London: the step-by-step guide Michael Leapman celebrates Cup Final day with a walk around Wembley way

Distance: Four-and-a-half miles Time: Two hours By tube: Wembley Park (Metropolitan and Jubilee Lines) By bus: 83, 182, 297 Car park: At Wembley Park station

for cup final weekend, here is a walk that starts and ends with impressive views of the twin domes of Wembley Stadium and includes a pleasant waterside stroll and a modest hill climb. It is probably not a good idea to try it on match day itself!

The first view of the stadium, built in 1924 for the Empire Exhibition, comes as you leave the car park and turn left to pass the tube station, which dates from the same time (if you come by tube, as you leave the station you have to divert a few paces to the right for the view). Continuing past the station, cross the road and take the first turning on the right, Chalkhill Road.

Where the road bends right, keep ahead on the path in front of Majestic Court, part of the 1970 concrete Chalkhill Estate. You soon join a metalled path, with the railway line on your right, passing a school on your left. Just past a playground with complex spiral apparatus, turn left on a path that runs between the school and some houses, and keep ahead for a few yards on Saxon Road.

Turn right on to the marked "Brent Green Walk Footpath", which curves through more flats and houses to reach Ken Way. Here cross the Safeway car park and the main road (Blackbird Hill) into Old Church Lane, alongside the Blackbird pub. On the right are some spirited mock Tudor houses, with fine brick nogging.

Where the main road curves left take the right-hand fork (still Old Church Lane), to reach the gate to the old and now disused church in question, dating in part from the 12th century and standing sombrely in an overgrown cemetery. Its wooden bell tower was rebuilt in the 19th century. A few yards away, the much larger Church of St Andrew is early Victorian Gothic, built in 1847 in Wells Street, Marylebone, and moved here in 1934.

At the end of the lane turn left, passing the sailing club's forest of masts on your right. Turn right at the nursery entrance and, where the road ends, fork right on to the wider of two metalled paths, which soon offers views of the Brent Reservoir (the Welsh Harp) and Neasden beyond. Today popular with weekend sailors, the reservoir was created in 1835 to provide water to the Grand Junction Canal.

The surfaced path ends as it gets closer to the water and becomes a dirt track, narrowing to pass between the North Circular sailing club and a landing stage. The track climbs and then dips before reaching Cool Oak Lane.

Cross the road and walk on the left bank of the reservoir's northern spur, where the landscape is now less manicured, with wildfowl, rushes and trees by the water, and abandoned allotments on your left. The path turns left away from the reservoir, keeping to the right of the fence to the allotments.

Stay close to the fence, which means keeping left at two successive forks. When you reach West Hendon Playing Fields cross them diagonally, making for the tall floodlights of the Kingsbury Town football ground ahead and slightly right. Go through a gap in a concrete wall to the left of the floodlights, passing between the football ground and its car park.

At the end of the hawthorn hedge beside the ground, go diagonally right across another open space to pass some red-brick toilets. Cross the road and turn up Elthorne Road, with more, better-tended allotments on your right.

When you reach Church Lane Recreation Ground walk on the path just inside it as it turns right away from the road. Cross the playground to leave through tall metal gates, cross Church Lane and go straight ahead on Slough Lane. Cross Bush Grove and Salmon Street and keep ahead on a wide gravel path to enter Fryent Country Park, with stables and horses on your left.

Past the paddock, walk to the left of the hedge, with an open meadow on your left and a wooded hill ahead. When you reach a bench, keep ahead to the next bench, easily visible beside a clump of three trees. In the distance on your right you can see the spire of Harrow church rising above its bill.

Turn left at the second bench to walk through a gap in a hedgerow and follow the edge of the meadow round to the right. Follow the hedge as it curves right, then go straight ahead past a tiny pond with bullrushes, towards a bus stop momentarily visible on the road in front of you.

Cross the road into a car park and leave it at the far left-hand corner between two tree stumps serving as posts. Go right into the woods and immediately fork left on a narrow uphill path between trees. Fork right into a clearing, where the path curves left, still uphill. Turn left at the T-junction and when you reach an alley lined with poplars turn right to walk along it, climbing gently.

Where the poplars end turn left through an oak glade which emerges on Barn Hill, a street of pleasant 20th-century houses. Walk downhill on the road, leaving the tennis club entrance on your left, and you soon get your second and final view of Wembley Stadium. Follow the road across Forty Lane and back to the station.