Green Belt
Relay
Green Belt
Relay
Stage 22 - Walton Bridge to Hawker Centre (Ham) (9.15 miles)
STILL TO BE COMPLETED – Below is a taster.
The area around Walton Bridge has good facilities. There are public toilets, ample parking, a café and lots of outdoor seating. If you have time you can even have a paddle in the river or go on a boat trip.
The new bridge at Walton was built in 1999 and looks to be a temporary measure, just like the older one that was built in 1953 and still sits next to it.
From Walton Bridge we follow the Thames back past Hampton Court and through Kingston-upon-Thames to finish just before Teddington Lock.
Across the river you can firstly see Sunbury then Hampton. The Magpie Hotel in Sunbury High Street backs onto the Thames and is where the first meeting of the Grand Order of Water Rats took place in 1889. They started as a bunch of music hall stars that owned a trotting pony called "Magpie" who was winning races around the London area. The winnings were used to help less well-off artists and other good causes. The name came about when on a rainy day in London the driver of a horse-drawn bus recognising two well-known artists with the pony, compared it to a "bloomin' water rat". Their first meeting was held at a pub on the river in Sunbury-on-Thames. The pub has since taken the name of the pony and still bears the plaque placed on its front wall.
Hampton is an attractive 18thC village, still linked by ferry to the south bank. Despite the proximity of Hampton Court, the village owes its existence to Hampton House (on the left at 4 miles), bought by David Garrick in 1754 and subsequently altered by Robert Adam. By the river is Garrick’s Temple, built to house Roubiliac’s burst of Shakespeare and nearby stands a large Swiss chalet, which was brought over from Switzerland in 1899.
On along the Thames and back over Hampton Court Bridge. It is here that we come full circle and pass the palace at Hampton Court once again. For now, we have completed the belt and are into the last four miles of the relay. Immediately north of the Palace is Bushy Park, enclosing 2,000 acres and a formal design reminiscent of Versailles, it is noted for its chestnut trees, deer and was HQ for the Allied Forces, including General Eisenhower, in the run up to the D-Day invasion.
Continuing along the Thames past the Palace and you get a good view of the newly opened Privy Gardens and of Home Park. At Kingston Bridge we cross over to Kingston. A metal plaque on the bridge tells of the bridge's history. This is the ninth and last time that we cross the Thames.
Kingston-upon-Thames is a Royal Borough and home of the Coronation Stone which is displayed outside the old Guildhall and on which seven Saxon Kings were crowned. The final mile is along the Thames through Canbury Gardens on the towpath to the Hawker Centre at Ham. Until recently it was here that the famous Hawker-Siddeley Aeroplane Factory stood but now has been knocked down to make way for new housing. Just along the Thames past the finish is Teddington Lock, the largest lock on the river and above which the Thames is no longer tidal. A footbridge crosses the river here to the Teddington side, on the banks of which stand Teddington Studios (once Thames Television).
Teddington Lock and Weir, the lowest on the river controlled by the NRA, is particularly attractive and it is here that the flow of the River Thames can be monitored precisely (up to 15,000 million gallons per day in times of flood). On the east bank, 265yds below Teddington Lock, an obelisk marks the boundary of the jurisdiction of the National Rivers Authority and the Port of London Authority.
It’s a long way from Hampton Court to the Hawkers Centre at Ham. Just over two miles, as the crow flies, or two hundred and twenty miles, depending on which route you take. You decide for yourself which one you will take.
Copywrite @ Sean. Davis 2009. All rights reserved.
