Q J Med 2004; 97: 461-462
QJM vol. 97 no. 7 © Association of Physicians 2004; all rights reserved.
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A magical mystery tour
This month, let me take you on a three-mile walk. In my opinion, it is one of the finest and most fascinating walks in England. If you know English geography and history well, you may want to try and guess its location. I will give you only one clue: it ends at a famous hospital.I suggest that we start at the northernmost point of the walk, on some farmland. The fields we are about to go across have some charming names: Bush Field, Barn Field, Hill Field, Lower Weild Pightle and Upper Weild Pightle. If you look around at the hedgerows, you will see at least fifteen species of trees, including wild service, denoting that the hedges go back to medieval times. Some of the oaks mark out the boundaries of the original Saxon parishes. This is farmland that has barely changed over many centuries.
In a minute we will cross our first stream. You may want to cast a glance behind you at a delightful architectural folly behind us, called the Great Wall. Its design was based on the fortifications of Bavarian hilltop towns, but only a third of it was ever finished before the First World War put paid to the project. Once we have crossed the stream, you will notice how the ground rises, but also becomes boggy, because of the changing geological strata. We are leaving clay soil and starting to climb up towards the remains of a gigantic sandbank, now covered mainly by woods and heaths. The sandbank itself was laid down forty million years ago, by a river as wide as the Ganges.
The fields come to an end and we cross a bridle path and then a road. Taking a detour a couple of hundred yards to the left would bring you to the original weather-boarded farmhouse and buildings for the estate you are passing over. The farmhouse itself, Old Wyldes, probably dates back to the early seventeenth century. William Blake, who visited friends here, called some trees nearby ‘the Dante Wood’. A similar detour up a lane to the left would take you close to a wood where the painter Turner once had a house. (By coincidence, later on in our walk we will pass near the summer residence of John Constable.)
We need to cross the road now. Take the steep track by the bend in the far left hand corner. The soil gets much sandier as we climb; we have almost mounted the summit of the primeval sandbank. Indeed, in the birch wood and gorse a few hundred yards to the right we can visit the pits dug by builders in the nineteenth century as they removed hundreds of thousands of tons of golden sand for construction elsewhere. One of the firs at the summit of the track was planted by Turner himself.
We now have to go across the only other road on our walk. Never mind: within seconds we can dive down again through a gate in a wooden fence almost exactly opposite, into more woods. In a minute we will come out onto a broad meadow, known as West Meadow. Amazingly, it was once laid out as a golf course by Grand Duke Michael Romanov, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II.
Turn right along the stony path skirting the field. At the end of the field, glance back. You will catch a glimpse of a stately home behind trees to the north. It is one of Robert Adam's neo-classical masterpieces. It has a landscaped park by Humphrey Repton, and an art collection that includes portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough, as well as a Vermeer and a Rembrandt. It also has a coach house with a café where you can buy the best cup of coffee in England.
Our way now passes through an iron gate, then a thicket of gorse and brambles, and then directly between two ancient boundary oaks. From this point it is best to follow the standard Venetian advice ‘sempre dritto’ (‘keep going straight ahead’). If we had more time to explore, I could show you that we were going more or less parallel to a boundary ditch between two Saxon manors, and a brook beyond that. But we should probably just carry on straight for the next half a mile or so, through more woods and meadows. These woods were once used for hunting and ‘pannage’—pig grazing.
The path eventually reaches the top of a hill with a dramatic view for many miles across a wide valley. Once you have feasted on the view, turn to your right and go straight back down the hill, following a path between two ponds. We are likely to see a great range of waterfowl here: mallard, barbary ducks, swans, Canada geese, herons, cormorant and (if we are lucky) crested grebe.
We are now almost at the end of this wonderful rural idyll, but should pause to notice another memorable house which has come into view on the right just before we enter an avenue of plane trees. It is the house where Keats lived.
And now, of course, we have come within a couple of hundred yards of our destination: the Royal Free Hospital in London. We are in fact about four miles from Trafalgar Square. We have walked across Hampstead Heath Extension, Sandy Heath, Kenwood and Hampstead Heath itself. We have also just climbed to the top of Parliament Hill, where Guy Fawkes and his colleagues watched the Houses of Parliament, hoping to see them blow up.
If your work ever takes you to the Royal Free, give yourself an extra hour or so next time. Take the underground to Golders Green on the Northern Line, ask directions for Hoop Lane and then Meadway, and look out for a cul-de-sac called Heathgate on your right, where this walk starts. A good map will help, and so will ‘Hampstead Heath: The Walker's Guide’.1 Or you might just want to copy this article. If you lose your way, ask any jogger, dog walker or (on most days) a middle-aged doctor carrying a black briefcase. I do this walk several times a week, and it is one of the things that makes living and working in London bearable.
References
1. McDowall D, Woolton D. Hampstead Heath: The Walker's Guide. Richmond, David McDowall, 1998.
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