66km Stealing the dead
The Grand Union Canal, near Hayes
Ride overview
Spend the day gongoozling - meaning to stand and stare at working boats - as well as pedalling along the serene traffic-free paths of London’s western canals. It’s a route with an intense mix of city and country from the brutalist realms of Westway and the Trellick tower to the meadows and lakes of London’s western fringes. It’s a route for the nose too, as one minute you ride through the wafts of curry and cooked chicken, baking biscuits and bread, and the next through the scents of wild apples, elders and rich green trees. The tranquil and verdant world of West London is a lovely place to be; within the city, but at the same time so very far away from it.
Ride Notes
Gorgeous glass buildings gleam, people mill around the recently restored dock of the Paddington Basin, tourists pose for their Instagram photos beside two of London’s most stylish bridges, children play in the fountains, crowds queue for tour boats and a long line of people wait for the next show in the historic puppet theatre on a barge. Bars and cafes overflow. It is a dazzling place to be - thrilling, full of life in all its summer city glory and it could not be a greater contrast to what you are about to see.
After four hundred metres of riding, the city calms down as you arrive in Little Venice, as gracious a city spot as ever there was; a wide basin lined with trees and magnificent mansions. Beautifully maintained narrow boats line the banks along with pubs and restaurants. In its canal heyday, you’d have been able to walk across the jam of boats, and stumbled on the piles of sand, gravel, bricks and manure stacked up along the quays. But today, the only dodging is past the smiling tourists posing for pictures.
Westway after a couple of kilometres of riding, is everything that a canal is not. Raised on great pillars of concrete, the A40 arterial road is one of the few examples of the great post war utopia dreamed up by Patrick Abercrombie and other city planners after WWII. The idea was to build four elevated motorway rings around inner London connected by a series of arterial roads. The plan was as bold as it was brutal and the opposition to it intense. To turn the plan into a reality would have meant destroying more homes than achieved by the Luftwaffe. The plan was abandoned in the early 1970s.
Paddington Basin
Towering above trees, Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, appears as another brutalist utopian statement. Loathed and loved in equal measure, it’s spacious and cedar-panelled flats are keenly sought after by today’s moneyed young professionals. The last two set pieces of the urban landscape are quickly passed - the skeletal remains of the old Kensington Gas works, hauntingly gaunt against a blue summer sky, and at Old Oak Common, the newest and largest railway station in the UK rises from out of the London clay.
Slowly, keeping pace with your rhythm, the city releases its grip. There are beautiful bursts of scenery, and flowers are abundant, as are the long lines of narrow boats tethered to the banks. You ride past old Victorian brick buildings and modern grey warehouses and thickets of trees and wild open spaces. By Sudbury, only 10km into the ride, things are truly rural with golf courses, the wooded hill of Horsenden and Perivale whose nature reserve is one of the oldest in the country. Over 75 different species of birds have been recorded here.
Elizabeth I is said to have only eaten bread made from the wheat which was grown at Greenford, the next urban centre on the route, and food is still very much part of Greenford’s DNA. The air is filled with the scent of curry and baking chicken. Bread and biscuits too. For over 150 years, this district has been London’s centre of food processing. Lyons had their factory here, where teas and coffees were packed and processed and ice cream made. Along these banks until the end of the twentieth century, Hovis baked their loaves, Nestlè made their chocolates and Quaker their breakfast cereals.
London Cycling Network C16
Beyond Greenford, the path is lined with the rich green scent of trees mixed with the intoxicating cocktails of buddleias, wayside apples and wine-dark elders. How nature recovers from its bruising! If you’d ridden the next few kilometres in the canal’s industrial heyday, you’d be passing the smoking chimneys of brickworks. Children would be labouring, dust would smear the air, acrid smoke would billow from the chimneys. Today, what buildings there are have their backs turned against the canals, casually indifferent to its potential.
At Bull’s Bridge, a classic white hump-backed canal bridge, the Paddington Arm joins the Grand Union Canal. From now on, the path alternates between metalled and rougher stone, but the contrasts and delights of the water never alter. At Cowley there is a huge canal dock, still busy with boats. It was here that the early Victorian super-fast four horse drawn passenger barge from Paddington terminated. Beyond is a sylvan delight. The restless city seems so very far away, yet you are still within its bounds.
Traffic-free riding along the Grand Union Canal
The canal moves through a mosaic of farmland, woodland and water. There are glimpses of thatched homes, or traditional wooden barns and buildings. The canal passes through the wetlands of the Colne valley with its great lakes, and sibilant reed beds. Even in the height of summer, traffic on the water is slight, but what is most striking of all, is the intensity of the green and the richness of the trees. The scenery is more African Queen than urban London. The cries of unseen birds and waterfowl become mysterious and exotic in this setting.
Traffic-free riding along the Grand Union Canal
If riding to the boundary of London is the aim, then you’ll make for the station at Rickmansworth, and travel back into town. Otherwise the route continues through Watford along a succession of public parks and open spaces, and up into wooded hills before freewheeling into St. Albans. The town itself is quintessentially southern English with beams and plaster amongst later brick and stone. As the crespular light of a summer’s evening draws in, you might find yourself sitting in the still stone quiet of England’s longest cathedral nave or quenching your thirst in one of the many pubs in town, or if there’s energy still in those legs, you might walk around the extensive Roman ruins of Verulanium. Whatever you choose, you’ll have had a serene day in the saddle.
The Cathedral & Abbey Church of Saint Alban
Ride practicalities
The ride of course, is a great route at any time of year, even in winter as most of the paths are metalled. Summer weekend afternoons should be avoided as the paths fill up with locals out for a stroll.
START/FINISH: Paddington Basin /St. Albans Abbey DISTANCE: 68KM. TOTAL ASCENT: 339m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: traffic-free cycle paths alongside the Grand Union Canal with good surfaces throughout. There is a short road section through the North Watford housing estates. MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Paddington mainline, Elizabeth line and Underground/ St Albans Abbey LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: West London Surprise, Grand Union Canal West, NCN6. RECOMMENDED FOOD AND DRINK; Cafe in the Park, Rickmansworth
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