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The Late Edition

London's evening edition. Independent, updated daily.

AnswerChecked 8 Sep 2026

Where can you go for a long walk in London?

The Capital Ring is about 78 miles in 15 signed sections through inner London, and the London Loop is about 150 miles in 24 sections round the outside. Every section starts and ends at a station, so one is an afternoon and a train home rather than an expedition. The canal towpaths are the flat option.

The two rings

The Capital Ring loops through inner suburban London, Woolwich, Crystal Palace, Richmond, Wembley, Highgate and Hackney, in 15 signed sections of about a half day each. The London Loop is the outer one, out where London stops being London: Farthing Downs, the Darent valley, Epping Forest, Havering. It is properly rural in places, which surprises people who assume the M25 is all retail parks.

Why the sections matter

Each one begins and ends at a station. That is the whole point of them: you do a piece, you get the train home, and nobody sensible does either ring in one go.

The flat ones

The canal towpaths. The Regent’s Canal runs from Little Venice through Camden, and the towpaths and the old railway lines are the routes that work after work, because they are level, they are lit in places and they do not involve a map.

What is on

7 listings

  1. Sport Free

    Dogs on Hampstead Heath

    07:00 Hampstead Heath, Hampstead

    Eight hundred acres, off lead almost everywhere, and the one swimming pond dogs are allowed in is not one of the bathing ponds. Busiest at the Parliament Hill end on a weekend morning.

  2. Sport Free

    Dogs in Richmond Park

    07:30 Richmond Park, Richmond

    The largest of the royal parks and the one with the deer, which is why dogs must be on a lead in May and June and in September and October. The gates open and close with the light.

  3. Sport Free

    Dogs in Battersea Park

    08:00 Battersea Park, Battersea

    Flat, walled, and small enough to do a full circuit in half an hour, with the river along one side and a cafe at each end. The one park on this list you can reach on foot from a station.

  4. Free

    The Kyoto Garden, Holland Park

    08:00 Holland Park, Kensington

    A Japanese garden given to the borough in 1991, with koi, a waterfall and peacocks that have no fear of anyone. Free, and quietest before the school run ends.

  5. Sport Free

    Towpath walk: Paddington Basin to Little Venice

    09:00 Paddington Basin, Paddington

    Twenty minutes of canal that most people who work here never walk. Comes out at the pool where three waterways meet, with the narrowboats and the puppet theatre barge.

  6. Free

    Evening walk: Kensington Gardens to the Round Pond

    18:30 Kensington Gardens, Kensington

    The pond sits on the axis of the palace, so the view back at it in low light is the one the garden was laid out to give you. Twenty minutes from the High Street.

  7. Free

    A walk through Hampstead village

    11:00 Hampstead village, Hampstead

    Lanes that were a hill village before London reached them, and still read like one above the high street. Flask Walk and Holly Mount are the two to take if you only take two.

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