7 walkers, 6.9 miles - leader Gavin Fuller

Six walkers joined the leader on a sunny evening at East Croydon, although mercifully cooler than the previous two evenings, for a traipse through some of the borough’s open spaces, in varying stages of maintenance. After a climb to the water tower in Park Hill, it was through suburban streets to Lloyd Park, which is currently in a wilder state than the leader has ever known it in a decade in South Croydon, although the paths through it were somewhat better defined than he’d found them earlier in the month. Then it was on to the woods around Addington Hills and a circuit through Coombe Wood which exited through a hidden route which the leader accidentally met for the first time to the Vanguard Way. After a short stretch along that it was a circuit through Croham Hurst to the viewpoint on Breakneck Hill, and then over, under and over again the disused Woodside & South Croydon Railway, passing through Birdhurst Community Garden, and finally a climb up Water Tower Hill back to Park Hill and East Croydon station.

Photographs by Gavin Fuller