This walk wins, hands down, the contest for shortest distance from station to footpath: right from the Charles Holden-designed station, immediate right into the station car park and – shazam! – you’re on the London Loop. No boring walking through suburban streets here; it’s straight into countryside. And what countryside. Trent Park was once part of Enfield Chase, the huge royal hunting forest north of London, and the landscape remains largely unchanged since the days when kings pursued deer through the oak, sweet chestnut and ash woodlands. On one occasion Elizabeth I rode to the Chase with ‘a retinue of twelve ladies in white satin, a hundred and twenty yeomen in green and fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow caps, each armed with a gilded bow’.

Predating most of the kings is mysterious Camlet Moat, once a fortified manor house and, although nothing remains above ground of the manor, the moat remains, filled with turbid water, the oaks and willows growing on the island invariably festooned with mysterious offerings. The manor was demolished in 1429 but the moat has endured. As to the name and its suggestions of Camelot? Nobody knows.

Following the London Loop past the obelisk, taken from Wrest Park and erected here in 1934 to impress the Duke and Duchess of Kent honeymooning on the estate, the walk dips to Salmons Brook before going past the nurseries and garden centres of Crews Hill to enter Whitewebbs Wood, another relict of Enfield Chase and thus ancient woodland. At the bottom of Flash Lane is an aqueduct that was built in 1820 to shorten the route of the New River into London. The ‘New River’ itself, dug between 1609 and 1613, is a marvel of 17th-century engineering, following the 100-foot contour from the river head springs in Amwell and Chadwell in Hertfordshire to reservoirs in Clerkenwell. Its original, gravity-driven route was 38.75 miles, but pumping stations, initially steam and then electric, allowed the route to be considerably shortened over the centuries.

Leaving Whitewebbs Park, transport enthusiasts might like to head west to Whitewebbs Museum of Transport (www.whitewebbsmuseum.co.uk), housed in one of those Victorian pumping stations, and home to many historic vehicles (open Tuesday and last Sunday of month).

The walk continues across fields and over the M25 via a footbridge which provides excellent views of London’s new skyscrapers before joining the New River – another bridge over the motorway. The river is sealed in concrete, but you can stand on it, looking down at the traffic streaming past, blissfully unaware of the river flowing over head. Take the New River path north, watching for dragonflies and hungry trout; just west Temple Bar, one of the old gates to the City of London, sat for more than a century, forgotten in the field to which it had been moved. However, in 2004, the Wren-designed structure was dismantled and returned to the City; it now sits in Paternoster Square.

Where to eat: The King & Tinker pub (Whitewebbs Lane, Enfield EN2 9HJ, 020 8363 6411). The food can be hit and miss, but the pub dates from the 16th century and the name comes from a ballad telling the story of how King James I became lost while hunting on Enfield Chace and fetched up at the pub, falling into conversation with a tinker who only realised the identity of his drinking partner when the king’s flustered courtiers arrived.