A bitter Pyl

I promise there will be some wargaming again. Soon. Ish. The reinforcements I ordered from Pendraken have been dispatched and I'm tempted to paint up the extra Americans before tackling Haberghan's column again.

Yesterday I walked the Hogsmill again with my constant companion*.  She'd not done the stretch beyond Old Malden before. If anything the ground was wetter than last weekend. Yesterday was forecast to be relatively free of precipitation, whilst today snow was forecast, though it's not nearly cold enough for it to settle so it would be even wetter.

* that's my wife, not a dog

Parts looked more like the Everglades than suburban Surrey.

My initial thought was to walk across Nonsuch Park again, but this time carry on to the Pyl Brook, a tributary of the Beverley Brook. The Beverley Brook flows into the Thames at Barnes, several miles downstream from the Hogsmill. Looking at maps of the area, it looked like the waterway had green space either side for much of its route, except where it disappeared under streets. I hoped we would thus be able to get most of the way back home, creating a circular walk largely off road.

Approximate route from the source of the Hogsmill to the Pyl Brook. There's about a mile of walking along streets between Cheam Park and the Pyl Brook. The route up the Hogsmill can be seen on the left heading NW from Ewell. Another branch of the Hogsmill is just on the map West of Ewell.

The area near the springs was once a hive of industry, including several powder mills, as there were downstream near Old Malden. There is evidence of old brick buildings and various walled in channels previously controlled by sluices judging by the example below.

Your Bloggist stood on the wall in the middle of the upper shot.  What looks like slots for sluice gates remain on the left side of the narrow constriction - on the right they appear to have been broken off.

The channel feeding the 'sluice gates' above.

By the time we got to Ewell and stopped for a snack, I was beginning to think it wouldn't be worth pressing on to the Pyl Brook. I wasn't totally confident in there being footpaths we could use on the latter stream. We resumed our walk and went through some very picturesque parts of old Ewell and on to Nonsuch.

As I thought we wouldn't march on to the Pyl Brook, we wandered around Nonsuch Park a little more than if we were on a mission to get from A to B, and came across a die-straight concrete road. This appeared to go no where so I speculated that the park had been used for a military camp during the War. I must do a little more browsing on this. We then headed across the adjoining Cheam Park, which involved ascending a hill which I assume marked the watershed between the Hogsmill and Beverley rivers.

Over the 'watershed'? I think the ridge in the distance is the area of Kingston Hill, Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. Beyond it is the Thames.

When we got to the road where the buses back home go we changed our mind and headed towards the Pyl Brook rather than take the easy option. I wouldn't make it back in time for kick-off anyway. We lost. Again. So we walked through the 'Cheam Badlands' towards Sutton and the next bit of green space.

The map had looked quite promising and when we got to the little park which the Pyl Brook ran through, my hopes began to rise. The park, and stream is next to an industrial and retail park, so not particularly photogenic, but that's to be expected. The path headed out of the north end of the park and came to a stop at the A24, about 1/2 mile from the entrance. The west bank of the stream backs on to houses and every so often there is a large drain, about 5 feet wide, through which the run-off from the surrounding streets drained. I 'knew' that street drains must head in to a water course somewhere along the line, but for some reason this surprised me. Maybe it was the immediacy of it. It also just struck me now (slow I know) that this is where whatever 'stuff' we put on our cars or paths to clean them goes.

Pyl Brook, view downstream from a small footbridge

Same location looking back upstream.

One of the large 'street' drains.

At the A24 we were left with a dilemma. There was no obvious continuation of the footpath by the stream, so we took the right hand option as the stream crossed this street further along. Except, it appeared to be underground at that point. We could see every now and again signs that the stream ran between the back gardens of houses and eventually we found another little park where the path followed the stream for....ooh 150 metres.  Given there was no obvious place to pick up the stream again, only the hints of the map (it ran alongside the grounds of a crematorium, but we didn't know if when we got there it would be blocked. We called it a day and decided to continue walking to the quickest route back home. Past the enticingly named (but not enticingly presented Morden Brook pub. The street names taunted me. Meadow Close, Meadway, etc. But it was just dull suburbia. There was no direct bus route home for quite a long stretch so we opted to walk all the way. Probably another 7 or 8 km at that point. And at least from Raynes Park, much of the route is off road as it follows the railway

5 1/2 hours and 24.4 km after setting off, we arrived home. Tired but maybe not any wiser. I still want to explore some of those other green islands along the route of the Pyl Brook to see what can be walked. And there's still the other branches of the Hogsmill to walk.

Oh, my friend, we're older but no wiser

For in our hearts, the dreams are still the same

So, a bit of Googling later, and I discovered that Nonsuch Park was indeed a Canadian army camp in the run up to D-Day (I speculated that the concrete road was just wide enough  for a Sherman tank). The park had earlier seen some anti-glider measures (the Nazi swine would come disguised as nuns) . https://eehe.org.uk/?p=25296

I also came across this piece of suburban, wartime history. Nothing remarkable, but another of the millions of tesserae that make up the mosaic. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/57/a2763957.shtml

The Ewell area wasn’t bombed very much. Kingston with its Hawker factory, power station and other industry was more of a target. Even New Malden got quite badly hit in one raid, though whether this was because of the railway junction or simply jittery Luftwaffe crew thinking it was ‘close enough’ to Kingston is a matter of speculation. I’ve seen the following excellent, site before. It’s an interactive map which plots all known wartime bombs in the London area - including one next to the house diagonally opposite mine, one a 100 yards down the road (where a pair of newer houses stand), and one in the school playing field behind me. Last time I looked at it, there were a couple of V2 hits in and near Richmond Park - Hitler clearly wanted to strike a blow at the King’s venison supply.

http://bombsight.org/explore/greater-london/sutton/nonsuch/