Red Green Group/Friends of Perivale Park. Green Flag award 2022-2025.
Google maps depends on crowd sourcing for items of interest on its maps (as indeed does the other map I often use, openstreetmap.org). I have been updating the entries for Perivale Park, the results of which you can see below. All you need is to have a Google account to do so, and although the entries are reviewed by Google, all of mine have thus far been accepted and released into the public version of the maps.
Continue reading “Places of interest in Google Maps for the park.”
The river Brent flows along the southern edge of Perivale Park, on its way to joining the river Thames at Brentford. I thought here I would trace its route from (some) of its sources. The main route of the river starts in the London Borough of Barnet at Moat Mount, where it is called Dollis Brook. Much but not all of this route is walkable as the Dollis Valley Greenwalk.
Continue reading “The River Brent and (some of) its tributaries.”
Over the last few years, one corner of the main playing field area of the park had become something of a storage depot. Much of the accumulation was because of the loss of other storage spaces in the borough, and also whilst awaiting for completion of the new park at Glade lane. Gradually since June this year, the Perivale “depot” has been depleted and the contents moved to the new park. Finally the last items have gone and we now await for the grass to grow back to complete the recovery. So thanks Ealing Parks for doing this – it is much appreciated.
Leisure centers apparently have life expectancies of ~40 years and the one named Gurnell, located in what we like to call the greater Perivale park in the late 1970s, had reached the end of its life. The original redevelopment plans, the “Gurnell redevelopment”, were rejected a year or so ago by the council planning committee and after a rethink a new team at Ealing Council has put forward what they call a very different set of proposals. A public meeting was held on 30th November to announce these plans to the public. Here I show a few of the posters and slides on show.
Continue reading “Unveiled: the new plans for Gurnell Leisure centre”
To the west of Perivale park are to be found Northala Fields, the prominent features of which are the four tall mounds with two outstanding viewpoints at their tops. Now to the south west of Perivale an even larger feature is taking shape- Glade lane canalside park.
Continue reading “Glade Lane canalside park – monumental mounds!”
Perivale park is blessed with having lots of green interesting areas surrounding it and one of them is Paradise Fields, just up to the road so to speak. There a project to introduce beavers is taking place (around five), following the earlier such project at Enfield and the birth of the first baby beavers in London in 400 years there.
What, you might ask is the connection between Perivale Park and the Colne Valley viaduct?The viaduct is part of the HS2 rail link from London to Birmingham – and possibly beyond – and will be 3.4 km long, the longest railway viaduct in the UK. East of the viaduct a tunnel is being bored by TBMs Caroline and Sushila from Northolt to Greenford, ending just up the road from the park at Green Park way. Two more TBMs will head towards Greenford from Old Oak common, a new interchange station expected to be one of the busiest in the UK.
As you can see from the map below, Perivale park abuts a golf course. Ealing council are proposing that this course be converted into a new regional park. Quoting Peter Mason, leading of the council “the Elizabeth II Park has transformed the east of London and this new regional park has the potential to have similar positive effect on the borough and West London” This is apparently part of the promise to “residents (of Ealing) 10 new parks and 50,000 more trees”.
A few years ago, a walk in the park would often reveal small discarded nitrous oxide gas canisters; my record find was 52 of them. Then their incidence started to decrease and they became a less common sight. Today however whilst on my early morning litter round, I came across 19 much larger canisters – each weighing 1.1 kg. Since 21 kg of “litter” was rather too much for me to remove, I left them there.
Continue reading “A new (industrial-sized) find in the park.”
As you can see from the map below, a footpath known as the Gurnell to Greenford greenway runs parallel to Ruislip Road, and adjacent to the river Brent. At the spot marked with a red arrow, the footpath is very close to the near-vertical bank of the river, which flows perhaps 3-5m below the level of the path. This bank has become increasingly unstable over the years, possibly because of the occasional flood waters that roar down the Brent when the sluice gates are released from the Welsh Harp reservoir at times of heavy rains.
Continue reading “Repairs/by-passes to the Gurnell to Greenford path.”
Occasionally other green spaces in London make a guest appearance here, and this one is from Chobham Common, in the south west just beyond the M25 ring. The last two nights have seen an abrupt drop in temperatures, down to about -4C, and this rapid freeze and perhaps wind have created some wonderful patterns in the Chobham common ponds. Shown below is a selection for you to enjoy.
Continue reading “Ice art: the frozen ponds of Chobham Common.”
Ealing parks have just installed three new Fingerpost signs in the park and an information sign for Longfield meadows.
As part of the grant we obtained from the Freshwater foundation, we are organising two sessions of free five-a-side football training for 8-10 year olds on Wednesday October 26, 2022 (half-term). The training will be done using the park MUGA (multi-use games area) by Brentford FC community sports trust, who have many years of experience in running such programs.
Continue reading “Free five-a-side football training for 8-10 year olds on 26th October – book now!”
Coston’s brook is a tributary of the river Brent, joining it at the south west corner of the park (red arrow on 19th Century map of the area).
Neil Anderson will be looking for Dragonflies, Damselflies and no doubt interesting invertebrates on July 30 (Saturday), starting under the arches at the Stockdove entrance to the park. Do come along!
Continue reading “A Nature walk with Neil Anderson – 30 July, 2022.”
Jon has sent me this fantastic link for exploring georeferenced maps with historical overlays. Click on the map below or use this link.
Continue reading “Explore historical georeferenced maps of the park area.”
On Jubilee day, June 2, 2022, we capture the park with the new Walnut tree planted by Ealing May Councillor Munir Ahmed in March as a contribution to the Queen’s Green Canopy. It is looking very healthy indeed!
Continue reading “Perivale Park – Contributing to the Queen’s Green Canopy on Platinum Jubilee day.”
The park has two wonderful cricket pitches and for the summer season there are always matches being played on them. So it is no surprise that after the match, some of the teams have a picnic and refreshment. The trouble is that all the detritus that accompanies food and drink is sometimes‡ simply left scattered, as the photos below show for yesterday’s match. For someone else to pick up.
Continue reading “Cricket in the park: deep SHAME on this weekend’s teams.”
Herons come in a wide variety of tameness and approachability. The most approachable we have seen was sat on a canal boat moored on the grand union canal near Stocker’s lake, who hardly stirred as we walked along the tow path and got to perhaps two metres of him. In contrast, the canal near Horsenden hill often has herons who fly away when you are still perhaps 100m away.
We have received two absolutely delightful emails from Caroline, who recollects her childhood spent growing up in Perivale Park. I quote her emails (with her permission) here for everyone to relish. Caroline now lives in Canada, and has not visited the park since the late 1980s.
The locals know the original park pond for its tadpoles. For a few years in the recent past they have been abundant in what was actually quite a small pond. Unfortunately, the tadpoles have become less abundant, and last year (2021) we think there were none that could be seen. In an effort to prevent premature drying out of the relatively small pond, it was enlarged about 18 months ago in an effort to allow water to be retained past the peak tadpole time to allow frogs to emerge and survive. After about a year where the clay stirred up by the enlargement was still in suspension, the ponds are finally starting to look more settled. Now with recent rains, the three separate ponds have joined up to make a single stretch of water.
We are lucky that our bedroom window faces south, which means that in the mornings we can see the sun rise in the east and in the evening we can see it set in the west. Sometimes it can feel like a display of modern art, and a few times I have here shown the morning artwork. Today the atmospherics have led to an interesting alternative evening display.
Sometimes, when going for a walk in green areas in Ealing, one can come across football or cricket pitches that do not seem abundantly used. Not so in Perivale Park, when during the winter months, the football pitches have freshly painted lines, teams young and old and even a good smattering of spectators. Below you can see these in the park today.
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.
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.
We had a wonderful turnout today for the orchard gardening. Here are some of the helpers (not all present at the same time)
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!
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: