Friends of Perivale Park
A few days ago, the park rangers responded to feedback that the route of the Capital Ring through the park was confusing some walkers, by putting up a number of new signs directing them in the correct direction (which is apparently a clockwise circuit of the ring).
Continue reading “The Capital Ring in the park: a plea for maintenance!”
Just before lockdown in February, six new exercise areas on the path of the “5km” run around the park were created. But the lockdown delayed the surfacing with a soft compound (which health and safety presumably nowadays demands of such places). They have now been lined and appear to be ready for use. They are aimed very much at runners who want to address the upper parts of their bodies for some exercise. The last photo shows the large area recently lined and with anchoring points for six “full body” machines that will be installed at some point.
Continue reading “Early dawn ponds – and soft exercise areas.”
This entrance is much used by local residents, many of whom are pushing kids buggies and whose progress has been hampered in the past by the puddles, verging on mini-ponds, that invariably form there when it rains. Some large ones have been seen with the recent rainy october.
A combination of constant rain and showers coupled with very mild weather has produced one of the best displays of fungi in the park for a little while. A particularly rich location is next to the large pond in the centre of the park (first photo, now gradually filling up with water) which was surrounded by trees in December 2018 by a Trees For Cities volunteering event. Each of the young trees were mulched with bark chippings, but a large mound was left over at the end and it is there‡ that you are guaranteed to find fungi at this time of year.
Continue reading “For all fungus lovers – an autumn abundance.”
The 29km long river Brent, named after the goddess Briguntia (bringer of poetry, springtime and love) runs through the southern edge of Perivale Park on its way to Hanwell and the river Thames.
The last three days have seen near continuous steady rain. So its time to go out and see how the park (and birds) have responded. The ducks and gulls are out in force enjoying their new ponds. Meanwhile, some of the new paths in the Longfield meadows area have become ponds themselves.
Those of us of a certain age remember distant childhood times when everyone so it seemed had access to a local pond with abundant tadpole populations. Such a rain-replenished pond was dug perhaps 10 years ago in Perivale Park. For a fair few of these subsequent years tadpoles were indeed seen. However the pond was fairly shallow and had often dried out just before the tadpoles were due to leave it as frogs. Now its been enlarged!
One of the activities last Sunday involved a nature walk around the park. Here Neil Anderson has kindly sent us summaries of few highlights regarding sightings: Continue reading “Celebrating Perivale Park: Nature walk report”
This is a much anticipated annual event in the park, the mole invasion. These little critters are highly organised and select only the finest cricket turf to dig their mounds, in this remarkably neat pattern. A day later and the moles vanish; probably hibernating until next summer.
More developments regarding the tennis courts. The power supply cable laid into a trench a week or so ago is today being connected up to the keypad system controlling entry. When commissioned, entry will be according to the instructions below.
Continue reading “Tennis courts in the Park – how to book (shortly).”
Sunrise at this time of year is around 06.15 and it terms of spectacular display it literally only lasts a few minutes. So you have to be in the right place at the right time to capture these effects. This is what I saw today!
If you have wandered along the Capital ring path in the park recently you may have wondered why a nice new cabin has just appeared there.
Continue reading “The Greenwayers have a new base – in the park.”
The park has some very well patronised tennis courts. In March, one of the sturdy doors to the courts was replaced by a new version with a keypad – and then promptly locked so that no-one could use it. Yesterday, two workmen turned up digging a trench to carry an electricity cable from the adjacent cricket pavillion to the entrance to the courts.
Today twelve of those fantastic folks at LAGER Can (Litter Action Group Ealing Residents) came over to Perivale park and hunted for litter. After about 90 minutes, around 20 bags of the stuff had been removed from the park and surroundings and placed in litter bags for collection.
We are currently starting a big butterfly count in the UK. Suitably inspired and anxious to see some birds as well, we ventured off to Horsenden hill, with the added bonus of Horsenden farm opening its new shop selling vegetables, breads, honey and microbrewed beers. The Gruffalo also always provides interest (to those who have not seen him before, he is rather BIG).
News has reached us that Ealing Wildlife Group have reached their funding target to convert some abandoned allotments on the edge of the park into a new Nature Reserve (the allotments were abandoned due to propensity for flooding). Congratulations to them!
Continue reading “A new Nature reserve on the edge of Perivale Park”
Today we undertook a litter-picking exercise walk around the park, taking in the Greenway walk to Gurnell. We armed ourselves at the start with two litter pickers and (optimistically) just ONE collection bag.
Well, Greenford is newly on the map. It now (i.e. 29 May, 2020) has the least used station in London! Well, let’s try to lose that record by saying why you would want to come to South Greenford, the station with this unenviable (and hopefully temporary) record. Continue reading “South Greenford – Least Used Station in London”
With the recent rains and abundant sun, the beneficiaries have been the “weeds” (which if they did not dominate so quickly can be appreciated for themselves). The four raised beds in the orchard garden area of Perivale Park needed some attention! Three of the beds are planted; one with winter garlic, another with flowering and about to seed winter brassicas and the third with a still germinating wildflower mix. But we still need gardeners to come along and plant/deplant/replant something there! Vegetables, herbs, flowers, anything you fancy!
Continue reading “Weeding exercises in the park – and the ponds quickly refilled.”
Greenford Birch Wood is one of the smaller green areas northwest of Perivale Park, running alongside the A40 and where most of the drivers there have no idea it exists.
Continue reading “Greenford Birch Wood – a little known green space.”
Just to the south of Perivale Park is Cuckoo Park, reached by a most magnificent avenue of chestnut trees (Cuckoo Avenue) by branching off south from the Greenford to Gurnell Greenway. The trees were planted as part of the development of the Cuckoo estate in the late 1930s. I was at the end of a Greenwayers’ litter picking last year, enjoying the traditional cup of tea and Richard’s biscuits, when a local resident (who was also a thespian and a Churchill impersonator), told me that the newly planted Cuckoo avenue was formally opened by Charlie Chaplin himself. Anyway, if you do need some exercise, go walk along this magnificant avenue; the chestnuts are now in full bloom. Delay and you will miss the flowering.
Continue reading “Cuckoo Park, Cuckoo Avenue, Chestnuts and Charlie Chaplin.”
More history, this time east of Perivale Park, towards Perivale and then to Pitshanger. The ancient parish church of Perivale is located along Perivale lane. One can almost imagine how it all looked 885 years ago!
Recent warm and sunny conditions have resulted in a profusion of insect life. Probably most noticeable amongst these have been butterflies and various bees. One of the most striking butterflies to be seen at the moment is the fairly large lemon-yellow male Brimstone that will have over-wintered as an adult, perhaps hidden amongst some ivy. There are some who say the name butterfly originated from this species as the butter-coloured fly, though others dispute this attractive notion.
Continue reading “Spring butterflies in Perivale Park”
As I remarked before, Perivale Park is surrounded on all sides by other green spaces. This time our daily and (very) early exercise walk took us west towards Northolt and Belvue Park. This area has a very long history, dating to medieval and Roman times. I will let the highly informative signs that you eventually come across speak for themselves. They are located near the old Northolt Manor, complete with moat and church. You would hardly think you were in London!
Perivale park has neighbouring green areas in all four (arguably even five) compass directions. The one to the north is called Paradise fields, with the Paddington branch of the grand union canal running along the north and east edges and with Horsenden hill visible further east.
When the Coston’s Brook corridor that runs out of a culvert near the children’s playground and joins the river Brent about 200m further on was opened up about 18 months ago by removing much of the impenetrable undergrowth and blackthorn, we always knew the shrubs and trees would come back. Meanwhile we enjoyed all the new shoots coming up along the new path leading to the new bridge and in the morning with hoar frost they looked fantastic. But it was time to move to the next season and so the haircut arrived yesterday.
Continue reading “The Park has had a haircut (and a facelift).”
The Portuguese always had a love affair with “grelos”, these being the flowering shoots of the Brassica family. Two or three weeks ago we harvested a lot of cabbage “grelos” but those are now in full bloom and no longer tender enough to be consumed. Since last week the mustard variety started producing their “grelos” and we have been harvesting them in large quantities. If it does not get too hot we will go on doing so for the next 2 weeks.
This morning we went for a stroll around the park with Neil Anderson to see how many different species of birds we could spot. The final total: 31 and as Neil put it “if we’d looked harder we could have found House Sparrows by some of the gardens + previous visits have seen Jay & Greenfinch”. The kingfishers in particular were a treat! As the river Brent improves we hope to see them far more often.
Google maps has for some time allowed anyone to upload a photo of a feature on the map. Once you have done this, they then kindly send you periodic encouragements to continue the habit by revealing the viewing statistics for your photos and a slider which supposedly rewards your activities with “points”.
Continue reading “Google maps: “Your photo is making a difference””