Do You Want to Walk Hither Green?

I've accomplished a lot of things this year, from recording one of my original jazz compositions to finishing a year of weekly self portraits to maintaining my habit of almost daily entries on my main blog.

However, I've failed in my ambition to do a lot of extra walking round Hither Green beyond what was previously my habit. Now, as we come towards the end of the year, I'm relocating up to Oxford to start a new job there and therefore, I think I won't get any further on this blog.

What I think I should have done is started by mapping out what I counted as Hither Green and marking out some routes that would see me covering most of it. I made a few desultory efforts but never found enough time to do it properly.

What I'm wondering now (apart from whether anyone wants to buy a spacious one-bedroom flat with beautiful garden in the area!) is if anyone else would like to take this project on? You can have the existing blog if you want and I'm guaranteed as a subscriber. I can live with my failure in this area but would love to see what someone else might be able to do with it.

Let me know via the comments if you are interested.

Walking Down to the Pub...

I haven't been doing much local walking recently, or at least not with blogging rather than simply getting to nearby destinations in mind.

However, tonight I will be walking down to The Station (the pub, not the place where you go for trains) to meet up with some of the other people who live in the area. The main agenda is just to meet up socially - community builds when you know people and you get to know people by spending time with them.

It was being organised on the local discussion forum but that seems to be having some problems today so I'm posting here, which may catch one or two people's attention. If so... see you in The Station from about 7:30pm.

Mountsfield Park

Mountsfield Park is a large area, adding "green lungs" to Hither Green. In recent years a lot of work has been done to ensure that the park is a living, thriving part of the local community, supported by the Friends of Mountsfield Park (who have an informative website with more background information).

I was at their meeting last night. It sounds like there is definite progress on the plan of getting a café and toilets in the park, with a good chance of it all being ready by the end of June (ready for the under-5's fun day on 26 June). There is also work being done on getting a farmers market running there.

I hope this all works as planned - drawing more people in and, as the park becomes a stronger hub of the community, becoming safer, less prone to antisocial elements and thus yet more popular as a destination. At the moment I would say that, on the whole, things are looking good for the park, which is an increasingly pleasant place to take a stroll.

Further Green

How big is Hither Green? I have still not decided on my own answer. However, although many people consider Brownhill Road to be a southern boundary I think my footleather will need to tread beyond that; otherwise, I will be missing such beacons as Hither Green Methodist Church and Hither Green Cemetery.

Last night I visited friends who live in one of the roads between Verdant Lane and took some pictures on my walk down - click on the image (looking at the crossroads where Brownhill Road, Verdant Lane, St Mildred's Road and Hither Green Lane meet from part way down Verdant Lane) to see the set.

One of the roads down there is Further Green Road. That suits my perspective - I live in Hither Green but I hope to find time to trek thither to Further Green from time to time.

Walking New Cross

Another walking blog to watch - and this one is local: Walking New Cross.

Let It Snow!

It has been a while since I last posted. I planned that I would pick things up when it got lighter in the evenings.

That happened last week but something else has come up to kick start this blog - snow!

This morning, I woke up to find that Hither Green was blanketed in snow. I took a few pictures in my back garden and then, after church, took a stroll round Mountsfield Park, where people were out enjoying the novelty and making snowmen.

Pictures are available on my Flickr account although, now I have started again, I hope the weather clears up a bit so I can make more progress with the walking side of plans.

New Cross

Just a quick post to show you that I'm still alive and to remind myself to add Transportine's Walking New Cross series to my list of walking links.