Despite the weather forecast of no sunshine and intermittent rain, an impressive turnout of twenty-four members and three guests assembled at Wimbledon Park station for a 4.5 mile walk across Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common.
A stroll along a suburban street took us to the gates of the nearby park. It is a recreational green space that sprawls across sixty-seven acres. Passing a children’s playground and numerous tennis courts, we reached a large lake with much wildlife. Zig-zagging past an athletics track took us out of the park and onto a road with a distant view of the home of lawn tennis. Turning off beforehand, we climbed up a side road until we found ourselves at an entrance to Putney Heath. Highwaymen once prowled here and duels were fought but we only saw locals enjoying the attractive woodlands.
Soon we spotted the windmill dating from 1817 on the adjacent Wimbledon Common. We stopped for refreshment at the tearoom below its four sails whilst fortunately avoiding a sudden rain shower. We then set off down a straight path with little mud to the south-east corner of the Common and the start of Wimbledon Village. Here we passed through a small bustling market and past many expensive looking shops before heading down the hill to finish the walk in the vicinity of Wimbledon station.
The adjacent Alexandra pub provided ten of our number with a pleasant hour or so of excellent refreshment and good conversation before heading home.
Our train to Oxford was pretty much full as we left behind us an exceptionally busy Marylebone Station. Arriving at Beaconsfield we were joined by others who had come by car. We were 15 strong now and were packing out the small station building so we went outside for the briefing (in the rain unfortunately).
Happily the rain stopped quite soon after we began this 9 mile ramble although the sky remained in threatening mood all day. After passing a sign to the model village and walking along some residential streets we reached open fields and headed northeast towards Seer Green. A couple of fields later we passed through an attractive avenue of trees and then we had to cross the very busy Amersham road. We had to wait quite a long time before we could all cross safely. Then we were walking through a wood and then across wet fields to Seer Green for an early lunch.
We were so lucky for this walk. It was a sunny day with blue skies. It was even more appreciated because it was sandwiched between never ending rainy and miserable days. Eleven Polyramblers turned up for the walk (including me, the leader).
I warned people that there were no toilets at the outdoor café where we were stopping for lunch. But this was made up by at least eight open toilet buildings along the way. We did not visit them all. Enough about toilets!
For the 15th Polyramblers annual snow-walking weekend, we went to Bad Gastein, a spa town in the mountains in Austria. This year there were 12 of us including newbies Jackie C, Julie and Wendy (Christine Bignold’s daughter). We flew from Heathrow and Gatwick and met at Salzburg airport. We had a lovely train journey to Bad Gastein with magnificent scenery. But we should not have sat in the quiet carriage! We were told off twice for being too noisy. After a short walk to discover the town or to the nearest supermarket to buy shower gel, we had a very nice but enormous dinner at the Schafflinger Alm. How can they eat such huge portions?
On a bright, mild and dry day 18 Poly Ramblers set off on what purported to be a seven (later calculated to be eight) mile walk in the woodlands of Hertfordshire. We quickly reached Brickendon, one of the most haunted places in Hertfordshire, where we briefly visited the Holy Cross chapel built in 1932 in Tudor style with a fine wooden beamed interior.
