Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, falls at the end of September this year, followed nine days later by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Collectively known as the High Holydays, these are the most solemn events in the Jewish calendar, marked by fasting and all-day attendance in synagogue on Yom Kippur.

This month's walk explores the north London suburb of Golders Green, home to one of largest Jewish communities, taking in the Judaica shops, kosher bakers and butchers of Golders Green Road, synagogues of all shapes and sizes and the Jewish cemetary in Hoop Lane. The walk includes a visit to the Jewish Museum at the Sternberg Centre in neighbouring Finchley before returning through the treelined streets of Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Highlights

Golders Green Road
Temple Fortune
Finchley Synagogue
Jewish Museum
Brookside Walk
Hampstead Garden Suburb
Central Square
Jewish Cemetary Hoop Lane

Type of walk: circular

Distance: 4.5 miles approx

Time taken: two hours approx (excluding bookshop browsing, eating, diversions and visiting the museum)

Weekdays between Monday and Thursday, and Sundays, are the best time to do this walk, if you want to be able to visit the Jewish museum and generally absorb the life of the streets. Most Jewish shops and businesses close for Shabbat at lunchtime on Friday and do not reopen until Sunday morning. By lunchtime on Sunday, Golders Green's Jewish restaurants and cafes are filled with Jewish families having lunch out. However if you do go on Saturday, the streets are busy with people walking to synagogue, as Orthodox Jews are forbidden to drive on the Sabbath. On Rosh Hashanah, which starts on the evening of Friday 22 September, many synagogue goers will be dressed in their smartest clothes as it is customary to buy new clothes for the New Year. Shops will sell sweet foods (apples dipped in honey are traditional) for a sweet New Year.

Start and finish: Golders Green tube (Northern line)

Start. Come out of Golders Green station and turn right round the curve of the station forecourt to a pedestrian crossing with HSBC Bank opposite. Cross and continue straight ahead up Golders Green Road. Jewish families started to settle here at the beginning of the twentieth century as they spread out of the East End and into the suburbs of north and east London. This (and Brent Street in neighbouring Hendon) have London's largest collections of Jewish shops, where you can buy everything from a kosher chicken to a set of Shabbat candles. Good places to browse for Jewish books and music include Steimatzky's and Jerusalem the Golden further up the road under the railway bridge. Restaurants include Carmelli's bakery (good for takeaway savory pastries and pizza), Bloom's and Dizengoff's.

Continue up the road as far as the Jewish Learning Exchange and the library, cross and continue walking in the same direction on the other side of the road past the Greek Orthodox Cathedral to take a left turning into Woodstock Avenue. The anonymous suburban house on the right hand corner is a synagogue, one of many similar small synagogues or stiebls dotted around Golders Green. These are unsually identifiable only by the sight of ultra-Orthodox men in black coats, hats and beards going in and out.

Nearly all the shabby early twentieth century suburban houses in Woodstock Road are owned or rented by Jews. A Jewish home is indentifiable from the outside by its mezuzah, a small holder nailed to the right hand side of the front door lintel.

Take the second right into The Drive, whose residents are also almost all Jewish, the men and boys in kippah, or skullcaps, with tzitzit or fringes hanging from their waists, and the women and girls in skirts rather than trousers. Turn right again into Highfield Avenue to emerge again into Golders Green Road lined in with kosher butchers' and grocers' shops.

Cross at the crossing and turn right up Highfield Road, continuing straight on up a footpath at the end of the road. Turn right and immediately left into Oakfield Road and look for an iron gate on the left into Princes Park. This small but attractive park has tennis courts, flower beds and a wide expanse of grass which opens out through a half-timbered archway cleverly built to conceal public toilets. Go under the archway and follow the tarmac path to the right through the park, emerging into Park Way. This part of Golders Green is smarter, with large detached houses lining wide spacious streets.

At the end of Park Way, follow the curve round to Cranbourne Gardens, then turn right into Bridge Lane and left into Ashbourne Avenue. At the far end of Ashbourne Avenue, in Temple Fortune (as this section of the Finchley Road is known) is Joseph's Bookstore, which has regular readings and talks by Jewish authors as well as a comprehensive range of Jewish fiction and non fiction. After a good browse, go through the connecting swing doors to Café Also, which serves mostly middle-eastern food and is an excellent place for lunch or a snack.

The walk continues left up a short section of the busy Finchley Road. Just before you get to the traffic lights look left to spot a signpost saying Dollis Valley Green Walk. This leads through grassy open space and woodland by the Dollis and Mutton Brooks, tributaries of the river Brent, and you can follow the network of rivers up to Moat Mount on the edge of north London or down to Hampstead Heath. This section, also called the Brookside Walk, provides a pleasant diversion to the ponds at Brent Park, a peaceful spot even if it is just yards from the traffic-choked North Circular. (NB: if you do divert you have to retrace your steps to continue the walk because there is no other pedestrian crossing over the North Circular).

Cross the North Circular at the traffic lights and aim for the war memorial in the opposite left hand corner between the North Circular and Regent's Park Road. Cross Charter Way to a white modern square of a building and turn right into Kinloss Gardens round the side of the building. This is Finchley Synagogue, an active Orthodox synagogue known to its congregants as Kinloss. It has a strong choral tradition and seats for 1,350 people.

Continue up Kinloss Gardens, turn right into Chessington Avenue, cross Regent's Park Road at the traffic island and continue almost straight ahead up Beechwood Avenue, turning left into Windermere Avenue. This is typical middling Edwardian suburbia, with detached houses in treelined streets, many Jewish-owned.

Keep straight on along Windermere Avenue past a metal barrier and turn right into East End Road then look for a large iron gate in a red-brick wall on the right. This is the entrance to the Sternberg Centre, home to a number of Jewish institutions including the Jewish Museum, and Manor House books which has a huge range of new and second hand books and Judaica. Leo Baeck College which trains Reform and Liberal rabbis, is housed in the mellow red brick manor house on the left of the site.

Security is tight and you have to sign in at the gate. Once in, however, you are free to look round.

When you come out of the gate again, turn right along East End Road and right again into Basing Way which winds through a low rise 1950s council estate. At the metal barrier, continue straight ahead into Kingsgate Avenue across Amberden Avenue and turn left down Clandon Gardens to cross a footbridge across the North Circular. Follow the path round to the right with a green wire fence and playing fields to your left and go straight on across Connaught Drive down Beaufort Drive.

At the main road (Falloden Way) cross, turn left and look for a gap in the woods almost immediately. A path with a wooden fence leads down to the main path along Mutton Brook, another part of the Dollis Valley Greenway Walk. At the wooden waymark post turn left and follow the path up to Addison Way.

You are now in Hampstead Garden Suburb, one of London's most architecturally distinctive areas and popular with Jewish families. It was created 100 years ago next year by Henrietta Barnett, an energetic social reformer, with the idea that rich and poor could live and work side by side in morally edifying and uplifting surroundings.

Now even the most modest terraces in Addison Way, the cheapest part of the Suburb, are way out of the league of all but the affluent. Cross Addison Way and go up Erskine Hill whose whitewashed cottages and small colourful gardens with clipped hedges were once designed for the Suburb's poor and are now much sought after. At the junction with Asmuns Hill follow Erskine Hill round to the left. Ahead of you as you cross Temple Fortune Hill is the impressive dome of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church in Central Square. This and the equally impressive spire of St Jude's on the Hill Church of England church next to it can be seen from across north London.

Turn left when you reach the Free Church and follow the road round the square past Henrietta Barnett girls' school, one of London's remaining grammar schools and a top performer in the school league tables.

Continue round Central Square and turn left opposite St Jude's into Heathgate, then right into Meadway. These roads were built for the wealthier Suburb residents, also in Arts and Crafts style harking back to the country cottage. Cross Hampstead Way and continue on to a roundabout with a trellis of wisteria forming a tunnel across the centre. Go through the trellis to Hoop Lane.

The Jewish Cemetary opens out on your right. The cemetary is shared between the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and the West London Synagogue (Reform). Sephardi Jews, of Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic background, have flat gravestones, while Ashkenazi Jews, from Germany and Eastern Europe, have upright stones. Jack Rosenthal, the playwright and husband of actress Maureen Lipman is buried here, as is Rabbi Hugo Gryn. The small stones on some of the graves have been left by visitors to signal that they have been there and prayed or reflected, as is the Jewish custom. If you do the walk just before Rosh Hashanah, the cemetary will be busy with people visiting family graves.

There is no way out at the other end of the cemetary so leave by Hoop Lane, turn right, then left into Finchley Road to Golders Green tube.

Multimedia

Related Internet Links

• Map: print out a map of the Golders Green walk

Related Links

• Autumn in Hampstead and Highgate

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