Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that each new season seems to especially favour some species of flower? This year, it seems to be magnolias, cherries and daffodils that are particularly splendid. Perivale park does not have any magnolias or cherries, but it certainly has a nice display of daffodils in the orchard area – thanks to volunteers who planted them last year.
A different view of the Park Pear Trees
Last autumn, the avenue of pear trees produced a wonderful orange-hued vista. Now a few months later, it is the turn of the blossom.
Wood sculptures found in a nearby nature reserve.
Whilst out exploring a nearby nature reserve, we came across these wonderful sculptures.
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The Ealing Beaver sanctuary revisited.
Time we thought to revisit the Beaver sanctuary, in Paradise fields. It has been raining a lot and so Coston’s Brook, which feeds the pond where the beavers are established should be and indeed was flowing well. The beavers themselves, which are largely nocturnal, are not expected to be out and about. So that they can be observed, there are a number of remote cameras, which capture their activities. There is a dam across the brook, but whether a “helping hand” from humans has contributed, or whether it is fully the work of the beavers themselves I am not certain.
Perivale Park Kestrel
You can often spot kestrels in the park, but less often taking a rest in a tree.
Friends of Perivale Park: Annual General Meeting, Monday 18th March, 2024 at 19.30.
Please Note. Due to a clash with an Ealing Council meeting on 5th March, the AGM has been rescheduled for Monday 19th March.
Fruit trees in West London – Lady Gilbert’s orchard.
Since 2019, Perivale park has had its own orchard, now with 35 fruit trees. I thought I might show some photos here of another, much older (1890) orchard which is about 13 km to the north of the park and is known as Gilbert’s orchard, after the wife of W. S. Gilbert of opera fame.
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News for February, 2024 – every little helps!
A stroll around the park has revealed interesting new features for this year.
- A new rubbish bin in the Longfield meadows, next to the bench where you can admire the lakes. Every little helps – but hey Ealing parks, don’t stop there. Put a few more in!
- Two large swathes in the north Londfield meadow appear to have been seeded. I will try to find out what the mix is (two years ago they put yellow rattle in, but it did not germinate).
- The bulbs in the raised beds in the orchard are showing. It’s quite a selection we put in last year, so do pop by when the flowers start in a few weeks time.
- I could not resist showing the mahonia next to the storage container in the orchard. It’s been there for years, having been planted when the area was a bowling green. It is starting to look very nice this year.
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Perivale Park Green flag: 2023-2024.
In 2022 the park got its first Green Flag award. We are proud that this award has been renewed for 2023 – 2024!
Costons Brook – as you may never have seen it before.
The water course that flows through the park, Costons Brook, is a tributary of the river Brent. Its source is difficult to identify since the development of Greenford these last 100 years or so have resulted in most of it running in underground culverts. The map I talked about here can help identify its original course, which appears to show one arm of the brook running close to Paradise fields, just west of Horsenden Hill.
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Places of interest in Google Maps for the park.
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.
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The River Brent and (some of) its tributaries.
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.
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A corner of the park is now restored!
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.
Unveiled: the new plans for Gurnell Leisure centre
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.
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Late autumn colour in 2023 – the avenue of Pear trees.
The relatively wet and warm autumn here has delayed the onset of full tree colour. One of the best displays in the park comes from the row of trees planted along the path parallel to the athletics track. The colour lasts a long time before the leaves drop.
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Autumn 2023 fungi, splashes of colour and gardening chores
Hunting for fungi is always great fun in the park – not for eating of course. Here are just a few we found over the last few days.
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Glade Lane canalside park – monumental mounds!
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.
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Overgrown path now clear – thanks to local volunteers.
A well-used path connecting the bridge across Coston’s brook and the Betham road entrance across the meadow there used to be a main access point to the “tadpole” pond in the park. Thanks Ros for photo!
Continue reading “Overgrown path now clear – thanks to local volunteers.”
The meadow in autumn 2023.
Thanks to the relatively late seeding, the larger flower meadow in the park (in between the orchard area and the MUGA court) has some late autumn colour. Thanks to Michael for some photos.
The beavers are coming – real soon now!
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.
The Colne Valley Viaduct taking shape
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.
Vandalism – pure and simple – but not as we know it.
The MUGA (multi-use-games-area) is a games area – where people might run (or at least trot). When playing games (or even trotting), you need a level surface where you are not likely to slip. So the photos below show the park MUGA as I found it today.
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Creation of a regional park – Some detail. And reference to a lido proposal?
This proposal certainly has caused much discussion and excitement. I managed to find some more detail, whilst we wait for more of the facts surrounding this proposal to emerge. This is the link and I only pull out a few snippets from that. Perhaps someone well versed in this sort of speak can identify other important aspects? Continue reading “Creation of a regional park – Some detail. And reference to a lido proposal?”
Council Proposing to Close Perivale Park Golf Course – and create a new regional park.
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”.
Treading the grapes in Greenford.
Horsenden Grape and Honey farm first planted their vines on a south facing sunny slope in Greenford about six years ago. This year the harvest of Solaris grapes was expected to be large enough to hold their first ever grape treading ceremony. As a “townie”, it’s not the sort of thing I would have done in my youth and I suspect a fair few readers here have never trodden grapes either!
A wonderful blush of blue in the park – and its only going to get better.
As I noted before on July 9th, a seed mix containing Flax was planted in the meadow along the Capital ring path. Now, a mere two months later, its produced a fantastic display – and I think the best is yet to come. Do go visit this part of the park and have a look for yourself (its alongside the Capital Ring path).
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A new (industrial-sized) find in the park.
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.
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Repairs/by-passes to the Gurnell to Greenford path.
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.
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Stipa Gigantea
I mentioned in the last post the giant grasses in the orchard area. Here are some photos, that do not entirely show how very tall they are!
Yellow slime mold.
Occasionally, I spot something in the park that I have never seen below. The photos below were snapped in the orchard area, next to the wood chipping mulch pile. iNaturalist tells me it is from the Genus Fuligo, and is probably the delightfully named “Dog Vomit Slime Mold”. With the frequent recent showers, I expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the next month or so.