London Loop Leg 3 - Petts Wood to Hayes

After completing Leg 1 and 2 of the London Loop for last years walks, Mr. Wilson decided that as we need to complete a walk for Unit 35 we should do leg 3 which had mixed reviews from the class.

So on the morning we all gathered in Arden room AR105 for registration before we set of for Falconwood Station for the 9:16 southeastern service to Petts Wood with a change at Lewisham.

When we got to Petts Wood and had left the station Karl was elected as the first leader for the first few kilometeres. On this expedition we were making sure that everybody has a turn at leading the group.

The route consisted of walking through estates, on busy roads and dirty tracks that led to us holding on to trees to make way for passing horses. Luckily the weather had held out for us which allowed us to bask in the sunshine, which was a nice change from the last walk as all it did was rain and I broke my umbrella.

Here is the group walking on an open field.

Shortly after the group had to make a pit stop at what used to be a huge house before it had burned down, this was so some could use the facilities and some could sit down and rest their already tired legs.

Then as I expected it came to my turn to lead the group...

Here I am look as though I can read a map.

After getting a short breifing by Mr. Wilson it was my turn to lead the group for the next few Kilometeres and on that route we found something intresting (well, Mr. Wilson found it intresting we saw it as another excuse to sit down) but we saw a bench that was dedicated to William Wilberforce, who was a man that helped to abolish slavery in Britain.

Here is the elusive William Wilberforce bench

Then shortly after we saw the bench we reached Keston common and the time had hit 12:30  and as I was the leader I thought this was the perfect place for us to have some lunch. Whilst eating lunch we saw Connor acting weird and pretending to be a super hero and also as a group effort we all decided to see if we could carry Christie, to Mr. Wilson's amuesment.


I still don't know why we did this!

The route was going so well until we found my final checkpoint and I handed the map over to Jamie this is where it all went pear shaped... Jamie who had better map reading than myself decided that Karl would be the best person to get information from WHICH LED TO US GETTING LOST!!!!!

This wasted valuable time for us as we were still on a tight schedule so this is something we really didn't need. As this was the final part of our route we had to rush to Hayes and thanks to some quick thinking we were able to take a short cut which had been located on the map. But this short cut didn't go without hiccups. For example as we were approaching Hayes station a school nearby must've finished early which led to Christie waling past them and screaming which led to them shaking in their boots.

But this wasn't the only time because a few minutes later more people from the same school approached and Christie did the same but these kids had a bit more backbone and gave some expletive words that I can't really write...

Finally, we arrived at Hayes Station to board the 13:50 train which would take us back to Falconwood (with a change at Lewisham) but to pass the time the whole group decided to belt out 'Ain't Nobody' by Chaka Khan to Mr. Wilson dismay and embarrasment.

The we finally arrived at Falconwood and that was the end of the current expedition. It had up's and down's and we made it home unscathed.