Watched or read George RR Martin’s Game Of Thrones? Been captivated by that colossal wrought-ice defensive battlement known as The Wall?
Here’s some news that may interest you.
It exists in our world too.Read More
How To Be Rude To A Latvian
(April, 2000)
Well, maybe it’s down aisle 3.
I try aisle 3. Bread. Strange jars of cabbagey, pickly things. More bread. Larger pickly things. Even more bread. Dear god, Latvians like their bread. Sadly, I’m not after bread, I’m after what is apparently the rarest of things in Latvia – a jar of curry sauce. And if it’s in this supermarket, it’s not down aisle 3.
Okay, maybe it’s down aisle 4…Read More
Hadrian’s Wall: A Birthday Adventure / Cry For Help
Every year I set myself a birthday challenge – something that looks feasible from a distance but turns into a living hell close-up. Last year, I wandered across the North York Moors in an 8-hour October rainstorm (and ended up writing it up for the San Francisco Chronicle). On my birthday this year…well, I was busy. Too much writing, too much on – something had to hit the wall.
So, two months late….I’m hitting the wall.
All It Takes
(2008)
The voice coming over the loudspeaker is beginning to struggle.
“Uh – on platform 6, the Treno Notte to Roma will be leaving in approximately…”
“SHOW ME TH’WAYDA GO-OME…..CAZZ I’M TIREDANA WANNA GOHDA BED…”Read More
How Archaeology Ruined My Englishness Forever
Here’s a story about how archaeology ruined me as an Englishman.Read More
Trans Pennine Trail: The Long, Winding Goodbye
It’s midnight, and I’m looking up at a signpost.
The best way to see England is on foot. (The second best way? Ask Sustrans). It’s a country designed to fit your feet, whether via the National Trail network or by those enticing mystery dashed lines you see winding their way into the trees at the fringes of your Ordnance Survey Landranger. You’re not meant to go from A to B – you’re supposed to dabble with the rest of the alphabet. This is why English people of a certain age will argue until they’re blue in the face about the ‘quickest route’ for a stranger to get somewhere. What they really mean is their favourite route – and everyone has a different one, because England can accomodate that.
At midnight on the 23rd of August I’m in Hornsea, my childhood home on East Yorkshire’s coastline. I’ve wandered along the sea-front, tweeting fitfully and plucking at memories, until I’ve reached the Marine Hotel and a sheer concrete wall to the upper promenade I clearly remember being too nervous to climb, which I can now scale by jumping, grabbing the rail and pulling myself up. (It’s such a contrast that I feel I have someone else’s memory). The clouds are low enough to turn to mist, fogging the streetlights and giving the ruinous amusement arcades the look of a heavily anti-aliased Pripyat.
Then I’m at the end of the old railway line, the one that connected Hornsea with Hull until Doctor Beeching swung his axe. The disused train station is long gone, and replaced with an enormous paved compass, pointing westwards – specifically, at Southport, on the other side of the country.
I walk the first mile of it.
From here, the Trail winds over the Wolds and down towards Sheffield, splitting in either direction to provide secondary routes for the weekend-tripper (one of which is up to York, via the whole Solar System)….
…and finally, on the main route, reaching Southport on the west coast, 20 miles north of Liverpool.
When Barbara of Hole In The Donut Travels came to York a few months back, I was startled to learn she hadn’t arrived via London. Because all too often, that’s the England visitors see. I’m not knocking London (it’s a fascinating place) but it’s not a synonym for England. The England I love best, that gets me scanning maps with what I can only describe as geographic lust, is that of hill and dale and moor and backwater trail – and the best ways to find these are by taking the great trans-England walking routes so beloved by folk like Wainwright (who even devised his own coast to coast walk)…
Striding along these great Ways isn’t just an effective method for seeing (and feeling) England – it’s also a great way to say goodbye to it. Since my plans revolve around seeing the rest of the world, a couple of final, epic walks sometime soon are an attractive prospect.
And the symbolism of starting the last of them from my childhood home?
Irresistible.
Further reading:
- The official Trans Pennine Trail homepage
- Walking Britain: tons of ideas here, complete with detailed breakdowns of walks and some (sadly quite small) photos of what you can expect to see.
- The Ramblers Society is a good jumping-off point for the basics.
- It is absolutely impossible to read this book and not have twitchy feet. That’s you warned.
Images: rofanator, vikellis, karenwithak, steves71.
Dead Air Under London
London breathes on my back. Around me, shirts billow, dresses flare and hats are clutched, as the stuffy, tasteless air roars past us in search of somewhere to dump its heat. Behind me, the mournful screee of an Underground Tube train – and around me, a subterranean London that is far from solid.
Imagine laying a cross-section across the city, dividing it like a cake. Looking at the results, you’d think: earthworms. The ground under London is Swiss-cheesed with cavities. There are the most famous – the London Underground and its many, many abandoned stations, and the extraordinarily extensive sewer system pioneered by Joseph Bazalgette, the “Sewer King“, an engineering marvel now threatened from above. But around them, burrowed into the sponge of subterranean London, are countless other mysterious voids. The church catacombs, most notably at Camden. The military bunkers and citadels and their extensive tunnel networks. The pedestrianways winding between Heathrow’s terminals (above), hauntingly endless when you’re dragging your suitcase down them. And then there’s the Fleet, London’s lost river, gushing back and forth through the sewer tunnels as the tide waxes and wanes, a trickle of its former self but still powerful enough to drown the unwary.
And through all this, the dead air of London’s ancient breath…
In.
Out.
Photo: Mike Sowden 2011.
Further reading:
- The real & fictional tunnels of London, at FictionalCities.
- Oh, and be sure to track down a copy of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, book and BBC TV adaptation.