Last Sunday saw the first in a new series of social walk and talk events organised by the campaign Better Streets for Enfield. Mark Hawkins-Dady, one of the organisers and walk leaders, tells us how the day went.
Walking and talking in the wooded part of Grovelands Park (photo: Jessica Rimmington)
On Sunday 13 October the campaign group Better Streets for Enfield (BSfE) hosted its first community ‘walk and talk’ – a social stroll, for anyone who fancied coming along. And so, from our meeting point outside Southgate Station, we set off on our 3.5-mile journey through two of Enfield’s parks and a little slice of Enfield suburbia.
The idea had been under discussion for some time. As a voluntary group lobbying for the benefits of ‘active travel’ (walking, wheeling, cycling), BSfE had, for several years, been collaborating with the Enfield Cycling Campaign (ECC) on its programme of community bike rides. Therefore, we had a basic model of how to set up and promote a free-to-join community event. But still, we had no idea whether anyone would be attracted by the idea of, simply, walking and chatting – especially given the unpredictability of the British weather in October.
Having worked out a route, we fixed our meeting point, before finding out it went by the inauspicious ‘What Three Words’ reference ‘birds.bring.woes’!
Admiring the view in Grovelands Park (photo: Jessica Rimmington)
As it turned out, the woes did not materialise. The temperature promised by the weather app sank to 11 degrees, but importantly showed no rain, and on the morning the core team of BSfE walk leaders was soon swelled by the participants who had booked online. After a short health and safety briefing, we set off. The first challenge was crossing the distinctive but difficult kidney-shaped roundabout next to Southgate Station, while trying to stay as a group. Multiple lanes of traffic swirl around this landmark, and drivers’ sightlines for spotting pedestrians who step into the zebra crossings can get obscured. As a pedestrian, one certainly feels like – in the technical parlance – ‘a vulnerable road user’. Soon, however, we reached the haven of Grovelands Park, where we paused and the walk leaders handed out feedback forms: if we were to offer further BSfE-hosted walks, feedback would be invaluable.
For those who don’t know Grovelands Park – once a great wooded estate of Elizabeth’s I’s pre-eminent statesman, William Cecil (Lord Burghley) – it is blessed with a rich variety of landscape: grassy slopes; a sizeable lake, home to ducks and various semi-permanent and migratory visitors; woodland, with towering trees; and even a boardwalk in the wet valley, next to the stream that was released from its piped confines a mere ten years ago. The estate’s 18th-century villa, designed by John Nash, is no longer part of the park, having been transformed into the well-known Priory Hospital for ‘addiction rehab and mental health treatment’.
The boardwalk in Grovelands Park (photo: Jessica Rimmington)
The Poplar Avenue in Oakwood Park (photo: Jessica Rimmington)
As we walked, the conversations ranged far and wide. It was clear that some of the attendees had lived in Enfield all their lives and knew these locales intimately. Others were more recent residents, contributing to London’s rich mix of backgrounds and experience, and had never visited Grovelands before. Two participants told me about their childhoods at local schools, with memories of cross-country runs (all weathers) through the park. One told me the fascinating story of his socialist walking group, which had originated as a climbing group but had settled into less vertical endeavours as the members had got older.
As we completed our half-circuit of Grovelands Park, the sun came out. It had turned out to be perfect walking weather – and I, for one, was keen to shed a layer of clothing, having prepared for the worst.
In order to reach our second park, Oakwood, we meandered through the faintly jungle-like territory north of Winchmore Hill Road, where the pavement takes you down green corridors between often lushly planted verges and front gardens. One of our group told us that the council was, technically, responsible for maintaining the verges – but judging by the sheer variety of planting and some carefully tended patches, there was evidence of loving guerrilla gardening by residents over the years.
A mural inside the recently revamped Oakwood Park Café (photo: Basil Clarke)
Shortly, we reached Oakwood Park, following the path around its perimeter, observing new wetlands en route, and enjoying its majestic avenue of poplars, before arriving at the Oakwood Café for our lunch. Since 2023, the revamped café has been run by Özgür Korkmaz and Menekse Ayrilmaz. They are leading lights in Enfield’s Londra Bisiklet Kulübü, the non-profit Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot cycling club, and the café has become a venue for more than eating, drinking (and the all-important loo stop). It’s now a hub for bike hire, for borrowing tennis rackets, for fitness classes and more.
In front of the café is a lovely large grassy area, and one could imagine the potential for future events – a small music stage set up, perhaps? An Oakwood Park Festival? For our first BSfE walk,Özgür and Menekse had set aside a private area for us, before supplying us with sandwiches, dips, salad, tea and coffee, happily devoured by our band of walkers. It was a good moment to catch a few group photos too.
The walkers gather in front of the Oakwood Park Café, flanked by their hosts, Özgür Korkmaz and Menekse Ayrilmaz (photo: Jessica Rimmington)
As we had now done three-quarters of our walk, some of the group peeled off after lunch to make their own ways to other destinations, while the rest of us crossed the park and took the (mostly gradual) uphill route back to Southgate tube, passing the Southgate Leisure Centre and Marks & Spencer’s.
Was it a success? It’s for others to judge, but I believe so. I did not know any of the walking group beyond my BSfE friends, but by the end of it there was a palpable sense of a shared experience and shared enjoyment. The mere fact of walking together, through interesting landscapes, seem to engender fellow feeling and encourage sociability. The ingredients are so simple: walking, talking, and some refreshments. But the whole is bigger than the parts. No wonder that just two days previously, on what was World Mental Health Day, the charity Living Streets was reminding us all how powerful the effects of walking can be for our wellbeing.
And now, we look forward to some feedback, to help shape walks that BSfE might offer in the future, in different parts of the geographically and culturally diverse borough that is Enfield.
