Seventy years ago this month, Crystal Palace, perched above Sydenham in south London, caught fire and burnt to the ground in a stream of molten glass and steel, the pipes of its organ emitting ghostly music as the wind blew through them. To mark the anniversary on November 30, the residents of Crystal Palace are planning a huge firework display, an apt memorial for a building which itself hosted some of London's most spectacular firework displays in its heyday.

This month's walk explores Crystal Palace and the park, where the remains of stone terraces and statues mark the site of the original Palace. The route then takes in the shops, bars and restaurants of the Crystal Palace triangle before heading up through the wealthy private estates of Dulwich to Dulwich Wood, finishing at the recently restored Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

Type of walk: linear

Time taken: two hours approx

Length: four and a half miles approx

Highlights

Crystal Palace Park (remains of Palace)
Crystal Palace dinosaurs
Crystal Palace Triangle
Dulwich Wood
Horniman Museum

Start: Crystal Palace station (train from Victoria or London Bridge,zone 4); finish Forest Hill station (trains to London Bridge and Charing Cross, zone 3)

Before you leave Crystal Palace station, stand on the platform for a moment and admire its grand scale. The station is a reminder that this south London suburb was a magnet for Victorians who descended in their thousands at weekends to eat in Crystal Palace's restaurants, stroll around the grounds and enjoy firework displays and concerts. The station was built to handle large crowds of people, channelling them out up the double staircases and through the brick archways into the park. This station was known as the Low Level Station, with a second station at Crystal Palace Parade at the top of the park, known as the High Level Station. Parts of the roof and arches of the High Level Station, demolished in 1961, are still visible from the Parade and from Farquar Road further along the walk route.

Turn left out of the station and head diagonally left towards a bus shelter in Anerley Hill. Turn right up the hill and at the junction with a sign for the sports stadium, look for an entrance into Crystal Palace Park. Continue ahead along a wide path running below a level of crumbling stone terraces with the occasional stone sphinx or headless statue. These were part of the original Palace, which was transported to Sydenham in 1854 from its first home in Hyde Park at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The path you are walking on runs across another, lower terrace.

It requires some imagination nowadays to walk along the weed-choked grass and visualise the gardens and fountains laid out around the Palace by Joseph Paxton but, like the station, the remains of the terraces give you a vivid impression of the scale of the building and grounds. The London Development Agency (LDA) has ambitious regeneration plans for the park and the sports centre in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, although not all local people are convinced.

Continue straight ahead along the path with views across south London and Surrey opening up to your right. On your left is the Crystal Palace TV mast which, like its counterpart in Alexandra Palace in North London, can be seen for miles. Ignore the steps down to the sports centre and continue straight on through a gate, veering right down a path which takes you past the stage of the Crystal Palace concert bowl, set in an ornamental lake. Regular open air classical and pop concerts used to take place here and the stage is stil used. At a junction of paths, go right, then left by a Capital Ring sign. Take the path to the right towards a playground past the World War II ship's bell from the SS Crystal Palace.

Go straight on at another junction of signs and through a gate to the Dinosaur Lakes. Crystal Palace was the first theme park and one of the main attractions for its Victorian visitors was these lakes, populated with startlingly life-like (although not anatomically accurate) models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, perched behind rocks and trees. The models were restored in 2002 at a cost of £4 million after being allowed to deteriorate for years. Follow the path round to the right and across a footbridge, then keep right up hill with the sports centre on your right.

You pass Crystal Palace station again on your left but go up the steps on your right to keep within the park. From here you get a good view of the underside of the terraces you were walking across earlier. At the junction of roads, go right through the gate marked South Terrace Gate and continue ahead to a set of wide stone steps. At the top of the steps, look for a ramp on your left and walk ahead along a path to a Crystal Palace Museum sign. The museum is staffed by volunteers and only open on Sundays and some bank holidays.

The route continues up the flight of steps just in front of the museum, emerging into a flower garden. Follow the circle of flowerbeds round to a set of wrought iron gates and leave the park at the traffic lights.

Cross at the set of pedestrian lights immediately in front of you, then at another to your left to reach Church Street. This is one side of the Crystal Palace Triangle, a triangle of three streets of shops, bars and restaurants which together make up what everyone thinks of as central Crystal Palace. Never mind that officially Crystal Palace does not exist. The SE19 postcode covering the Triangle is Upper Norwood and if you live at the bottom of the park you are in Penge or Sydenham. Despite this apparent handicap, Crystal Palace residents pride themselves on the quirkiness of their hilltop suburb, with its antiques shops and warehouses, its wide choice of bars and restaurants serving every type of food, and its individual clothes shops and galleries. This is a good place to stop for a drink or a meal, with most of the restaurants and cafes congregated in Westow Street and Westow Hill, the other two sides of the triangle.

Church Street has become rather run-down, with too many empty shops, but persevere to the traffic lights and turn right into Westow Street, with a good independent book shop and some interesting galleries. Turn right again into Westow Hill and look left between buildings for some spectacular views of the City of London, a reminder that you are at the top of a hill.

Turn left into Woodland Road, a steeply sloping street lined with tall Victorian terraces. Crystal Palace was a highly fashionable place to live in mid-Victorian times and many of its streets are lined with large villas. Look for a pedestrian passageway between houses called Jasper Passage half way down on the right and emerge onto Jasper Road, where you turn left, then right into Farquar Road.

If you want to get a view of the former Upper Level Station, take a detour to your right into Bowley Lane and Stanley Gardens, whose modern houses are overshadowed by the arched wall of the station.

The route continues along Farquar Road to its junction with Dulwich Wood Park. Cross this main road and turn right, then left into College Road. This is the beginning of Dulwich (if you continue along this road you reach the private Dulwich College) and all this land was developed by the Dulwich Estate. The Estate still maintains a tight grip on what homeowners can do with their properties and the detached houses in wide treelined streets marked with low white posts are characteristic of the area.

At the junction with Fountain Drive, veer left into the continuation of College Road. Opposite Sydenham Hill Station, go through a white metal gate up a tarmac path between trees and look for a black metal gate on the left into Dulwich Wood. A clear path leads straight ahead through peaceful autumn woods.

Carry on straight ahead, ignoring turnings, and check that you are on the right path by looking left to see first allotments, then Dulwich and Sydenham Hill Golf Course. The path ends at another black metal gate leading to a bridge over a sunken wooded path. This is part of the disused railway line which went through Sydenham Hill Woods to the Crystal Palace High Level Station.

Cross the bridge for a diversion to Sydenham Hill Woods nature reserve, run by the London Wildlife Trust. The walk route carries straight on without crossing the bridge down Cox's Walk, a woodland path which turns into tarmac as it reaches the main South Circular Road at Dulwich Common. Cross at the pedestrian lights and turn right up the hill along London Road (continuation of the South Circular) and look for a gate on the left into the Horniman Gardens and Museum.

The oddly shaped tower on the hill looking like a carved piece of marzipan is the Horniman Museum. Founded by tea planter and MP Frederick Horniman, the museum has an eclectic collection of stuffed animals, musical instruments from around the world and exhibitions on African culture. The museum was recently restored and there is a tea room and café overlooking the gardens and the museum's Victorian conservatory for an end-of-walk drink or snack.

To explore the gardens, continue straight ahead from the London Road gate, with lawns, flowerbeds and mature trees opening out in front of you, to a bandstand with sweeping views over London. Next to the bandstand is a small zoo.

Come back out onto London Road and continue walking up to Forest Hill Station and the end of the walk.

Multimedia

Related Internet Links

• Map: print out a map of the Crystal Palace walk

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• Get festive with a Greenwich Christmas walk

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