Denham two

A serious looking crate which we came across during our travels through the assessment centre at Harefield Hospital. One can only suppose that the contents were something a bit more expensive than baked beans, even branded baked beans from Heinz.

A serious looking lock on a cupboard at the Denham Grove hotel. I had never seen a black bolt like this before and must find out whether Screwfix have one. Google Images this afternoon gets me part of the way there, turning up a range of such things, including at the top, one via Amazon from the people at reference 1. Called a combination locking bolt, not identical to mine, but very close. £14.95. And I think now I can see that they are fairly simple inside, just four fancy washers rotating around a lugged bolt shaft. The sort of thing a DIY metalworker might be able to knock up in his garage?

The only downside to that design being that the keycode would be cut into the washers. No possibility of setting your own.

On this second occasion, rain did not stop play and we were able to inspect the grounds, which appeared to amount to the remnants of a formal garden and a timber fringed field running away to the south, presumably the shaded area at reference 2. We opted for an anti-clockwise circuit starting from the car park. Rollator possible terrain.

Looking back towards the tennis courts.

Sadly, not free from the attentions of fly tippers. Which we seem to be coming across quite a bit: not just Epsom at all. From where I associate to the ugly lynchings by cattle barons on the Great Plains, exasperated by waves of rustling and homesteading in the 1880s, reported at reference 4 - and of which more in due course.

Down the bottom, we found some young aspens - at least I took them to be aspens - shimmering delicately in the light breeze. Perhaps a telephone adept would have managed a video. The second one that Bing turned up at reference 5 does gives the idea, but perhaps you really need a professional. Preferably a professional who does not go in for noisy soundtracks.

The view east through a gap in the trees - I dare say not something contrived by whoever laid out the original gardens - across the Colne Valley, vaguely towards Harefield.

A marker pole for a gas pipeline. I think we saw a few more of them later on in our visit. Perhaps it is what you do out in the country, rather than the more discrete markers you get on the pavements of Epsom.

A summer house, which can be made the centrepiece of your summer wedding. Pictures of same available near reception.

What they call the grove, plus pod-life left. Expensive looking pod-life which may have started up during the plague but now offers intimate outdoor dinners during the summer. I believe that smoking is allowed outside the pods.

In to dine. More Corona and more Indian grub, with another colourful and tasty starter. One needed to be careful both with the green sauce and the salad - which last must have contained hidden treasure.

For main, I went for rogan josh, with naan off camera on the side. A dish which I have occasionally made myself in the distant past, sourcing the necessary goat from one of the Halal butchers in Balham. Very good it was too, although I say it myself, as was the version here, probably sheep rather than goat. But a word of warning: beef does not work at all well. Both taste and texture are all wrong.

Up first thing to take a bit of exercise to find that even in millionaire's row you get parking in the road. Sort of thing you expect in Upper Court Road but not Tilehouse Lane.

Strolled along to the HS2 barrier to notice this rather stroppy notice fixed to the fence. Stroppy enough to suggest that there had been some serious protesting at some point. Chaining oneself to large digger sort of thing. All I would say is that, as far as this particular stretch is concerned, while it is a prodigious blot on the landscape, it is not running next to a housing estate. Or through a housing estate. And once it is finished, it will be out of nearly everyone's way. And I dare say that it will make a lot less noise than the nearby M25.

I took a left at the barrier and took a short turn along the South Bucks Way, with this particular bit once being Old Shire Lane, probably because it ran along the county line of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, a finger of which last runs past the west of what is now London. Some relic of the past, like the Chessington peninsular poking into Surrey. For the way, see reference 6. For the lane see the map at reference 2.

Rollator accessible, but perhaps at the limit of what was sensible. Snapped here on exit from Old Shire Lane.

Returned for breakfast - mostly sausage sandwiches - and the return to real life at Epsom. Somewhere on the return to Epsom we came across yet another vehicle from Sunbelt rentals, last noticed at reference 7.

Helpful store finder at their US website at reference 8.

PS: a preview. We got a proper look at HS2 this afternoon, even straying through the open gate to one of the sites on the A412, which runs down to Denham from Rickmansworth. It took a security guard about thirty seconds to wander over from second gate and inform me firmly and seriously that I could not take pictures and I had to get off the site. No sense of humour at all. I thought he might have been a Nepali, so perhaps a veteran of the Gurkhas. All things considered, I think that HS2 must have been the subject of some very serious demonstrations. Perhaps even civil disobedience. I associate to the security guards of reference 3.

References

Reference 1: https://www.kaspsecurity.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/wellingtonia-114.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-bent-crane.html.

Reference 4: Cattle Kingdom: The hidden history of the cowboy west - Christopher Knowlton - 2018.

Reference 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAtimIrWO6c.

Reference 6: https://www.walkingenglishman.com/ldp/southbucksway.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/champers.html.

Reference 8: https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/.