Category: General

The newly formed Ealing Parks foundation has started a park of the month project.  Over the coming months and years, many of Ealing’s parks and green spaces will no doubt be highlighted.  So it is a great honour for Perivale Park to be chosen to be the inaugural Ealing park to be so featured: www.ealingparks.foundation/park-of-the-month-january. There you can see some recent photos taken in the depths of winter, along with an interesting short history of Perivale (which started life in fact as Little Greenford^‡).

Continue reading “Perivale is Ealing Park of the Month for January.”

Meeting four dog walkers in the park a few weeks ago, I stopped and asked them what amenities in the park they would like to see. One of the responses was dog water fountains for thirsty dogs. Providing this could be non trivial, since laying down a water pipe from the mains could be costly. Fortunately, a watering hole is already available for dogs, but the location might not be widely known. So here is a picture, along with its location in the park.

Continue reading “Dog water fountains in Perivale Park!”

Occasionally, one of the other green areas in west London makes an appearance here. Unlike Perivale Park, this one has lots of grazing animals to be seen. It is one of the delights of the UK that animals and ramblers can  be allowed to mix together in  some locations without being separated by fences. Common sense mostly prevails and the two can get on together famously. So here are some photos taken during a 3km walk around Staines Moor.

Continue reading “Animals galore! A guest appearance by Staines Moor.”

The autumn colours this year are delayed by perhaps a month due to the combination of temperatures and rain. The effect of course also depends on the time of day and whether a late sun is shining from a low angle making the leaves on the trees translucent.

Continue reading “Late autumn colours in the park”

The photo below shows the state of the kids playground in the park this morning. The litter had appeared by yesterday morning (Friday), with the playground having been cleared of all rubbish not much more than a day earlier. So this is a single day’s littering and the photo shows the area of only one of the bins there, with much more deposited around the rest of the playground. It does not look like fox-spill, since nothing has been chewed and the pizza and luxury chocolate boxes had not been folded to insert into the bin. This is human activity!

Continue reading “Perivale Park kids playground. The litterers have surpassed themselves in their disgrace.”

A freely accessible Wiki guide to the London National Park City is now available. The idea is for those of us with local knowledge of interesting areas and activities in London can add to the collective nuggets of information about London city. Some of the topics are shown below:

Continue reading “London National Park city Wiki.”

Perivale park is blessed with no less than three local nature reserves within walking distance. Of these, Perivale wood is the oldest and largest and is famed for its display of English bluebells. Normally only open one day a year to protect the plants, this year the Selborne Society, who look after the wood, have opened it on four “socially distanced” days in April.

Continue reading “Perivale Wood: Bluebells and Celandine in April.”

Litter picking is an increasing activity. When we are out on a pick, more and more frequently we get asked questions by passers-by such as “where do I get those collection bags from?” or “how do I get a litter picking stick?”. Also, we sometimes go out on a pick only to find an almost pristine park; other litter pickers have clearly got there before us! Sadly, that is mostly not the case though. So what are my favourite bugbears? Continue reading “A Deep Clean of the park!”

Continue reading “Swans And Canadian Geese on Perivale Wetlands today.”

A few weeks ago,  I noted that the  Capital Ring path often includes a water feature, and made a plea for maintenance of the drain from which the water was pouring. Well, Thames Water have responded! Thanks to them!!

Continue reading “The waters have gone on the flooded footpath!”

Five years ago, Perivale park and the adjacent Longfield meadows had only one pond, known to locals as the frog pond – and even that was only about 15 years old. Now – there are lots! Most are currently frozen and its going to get colder and they are going to freeze more! Here are some of them.

Continue reading “Frozen ponds galore – and sixty-trees meadows!”

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.

Continue reading “The Cowgate road entrance to the Park.”

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.

Continue reading “The Brent Rivers.”

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!

Continue reading “Amphibians galore – next year?”

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.

Continue reading “Invasion of the supermoles.”

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!

Continue reading “Sunrise in the park – September style.”

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.

Continue reading “The tennis courts are – electrified!”

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.

Continue reading “Thanks, LAGER Can!”

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).

Continue reading “Butterflies and Birds.”

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”