Most mornings, if I’m not too hung-over, I go for a run around Ruislip Lido — a mile there, through Ruislip Woods, about two miles round the lido and a mile back again. It generally takes me about half an hour. On my way, I see woodpeckers, egrets, sparrowhawks, and the occasional Muntjac deer. It’s hard to believe you’re in London, at the arse end of the Metropolitan line, surrounded by bland suburbia — John Betjeman’s Metroland.
Ruislip Woods is the largest slice of natural woodland in Greater London: 726 acres of oak, beech and hornbeam, and the lido is its pearl. People have gathered timber from this scruffy forest since god knows when. The medieval barn at Ruislip Manor is built from oaks that were saplings here 1,000 years ago, when these wild woods stretched right across Middlesex, Bucks and Herts.
Naturally, Ruislip Lido isn’t quite so ancient.
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