National Grade:Moderate Distance: 10.5 mi / 16.9km  Leader: Fiona K. Date: April 29th 2026

21 walkers and Fynn, a regular canine rambler,  set off on a breezy sunny day from the cafe at Rickmansworth Aquadrome, some of us sporting a very good coffee.  It was an excellent 10.5 walk on good paths and only 1 hill of note.  It was a very different landscape from our usual Wednesday walks (apart from being flat) it also included skirting gravel pits dug from river gravels that had formed in the last Ice Age.  Much of the excavated gravel was used in the building of the old Wembley Stadium, the pits then filling with water and then becoming a valuable local amenity and wildlife habitat.

 We continued along the grand union canal and off towards Croxley Green where we had lunch, returning back to the Aquadrome.  The walk took us across three rivers, the Gade, the Chess and the Colne. The Gade and the Chess, are chalk streams that flow into the river Colne. Hertfordshire has 10% of the worlds chalk streams, and the UK has as a whole 80% of the 260 chalk streams, so a very rare habitat, sadly under threat from pollution and extraction.

It was a very uneventful walk apart from an unfortunate incident of a dog in the daytime; a large dog on a canal boat  jumped up and barked ferociously at Fynn causing a kerfuffle that led to one of our walkers taking a tumble.  Fortunately she was fine but perhaps now sporting a bruise. 

Report by:  Anne Whitehead