Crews Hill

International capital of garden furniture

Map | Website

You'd be forgiven for panicking on the way to this station; it appears only after about five minutes of long, green, lush fields and numerous cows. It's endless stops up the branch line, and even veers way off the top of the A-Z. Despite all of this, though, Crews Hill isn't really a rural idyll. It'd be better described as a refugee camp from Ikea.

At first, all seems quiet and rural. The mostly deserted station doesn't have a ticket office, machine, or barriers and the subway is filled with puddles. There is a decaying rabbit corpse outside, and the only things that WAGN feels are interesting and nearby is a golf course and the Whitewebbs Museum of Transport, 1110 yards away. Then you hit the main road, and boy, you reach the forgotten and deeply evil circle of Hell, Ultragardencentrum. In fact, according to the website, Crews Hill is the "largest concentration of specialist garden centres, nurseries and aquatics centres in the UK."

One of several signs that state the obvious

THE AQUATIC CENTRE

<--- FISH

As well as fish – and reptiles – for sale in the labyrinth of outdoor markets and conservatories here, there are pools and hot tubs shaped like holes in the ground, sheds, decking and an army surplus store so you can look really hard when you build your shed and dig your pond. But pride of place in the first outdoor market near the station is Enfield Bird Centre, which has a notice on the door "PLEASE NOTE: This is a bird centre. If you don't like to see birds in cages, don't go in."

In here, there's a cacophany of twittering, all kinds of birds under the sun, and some hamsters in an isolation room at the back of the shop. The shop pet, a beautiful, glossy red macaw, can apparently talk (although he seems more interested in eating the cage), "do tricks and nip".

Birds for sale in Enfield Bird Centre

• Budgies: £15
• Canaries: £20
• Star finch: £45
• 'Shop-soiled' unidentified bird: £60

Avian accessories for sale in Enfield Bird Centre

• Flapjacks made from bird seed
• 'Best Buddies' drinking bottle
• Anti-peck spray
• Bird charcoal (?)

Traffic crawls along the main road here, and people jostle for space on the narrow pavement, looking for masonry, chairs, hamsters, manure and flowers. Every 200 metres there is an ice cream van; the kind that doesn't actually mention that it sells ice cream.

Residents of Zone 6, #26 – Crews Hill An old lady with ice cream hair lounges on the grass verge, watching horses behind an electric fence, eating what she thinks is a big ice cream but is most likely frozen sugared margarine.

Further down the main road, beyond the huge brown mounds of what on closer inspection appear to be sand, woodchips, manure, and something with a JCB banked halfway up it, is the Chelsea Garden Centre. This is one of the largest garden centres in Crews Hill, and possibly the most aspirational.

Walk past the potentially disastrous spelling mistake ("The Bluberry Cafe"), and through the turnstile, and you'll reach a huge warehouse of cheap plants and expensive tacky statues. There's so many to choose from here, but two that are pride of place. First, The Gardener. This dapper chap in a deerstalker hat and stone jacket, leaning slightly unnaturally on his spade, could be all yours for £457. Just think of Michaelangelo's David crossed with Alan Titchmarsh, and you're there.

Then there is a fountain, which doesn't have a name, but could perhaps be christened Elephant On A Bad Trip. The elephant has its head held back by a couple of cherubs, and every five seconds its trunk spouts a huge torrent of water. The elephant has a permanently terrified look on its face. The 70s disco background music that the centre plays is the icing on this profoundly disturbing cake.

Various cacti for sale in the Chelsea Garden Centre, Crews Hill

Only a few more words about the Chelsea Garden Centre are necessary. The toilets have about 4 hygiene notices, the soap dispenser dispenses foam and the dryers seem to have some kind of overpowering essential oil in that makes your hands purple. And the Bacchus statue, by the exit of the centre by the till, seems to be suitably trollied.

The madness doesn't end even if you walk for half a mile away from the station, although under the bridge in the other direction, you go up a steep hill as the pavement narrows and disappears. This is where you can see some evidence of Crews Hill's local residents indulging in illicit garden centre pleasures.

But if you take a turn down one path past a stables and petting zoo, you reach the Whitewebbs Museum of Transport. For a museum dedicated to not driving your car to get anywhere, it appears odd that you have to walk down a road with no pavement to get to it

Inside the building, a huge red-brick house that looks like it used to be a pumping station, you can see old Leicester Square and Goodge Street tube signs; quite a strange thing this far out of London. Alas, outside there are huge iron gates, warnings of guard dogs, and no notices of opening hours or an obvious way in. It seems to be appointment only. Pity.

Set barely 300 yards from the M25, Crews Hill is really nothing more than a shopping station for the big garden centre complex – it certainly isn't a commuter station, barely anybody lives here and those who do have at least seven cars to choose from. Trains aren't especially frequent, so by the time the train comes there is a legion of people carrying plants, statues and sheds waiting to get on. Carnage often ensues, so don't leave without some anti-peck spray.

Statistics

Time to Zone 1 35mins on WAGN (Old Street)
Last trains to Zone 1 Mon-Fri 2355 Sat 2325 Sun 2355

What to do if you get stuck in Crews Hill after the last train to Zone 1

Those statues? They used to be flesh and blood, just like you. Anybody who remains in Crews Hill on the stroke of midnight has a long career in garden ornamentation to look forward to. A very, very long career.