Capital Ring - a walk around inner London

The Capital Ring is a walking route around inner and suburban London, and was completed in September 2005. It complements the London Loop: if the LOOP is the "M25 for walkers", then the Capital Ring is the North Circular and South Circular.

Like almost all long-distance footpaths, authorities cannot agree on its length. Walk London are particularly indecisive (one might almost say carelessly imprecise): in their text summary they give the length as 125 km (78 miles), but their section distances sum to 133 km and immediately afterwards they say the average length of the 15 sections is 7.8 km, which produces a total of 117 km. The total is only 115 km (72 miles) according to the Ramblers Association; the Transport for London website gives it as 117 km (73 miles). My own estimate from plotting the route on digital maps is 121 km.

While finding green spaces in the more central areas of London is more difficult than in the outer fringes, and thus the Capital Ring is much more urban than the LOOP, it still manages to find quite a bit of green, and many other interesting places to pass along the way.

My walks around the Capital Ring

Date	From / to	Distance	Time	Ascent
1 December 2007	North Woolwich to Grove Park	15.6 km	3 hours 23 mins	256 metres
16 December 2007	Grove Park to Streatham Common	18.7 km	3 hours 47 mins	298 metres
6 April 2008	Streatham Common to Wimbledon Park	9.5 km	1 hour 57 mins	56 metres
19 May 2007	Richmond to Brentford	5.2 km	1 hour 30 mins	almost nil
7 April 2007	Brentford to Hanwell Locks	3.8 km	1 hour 5 mins	almost nil
23 February 2008	Hanwell Locks to Greenford	6.3 km	1 hour 18 mins	45 metres
6 January 2008	Greenford to South Kenton	8.6 km	1 hour 55 mins	176 metres
2 February 2008	South Kenton to Finsbury Park	21.0 km	4 hours 59 mins	338 metres
19 January 2008	Finsbury Park to River Lee	7.0 km	1 hour 33 mins	81 metres
11 May 2007	River Lee to Hackney Wick	4.4 km	0 hours 50 mins	almost nil
9 April 2007	Hackney Wick to Old Ford	0.6 km	0 hours 15 mins	almost nil
15 April 2007	Old Ford to North Woolwich	11.7 km	3 hours 10 mins	almost nil

Total walked so far: Total walked so far: 110 km, or about 91%

Capital Ring links

Walk London's page on the Capital Ring, with excellent leaflets with maps and directions. (The maps do occasionally have distortions of scale in an attempt to make things clearer, and the compass rose, ostensibly pointing north, is not always accurate, but generally they are very good.)
Transport for London's pages on the Capital Ring
The Capital Ring by Colin Saunders is a guidebook to the route - the second edition was published in June 2006. The directions are very clear and the supplementary information is interesting. But arguably now you can download free maps and directions from Walk London, the justification for buying the guidebook is much reduced. Generally I'm a strong advocate of OS maps, but the Capital Ring twists and turns a lot in places, and the OS maps don't always make it as clear as they might; the 1:25 000 maps do rather hide some minor roads as white roads on white with dotted edges - fine on a moorland where there is nothing else around, but not ideal in a town.
A walk around the Capital Ring by Tim Bertuchi