Anyway, by far the worst thing about Hatton Cross was not the noise, nor the ever-present concern that  one of these planes was going to miss the runway and land on me, but the fact that by the end of the unfathomably long time it had taken me to get there, I was naturally dying for the loo.

Not again.

I therefore spent the first part of the walk again searching fruitlessly for a toilet.  There were no toilets in Hatton Cross Station-sacriledge!  Do not pass by yonder Hatton Cross, O ye of weak bladder-and although there was one pub, I didn't want to spend the first part of my walk being forced to sit in some local-yokel hostelry drinking an orange juice that I didn't want purely for the pleasure of using the facilities.  Before long, things got really desperate as not only did I need the loo, but I realised that I had also gone the wrong way, and had no idea where I was.  I turned back and walked towards the airport, wondering exactly how I was going to get round this.

At that point, however, I spotted a BP garage which had-hallelujah!-a fully functioning toilet.

After my trip to the toilet, I was suddenly able to see things with a bit more clarity and focus, which led to the conclusion that I had gone the wrong way for a second time.  I had by this point wasted around an hour to-ing and fro-ing along various bleak dual carriageways.

Finally, with the correct route identified, I set off on a typical London Loop trek, meaning that it took me on a path past a grim local river that now mainly seems to be used for fly-tipping, through the occasional deserted park and intermittently through subways underneath huge roundabouts.  Ah, the joys of West London's premier beauty spots.  Eventually, I ended up in the borough of Hillingdon, where this scenic vista awaited me.

Another one of West London's hidden gems.

The final stretch was along a canal towpath, which I had been hoping would be a bit more palatable, but which had a distinct aura of when-Dirty-Den-died-the-first-time in Eastenders.  In other words, deserted apart from the occasional shady character lurking in the shadows looking as though they were waiting to do a drug deal or, more alarmingly, attack some lonely walker and throw her in the canal, or shoot her through a bunch of daffodils, or however it happened in Eastenders when Dirty Den died but then turned out twenty years later not to have died, or whatever ludicrousness it was.

Eventually I spotted some narrowboats on the horizon and a return to civilisation, civilisation in this case being represented by Hayes and Harlington Station, and was briefly chatted up (AGAIN!  What is it with men and the lure of a pair of muddy wellingtons and a bright green fleece?), this time by an alcoholic OAP on crutches who was inexplicably convinced that I would linger on the towpath to exchange pleasantries with him.

I ran away.  Straight into Coffee Republic, where I was tortured by the barista singing along in an alarmingly high-pitched tone to what appeared to be an album of Rihanna covers sung in a depressing Magic FM style by a random bloke.

Let's hope the next section will be more picturesque.

London Loop: Fulwell-Feltham a.k.a. Where I Have to Abandon Walk due to Toilet Emergency

So I thought it was time I did some more walking.

Have been on a bit of a hiatus recently as you can see from this blog, and every time someone has asked me when I am going to be walking again I've had to mutter something about the floods currently sweeping the nation and how awful it is and how every walking route in the country is most likely submerged under a few feet of water; when in fact the true reason I have not been walking is simply because I am pregnant.  And pregnant women obviously can't do any exercise, right?  At least, not any that causes one to be out of breath, apparently, which for me would pretty much mean that walking up the stairs at Wembley Park tube station is prohibited.

Anyway, I figured that now I am "safely" in the second trimester ("safe" is obviously a misnomer in pregnancy.  For example I have just spent the last five hours fretting that something terrible has happened to the baby because I hadn't felt it move since my particularly difficult walking experience today, and googling whether needing the toilet for excessive periods of time without being able to find one is likely to cause the foetus to expire with the sheer stress of it all).

So off I went to Fulwell, which is somewhere sort of near Kingston (as in, upon-Thames, obvs.  Not Jamaica).  I had a pleasant walking experience last week, the first since my long hiatus, walking from Kingston to Fulwell, which was a shorter distance that I usually do (have to make some allowances for the extra weight I'm now carrying and the delicate state of my mental health when it comes to stressing about doing too much exercise or being in places without guaranteed toilet facilities), with a conveniently placed cafe mid-walk and a John Lewis right on hand to dash into when it started raining, so I had clearly been lulled into a false sense of security about how easy walking "with child" was going to be.

That sense of security was to be completely shattered today.

Firstly, it started raining at the precise minute I stepped off the train at Fulwell Station.  The rain then got progressively harder and I made a series of poor decisions, including not stopping under a bus shelter to put my waterproof trousers on lest people in passing cars think I am getting changed in the street, and what would they think, and O the indignity of it all!

I ended up walking along the banks of a river somewhere in the vague direction of Heathrow Airport through a quagmire of mud and sludge, getting wet, needing the loo and wondering why I had ever left my nice, warm flat that morning.  The rain eventually eased off.  The longing for a toilet, however, got worse and worse.

Dear Rainbow, please grant my wish.  Please can I have a healthy baby.  Oh, and MAKE SURE THERE'S A TOILET SOON!

There wasn't.  Bloody rainbow.

Shortly after this, I found myself on Hounslow Heath, which according to my London Loop guide book, was a pretty spooky place back in the 1700s, liberally scattered with highwaymen and rotting corpses swinging on gibbets, both of which I would have gladly braved had there been a working toilet in the vicinity.  I have to admit, there were times when I thought today was going to go down in history as the shameful day I had a poo on Hounslow Heath, in full view of the planes approaching Heathrow Airport, and probably found myself in the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame, alongside a heading along the lines of "Woman caught crouching in field near Heathrow DEFECATING brings SHAME ON THE NATION!!!!  Cameron outraged and pledges to leave "no stone unturned" in hunt for "Heathrow Horror."

"Any chance of a lift to Terminal 5?  I know for a fact there are toilets there.  Just let me cling on to the underside, yeah?"

Luckily, it was not to be, and I did manage to hold it in, but I had to escape from the heath onto a suburban street, where I made my way to the nearest main road, clutching my distended abdomen and now visibly in so much pain that people on the street probably thought I was in labour.

Eventually I reached a hotel full of Eastern European air cabin crew-a massive benefit of being near the airport as it is much easier to sneak into a hotel and use the facilities without having to buy anything than it is in a pub or restaurant-and was able to find some relief.  After that, it was fortunately only a short walk to Feltham Station, which was completely off the route and not the eventual destination I had anticipated, but there was no way I was going to continue walking after such a traumatic experience.

As I was making my way to the platform, believe it or not, some lecherous man actually tried to CHAT ME UP.  This despite the fact that I was four and a half months pregnant, wearing mud-splattered wellies and a bright green fleece and looked as though I probably had just hitched a ride to Heathrow on the underside of a plane.  Now that is someone with no shame.