A CITY & VILLAGE TOURS NEARLY NEW DAYTRIP

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ADVENTURES IN

METRO-LAND

Almost as soon as the Romans built their wall London began to creep out towards the surrounding villages. Our story of urban sprawl begins in the idyllic village threatened by Heathrow’s third runway before venturing out into the Green Belt and John Betjeman’s Metro-Land to the handsome Chiltern town of Old Amersham where the museum opens just for us. Includes morning refreshments and a tasty buffet lunch.

We begin at 10.30am with morning refreshments included at the wonderful Five Bells pub in a village whose neighbour was demolished to build the airport which pinched its name - Heathrow. Harmondsworth borders the airport but it’s not on the flight path so there are no low flying noisy planes. Instead we find a picture postcard English village with an old pub on the village green next to the 12th century church. - so unexpected it is as though its been moved here brick by brick as a theme park of Englishness for visitors who don’t have time to stray too far from the airport!

Here we find Harmondsworth Old Barn - the largest timber framed building in England that John Betjeman called the Cathedral of Middlesex. Rarely open to the public we have exclusive access.

After a buffet lunch back at The Five Bells we head out into the Green Belt past Pinewood Studios where, legend says, the green parakeets came from. One hundred years ago the Metropolitan Railway decided to build houses and create new commuters. The advertising men coined the phrase Metro-Land publishing guide books promoting the good air of the flinty Chilterns and, with breath-taking hypocrisy, the men concreting over the countryside promised fields which still laugh of golden corn. The hyperbole worked and Londoners flocked to the new suburban estates stretching from Neasden to Amersham.

We finish at the end of the Metropolitan Line where Old Amersham survives as an affluent and handsome Chilterns market town. The Amersham Museum is opening out of hours just for us to show original Metro-land booklets, prints of posters and related items telling the story of Metro-land. Tea & biscuits is included in the tour fee before heading for home at 4.30pm.