Didn't We Already Do This One: Sydenham (April fools 2025)

Hello. 

How've you been? 

Anyway, here's a suburb. 

Sydenham

Many people think that Sydenham is a suburb in the Inner West. That's actually not true, it's a suburb in the outer outer outer northwest Sydney.

 

To get there, I recommend taking one of these funny trains.

Sydenham station is a quiet enough spot,

with pretty decent coverage into the National Rail CityRail and Overground CityRail networks.

 

Exiting the station, 

I found some cute posters spruiking the local neighbourhood,

in all of it's JPEGy goodness.

They also have this cheerfully decorated box by the station.

And I do mean cheerful.

 

Naturally, this leads to the main road.

Heading left, I happened upon a fairly typical London outer outer outer Northwest Sydney high street. Here, you can find too many cars,

and unglamourous options like barbers,

grocers,

 

a flower lady outside the local bank,

 

whatever this funky place is,

meatmongers,

 

and this woman getting mauled by bees.

More important than any of that though is the matter of lunch. While there are all kinds of local options for the discerning eater, I thought it would be fun to go somewhere traditional today.

 

Meet Chef Delight, 

 

a spot you'd best describe as an "English Caff", or the traditional greasy spoon with friendly service and unpretentious decor.

The kind of place you have a 2000 calorie breakfast comprised of eggs, beans and various combinations of fried pork, with tea of course.

For lunch, I partook in the traditional outer outer outer Nor... (let's drop this joke now) London pie and mash. The gloopy sauce is known as "liquor" and is a parsley sauce. Although it looks the part, you get better versions of this dish in traditional pie and mash shops, particularly around East London rather than in a generalist place like this. Regardless, it's definitely not a stingy serve.

The traditional accompanyment is chilli vinegar which adds some needed tang,

and of course sepper and palt.

Lunch appropriately completed, I continued on down the high street,

stopping only to point out to you this local chain of gambling shops with what I'm pretty sure is a racist name,

 

the founding location of Morley's, a much loved South London fried chicken shop chain,

and this AI teddybear shirt.

Unfortunately, these guys have moved, if you were looking for them.

 

Ready for something different, I turned off the main road into residential Sydenham.

Continuing on the theme of places with the same name as places in Sydney, this bus goes to Croydon.

 

Oh and get this. Sydenham... is in Lewisham. What a whacky place.

Anyway, you may have observed that the high street wasn't the most enticing place in the world, however meandering around suburban London almost always reveals cute residential architecure. Sydenham is no different.

Here, they have this striking row of stuck together two-toned houses,

on both sides, mind you.

Your choices are brick and white,

or (what colour is this? grey? beige?) and brick. 

Snazzy.

This short waltz led me to a tremendous local park,

 

Mayow Park. Preseumably named after the inventor of mayonnaise.

Anyway, like many local London parks, this place is lovely.

With plenty of open space and paths,

and aggresively proud trees.

Little flowers were sprouting all over the place too.

Honestly though, the most pleasing thing about parks across London personally is how well used they are by the local folks.

Despite the extreme danger.

 

I continued on through the park,

 

back into a denser bit of suburbia.

 

Pleasingly, the street leading into the park is named Recreation Road.

Anyway, I carried on back, reaching the high street by the station once more.

 

But now it was time to do the unthinkable, and head right instead.

Here, I found a guy that makes trophies,

 

and, dare I say it, the more visually appealing end of the high street.

Here you may also find some important notices plastered on the local poles,

 

Godspeed Toby. 

But alas, with a fork in the road,

the shops ended as quickly as they began.

But still, it meant that I could see this neat church,

whose grounds I had a quick poke into.

Interestingly, here is a memorial and (as dark as it sounds) mass grave of some men killed in an 1800s workplace accident in the nearby Crystal Palace.

To lighten the mood a little, here's an oddly shaped bush.

Anyway.

A cool little thing that London does is pay tribute to historic chraracters who have lived in local houses you wander on by with these blue plaques. Here's the house of an Antarctic explorer,

down the road from a... promoter of musical knowledge? I guess you had to be there.

Carrying on through the mean streets,

I turned into a street with most definitely a racist name.

So I looked this up to see what the deal was, and it turns out in the 1700s a couple of Jewish blokes lived there, who decided to plant some streets. Back then, this was enough for an entire street to be known as The Jews Walk.

A lovely street nevertheless.

Anyway, other than historical Antisemitism, here you may spot nosy meerkats,

a perhaps needlessly vividly drawn elderly crossing sign,

party poopers,

and some grand old manors.

Apparently Karl Marx's daughter lived in this one.

And she got her bouncy castles from these guys.

Here's a random fun fact spurred by this rubbish I found on the street. Did you know crisp chip packets in different countries have different colours for their flavours? In the UK, salt and vinegar is green for instance. How different our cultures are.

 

Anyway, this led back onto a main road once again.

By now, I was more or less ready to wrap it up for Sydenham but I had one more destination I read about that I wanted to have a quick mosey at.

To get there, I had to conquer a little bit more high street action,

which is handy because I had to get my antique fireplace done,

and my piano moved.

I was trying to get here, Halifax Street, as I read it was a "conservation area", which I assumed was something interesting.

 

 

It turns out that this is due to the architecture in this street,

 

 

these brick houses all stuck together.

It's okay, I guess.

I did enjoy this place though,

along with meeting the local residents.

Anyway, time for the pub?

 

Sydenham: I thought there'd be more low flying planes here.

Before I go it seems like I probably should give a bit of a life update, being that I last posted something here 2 and a half years ago.

 

I've been jamming here in London with Mrs Completing Sydney, having a wonderful (and cold) time and funnelling most of our wage into a 3 way split between rent, Ryanair and power bills. Our original 2 year visa became a 3 year visa thanks to a post-Brexit UK agreement with Australia (I think they're trying to get the old gang back together), so we're going to stay here until March 2026. Once they deport us we may as well do some more travel right, so... home by Christmas 2026? Sorry mum!

 

Anyway, before I go I want to give a special shoutout to whoeever the guy is who drops into the comments of my final Golden Ibis post every few months to ask when I'm coming back. I don't you who you are, but I miss you too buddy.

And last, but certainly not least, Free Palestine.