Landing in London: My first night in a rustic village only 27 km from Westminster

AFTER TWO YEARS cooped up in New Zealand, I finally summoned the courage to travel overseas once more! I was travelling to Dundee, Scotland, to see relatives of my Scottish father, through whom I have a British passport.

Leaving New Zealand was pretty awful. I arrived at 4:30 pm for check-in, but we didn't get through till ten past six, because there's not enough ground staff. Boarding was at ten to seven. So that left forty minutes to get through security. And the paperwork included the international vaccine pass and a positive RAT test, so more paperwork than normal.

And I had a stopover in San Francisco of five hours, and transiting through San Francisco you went through the same paperwork. And so, eventually, I made it to London Heathrow and spent the night in a very nice Airbnb above an Italian restaurant in Colnbrook, a village very close to Heathrow Airport.

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Here's a map which shows the location of Colnbrook in relation to downtown London and neighbouring towns like Slough and Windsor. Colnbrook is indicated by an orange pin, as it is really only a village and doesn't show up at that scale.

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Colnbrook is 27 kilometres or 17 miles from the very centre of London, about the same distance as from downtown Auckland to Pakakura. Ironically, it feels much more rural even though the throbbing mega-metropolis of London is right on its doorstep, and the noisy jets of Heathrow scream overhead, as you can hear in my walkaround video, which follows.

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As you can see, Colnbrook got its town charter from Henry VIII, though the area has been populated for a long time before that. Many historical events have happened in Colnbrook, such as the meeting of the conspirators against Richard II which features in a play by Shakespeare.

Wandering about, I was struck by how old the place was. You could tell straight away, especially if you had just flown in from New Zealand. Here is one quite famous old pub in Colnbrook.

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But there is an even older one called the Ostrich Inn, which dates back to 1106 and is built in much more of a Lord of the Rings style. The Ostrich Inn has an extraordinary history of its own, though as some of the mediaeval mayhem that's happened in the place is quite gory, I won't go into the details.

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There are apparently thirty-six listed historic buildings in and around Colnbrook.

Part of the reason that the village is so well-preserved is that it is in the London Green Belt, which surroundings most of London and separates it from newer suburban areas such as Slough, which lies just west of Colnbrook. There are towns and villages in the Green Belt, including Slough, but they aren't allowed to be joined up by suburban sprawl.

The part of the green belt in which Colnebrook sits is an especially pristine area called the Colne Valley Regional Park. The website of the Colne Valley Regional Park says that the area is a "mosaic of farmland, woodland & water with 200 km of rivers, canals and over 60 lakes." And so, along with old villages, the Colne Valley is full of rustic scenes like this one even though it is not that far from London.

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Here's a video about England's fourteen green belts, from the Council to Protect Rural England:

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Along with towns and villages that are prevented from merging together, and nature parks in the strictest sense, the green belts also contain lots of working farms. And so, the village of Colnbrook and its surroundings maintain an old-timey farming tradition even though they are practically in the suburbs of London. Indeed, the famous Cox's Orange Pippin apple was created in the Colnbrook area.

Wandering around the village, I came across a big farm called Poyle Park Farm, which has a very historic, listed farmhouse and which, though managed by a local family from the village, seemed to be owned by none other than the Queen herself.

Colnbrook is close to Windsor, and the Royal Family owns many farms in the area, known as the Royal Farms.

There was no way even after wandering for some time that I could get across this land, which was a bit inconvenient.

I thought that as I was in the suburbs, I could pretty much go anywhere, and having to go around working farms came as a surprise. But that is how the Green Belt is organised, a sort of balancing act of the three interests of townsfolk, nature, and farmers.

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Anyhow, the fact that there were such things as Royal Farms was my first introduction to Britain's class-based society on this trip, and one that didn't take long.

I remember seeing a documentary in which Prince Philip was pottering about on his farms, it was nice to see that he was concerned for the environment. You can buy some of the produce from the Royal Farms, though I suspect the best of it is kept for Buckingham Palace.

In fact, the monarchy owns a surprisingly large amount of the best land all over Great Britain, a Crown Estate apparently worth £14.1 billion. Not just the Royal Farms which are almost a hobby these days, I suspect, but also many urban and suburban areas that yield more in the way of cold cash, along with various other rural properties as far afield as Scotland. Having said that, the 1.4% of England, at least, that the Royals are estimated to own is greatly outweighed, in terms of area, by the rest of the aristocracy and the landed gentry in general.

In any case, it was remarkable that somewhere as old-fashioned as Colnbrook could exist right next to Heathrow Airport. And indeed, in my walk-around video, you can hear the screaming jets, which mar the rustic tranquility somewhat.

This post will be followed shortly by another one, in which I make it properly into London.