The 9th B&D Scouts had a solid week of walking further sections of the London Loop. Each day we met at Dagenham Heathway Tube Station and waited until 9:30 a.m. (whereupon you can buy a cheaper group ticket).

We set off on the first day to tackle the legs where we last left them, at Bexley. We had a pleasant day walking from Bexley to Petts Wood. This was quite a nice walk through various country parks and we even had a guided tour by a local man who was very knowledgeable on the local area! We got to Petts Wood station and there was some confusion as apparently the train at platform 1 and 3 was going to London, a bit difficult as they were completely different platforms. I chose the wrong one and we just missed our train and had to wait a while. Akela and I can highly recommend the bakery at Petts Wood though.

Tuesday saw us return to Petts Wood station to pick up the country walk from where we left off. This was a longer route and it was pretty much up and down for a fair bit. We saw the rather nice village of Farnborough, the lovely ponds at Keston and some of the nice areas in West Wickham. Time was a ticking for this route though and we didnt want to miss our train so we pushed hard on the last few miles, even though it wasnt that easy going. What was a little frustrating was the that route finished half a mile (and with hills in between) from the train station at Hayes! However we just made our train. This route was nice and tiring.

We all had a discussion on Wednesday morning and voted to do the longer route number 9 rather than the shorter ones we had on our list. This went from Kingston to Hatton Cross (or Heathrow if you prefer). It started in the middle of Kingston and we had to drag Akela away from the shops to cross the nice bridge. We walked through the lovely Bushy Park and saw many sights, including some deer up close. The gardens in the park are very tranquil too and we stopped for lunch just a little way along from a group of deer, also resting by a pond. We later picked up the River Crane Walk, past a shot tower (where they used to make gunpowder) and then across Hounslow Heath. We had a good compass all the way along the route, low flying airplanes from Heathrow. They are very difficult to capture well on a digital camera though and I have lots of photos of empty sky! After a bit of a tiring day the Scouts started to flag a bit and we slowed down on the final section, arriving at Hatton Cross 20 minutes over the estimated time (the first time on the entire Loop we were 'late'). The journey home was a long one too as we were just about as far as public transport could take us in London.