walking – Where is Phil now?

Oslo

Norway
October 2025.

This whole mad Bergen, Oslo and Lisbon trip (I mean who does Norway and Portugal in the same trip with nothing in between) came about because Eleanor and I have talked about going to a concert in a different country for quite some time. I saw Patti Smith was touring the 50th anniversary of her classic debut LP “Horses”, and playing in Oslo, and decided that now was the time.

So here we are in Oslo, arriving mid-afternoon yesterday. We’re staying in a nice downtown hotel, not far from the Munch Museum; which we visited the last time we came. The hotel is nice, but the breakfast was OMG good.

It’s cold and sunny and a good day to be walking 40 minutes up the Akerselva River from where it ends in the harbour near our hotel to Grunerlokka and the Mathallen food hall. We ate in the food hall last time we were in Oslo. It’s a bit like London’s Shoreditch 10 years ago, but all squashed into one small block; loads of graffiti and bars and cafes.

What we seemed to have missed last time was Nedre Foss. A small, but quite powerful waterfall just behind the back of the food hall. It was a lovely bonus to a nice riverside walk.

It was late morning when we left the hotel and we had intended on lunching though had arrived far too early to eat, especially after a large breakfast in the hotel. The walk was shorter than I had planned and though we carried on past the waterfall it seemed that being hungry again would be quite a way off.

The river is a similar size to central London’s Regents Canal, though fast running and seemingly cleaner. There are more trees and grass on the riverbank than the canal, but it was equally popular with walkers and runners.

That night we went to the Patti Smith concert that brought us here in the first place. The concert was great, though too packed for my liking, Patti was in fine voice and the band was fantastic. I’ve not seen her perform before.

The following day we spent some time in the National Museum of Oslo, which we also thoroughly enjoyed, though it’s very modern art gallery rather than national museum. The building itself is a fine piece of modern art, and it had a version of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, without the crowds of the Munch Museum.

Yesterday we late-lunched in this fabulous vegan café in one of the inner city residential areas. The food was very nice and we ended up talking to the owner about life in Oslo, he’d lived in the UK in the past so had some interesting perspectives, in a good way. One thing he said stuck with me ‘Norway is a trust based country’, admittedly we were mainly talking about tax, but the concept was on display in the basement of the museum. The cloakroom was just out in the open and there are dozens of coats just hanging there unguarded. I like it.

Oslo is a nice city to wander about, though very crowded on a sunny late autumn day. I found a bit of local brutalist architecture. It’s not the most exciting piece I will admit, but this holiday is not about brutalist buildings!

Soon enough it was time to head out to Oslo airport for a late afternoon flight to Lisbon. As we did last time, we enjoyed Oslo.

Oxford Brutalism

Oxford – Saturday 15 February 2025

A couple of posts ago I noted that I’m going to ‘practise’ being on my own before I spend solo time in Delhi as we make our individual journeys home from New Zealand. Eleanor and I fly to Auckland on 5 March and spend a week there before we’re joined by a London friend, Paula. The three of us will road trip down New Zealand to Dunedin, where we then separate. I fly to Brisbane for a night to see my family before going to Delhi. Eleanor and Paula spend a few more days in New Zealand then go to Sydney and Tokyo. I have 10 days on my own; and most of that will be spent somewhere that is different to the London I call home. Very different indeed.

I’ve not done the solo travel thing in a while and know I’m going to find aspects of life in Delhi challenging. I want to avoid finding aspects of being on own challenging while I contend with the challenges of Delhi. If I can manage the things I can control then I will be better positioned to manage the things I can’t. That is the theory anyway. Understanding more of what I feel I can control has been an objective of the last few weeks.

To help this I decided to taking a night away by myself and I chose Oxford. It’s not too far from London, it’s always busy with students, their visiting families and other tourists, and it has a good mix of historic architecture with a tiny bit of mid-century concrete mixed in. Other than its cold right now in the UK and Delhi will be hot, I’m going to find the Oxford experience will be just like Delhi, right?

I travelled up on Friday and though it was quite cold the sun was shining and it was a nice day to walk around semi-aimlessly taking photos of buildings of various ages.

Overall, it was a successful couple of days and I enjoyed myself and learned a more about how I react to being by myself and working with crowds and busy tourist venues. I will cover more of the two days in the next post, along with photos of the ‘proper’ Oxford. Today, I’m going to share photos of the limited number of 60s and 70s brutalist buildings to be found amongst the ‘old shit’.

Hilda Besse Building, aka the Common Room and Dining Hall at St. Antony’s College, was the most visually interesting of the brutalist buildings I wanted to see. A number of the concrete buildings, and seemingly a third of Oxford were surrounded by scaffold. A full refurbishment of Hilda was completed in 2021, and thankfully the building has remained true to John Partridge’s original 1971 design. The interior is supposed to be lovely, but like everywhere these days you need a pass to get through the security barriers. I love the window frames and have not seen the like before. They look so much like wartime bunkers I expected to see gun barrels poking out of them.

Just around the corner is the Denys Wilkinson Building, the astrophysics department of Oxford University. Its neighbour, the Thom Building, is being renovated and there was scaffold all over the place and a number of the paths around the building were blocked which was frustrating. I’m learning to accept that not everything is going to go to plan when I travel, so this was good. I also was trying to memorise directions between places, a ‘skill’ I feel I’m losing as I’ve become reliant on my phone to always be there to give me directions. This worked well so was I pleased to find I can do it with little effort, and getting slightly misplaced is often part of the enjoyment.

The Philip Dawson design Nuclear Physics Building first opened in the late 60s and was renamed The Denys Wilkinson Building in 2001 to honour the famous physicist, (and no, I don’t know physicists, famous or otherwise; being interested in brutalist architecture teaches you many things). The fan building houses a Van de Graff Generator.

I know nothing about the Oxford Centre for Innovation building other than where it is, and that it was difficult to photograph as it’s partly wrapped around Oxford Castle Mound and the castle butts up against the back of it.

It was raining on Saturday, and windy, cold and quite unpleasant, so after photographing the innovation Centre I took myself to the Ashmolean Museum, stopping for an excellent coffee in the most unfriendly and pretentious café I’ve been to, and I’m unfriendly and pretentious so have some expertise in this field!

I arrived at the Ashmolean soon after it opened and it was nice and quiet. I had a look around most of the galleries; there is a lot of pottery, something I have very limited interest in. I was seeking out galleries that housed North Indian and South East Asian collections as I’m still fascinated by the complex ancient history of these places as well as the religions that were so key to the buildings and art that were created hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. I was momentarily distracted in the Egyptian collection and this magnificent relief on the side of the tomb of Nubian King Taharqa who died in 664BC, he is believed to have been the last black pharaoh of Egypt. The detail is stunning!

The Indian and Asian galleries were interesting, with some lovely Buddhist and Hindi artefacts. I was especially interested in this beautiful 16th bronze of Saint Tirumankai Alvar which is soon to be returned to it’s home in the Tamil Nadu region of India. While it’s not know whether this statue was stolen, it also can’t be proved that it wasn’t so the museum is returning it. Much as I like to see these lovely objects in UK museums they should be returned to their traditional homes.

As the weather hadn’t improved while I was in the museum. I caught the train back home to London where Eleanor and went to a fantastic restaurant in Stoke Newington to not celebrate Valentines Day.

The next post will be all about the Hogwartsean, Disneyesque Oxford we all know and love.

A walk in the park

Wanstead – Saturday 08 February 2025

Every great adventure starts with a train journey. Though, it’s fair to say today’s adventure wasn’t great, and neither was it that adventurous, but it did start with a train journey. All 15 minutes of it.

For the past few months, I’ve had some discomfort/mild pain in my groin. I thought it might be a hernia so my doctor referred me for a scan at the Loxford Polyclinic in Barking, 15 minutes along the Suffragette Line from home followed by a 10 minute walk from the station. There are an awful lot of signs advising that the reception area I was sent to (1b) didn’t have a receptionist; this didn’t stop every person who arrived after me asking if there was a receptionist on today. I did get seen quite quickly.

I wanted to make this visit a little more enjoyable and “adventurous” so mapped out a walk home via the large heath/common area that I just lump into the generic name of Wanstead Flats, though there are official names for all the chunks of open land that is carved up by busy edge of London roads. One of those bit is Wanstead Flats, I just have no idea where is starts or ends.

I was expecting a grey old day but I wasn’t expecting to walk for 90 minutes with cold drizzly rain as my constant companion. However, the rain and very low cloud kept the people away and muted the noise of the traffic to a dull hum. It also blanketed any buildings on the flats’ edges making the walk feel endless and isolating and I really enjoyed the solitude. I walked without headphones and just ‘was’. It was nice. Cold, wet, but nice. My working week just seems so full of noise and I’m starting to appreciate quiet when I can get it, and this means listening to less music than normal. I’m finding this change quite liberating. Music has been with me for decades, and is critical to my wellbeing and I’m not giving it up, just slowly releasing it as a crutch, and allowing myself time in my own head has it’s own rewards.

Other than getting some miles into my legs before we go to New Zealand in four weeks (less three days; and I’m very excited), I’ve been wanting to photograph some garage doors that back onto a dirt path on the edge of the health for quite some time. I know that ‘garage doors on the edge of a heath’ is quite a ‘Phil’ thing to want to photograph, but I’m interested in these luminal spaces where human-made things butt up against natural things. Admittedly, the heath is hardly natural, particularly at this particular point as it’s just football fields, but you (hopefully) get what I mean.

On Thursday I bought myself a new 27mm lens for the Fujifilm xt2 camera I use and wanted to test it out before we go on holiday. It’s a very small lens and makes the camera a little less obvious, something I wanted for when I go to Delhi where I hope to try some street style photography.

Many of these garage doors are blocked by scrub, some are graffitied and some are pristine and obviously used. It’s also kinda weird that these garages back onto parkland that is part of Epping Forest, I’ve no idea how that happened.

I started the nicer second half of the walk just inside the A406, the dreaded North Circular road that slices through a large portion of northern London and is just a constant traffic jam. I’d just walked from Barking to Ilford so it was a relief to not be walking on the pavement of a busy road. I entered the ‘flats’ at the end of Forest View Rd, and it must be the most southern point of Epping Forest. There is not much forest at this point.

I walked past Alexandra Lake before cutting around a couple of football pitches with kids’ matches going on before I headed north west towards the ‘garages’.

I kept local landmarks Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers as an earthly North Star as I walked. I’m trying to plan walks before I leave home so I rely less on the maps app on my phone. I feel like my memory is waning rapidly as I just rely on technology too much another thing I want to practise before I go away; though I suspect mobile phone theft is less endemic in Delhi than it is in London.

The heath is a mix of football pitches; mostly unused today, and small patches of bramble and scrub, with the occasional clump of trees tossed in for good measure. It’s criss-crossed by roads though both the heath and roads were quiet today.

It took about 40 minutes of weaving and wandering to get to the ‘garages’, and to be honest I was a little surprised I found them, my vague plan had worked! I’ve only ever walked to them from the other end and then taken a sort of random path back towards home. I’d never approached from this angle before so it was a confidence boost to know that my brain hasn’t fully atrophied with constant mobile phone use.

The new lens was perfect for these conditions; a narrowish tree and scrub lined path between fields and houses, the low, dull sky and drizzle needed a crisp and ‘fast’ lens and I’m happy with the results. The weather suited the subject material as well. This is a not-quite grotty bit of east London edgeland, it shouldn’t be photographed under a warm blue sky. Today’s conditions were perfect.

Fred and John stayed as my marker beacons as I cut across the deserted football pitches back towards a warm and dry home. It’s hard to believe it’s only 1pm.

When I woke up this morning I’d intended on making a full day of today, Eleanor is out with friends and I’d wanted to get a really long walk in, but after two hours out I was cold and my trousers and boots were wet from the long grass so I went home, put music on, edited photos and wrote this instead. No regrets, I’d had a good day, and not just because I bought chips from Leytonstone’s best chippie on the way home

Five photography exhibitions

London – Friday 17 January 2025

With the trip to New Zealand and India now only a few weeks away, I’m doing a bit of practice, but what for I’m less certain of. My world has become quite cocooned since Covid and the eight days I will spend in India will be the longest I’ve been away by myself since a solo trip to New Zealand in 2018.

Eleanor will hate me saying it aloud, but I have become quite dependent on her for company and emotional support over the past few years. She has been encouraging me to get out more, do things and meet people and I have bursts of enthusiasm on occasion, but there is a way to go yet. I’m capable of entertaining myself, but eight days away is a long time, so I want to practice independence at least.

Eleanor is away in Bristol visiting one of her sons for the weekend and I have time at home so I plan on getting to some photo exhibitions today and then finding a pub to sit in to read my book over a pint and some food. Practise eating with only a book for company. Not wanting to be seen eating alone is definitely a ‘thing’, and it is a ‘thing’ I’m uncomfortable about. I don’t like being noticed, and of course the stupid thing is other diners/drinkers don’t really care, if they notice at all. It took a while, but I got comfortable with solo life when I travelled all those years ago so I should be able to do it for eight days, and practise makes perfect, apparently.

I also need to get some leg miles as there is a lot I want to see in Delhi and Chandigarh. I nailed the leg miles today with over 15km of walking done, the most for quite a few weeks, though I was getting a bit leggy by the end. I aim to get another 10-12kms done tomorrow and a few more on Sunday if I can. The final thing I wanted to practice today was just walking slowly, without headphones in and just enjoying the moment while it exists, good or bad. I need to stop needlessly rushing everywhere. This final thing will take some work I think.

I had a good go at practicing all of those things today. I got to five photography exhibitions across three different London galleries. All of them were different and all of them were brilliant in their individual way. Some of the images were quite sad, a small number were disturbing and an even smaller number were humorous. There was a decent balance of colour and monochrome.

I was inspired to visit all these galleries by a recent Substack post from fellow New Zealander, and Lynfield College alumni, Garth Cartwright, though he was not in my year.

My first stop was the Saatchi Gallery and ‘As We Rise: Photos from the Black Atlantic’. The images come from the Canadian Wedge Collection and showcases work from black artists from Canada, the US, UK, the Caribbean and Africa. The space is gorgeous, large, light and airy and I was surprised to find myself largely alone in the galleries. Friday afternoon is obviously a good time to go for peaceful and solitary contemplation.

I followed this with another show in the Saatchi, ‘Adaption’ a collection of work from Russian/American photographer Anastasia Samoylova. These were the most ‘fun’ images of the day, with a mix of reportage and some interesting photo collages mostly taken around Florida. As with ‘As we rise’ I was almost the only person viewing in the vast rooms the work was hung in.

I walked 50 minutes through Belgravia and Mayfair, two very expensive parts of London, neither of which I know well, to Goodman’s Gallery, for a major exhibition of work by Earnest Cole; ‘House of Bondage’. A collection of monochrome photos taken in 1960 of impoverished black communities in South Africa. Most of these images provided the content for a 1967 book of the same name. The images were heartbreakingly beautiful, with my ‘favourite’ being a lesson in a school where girls learn to scrub floors on their hands and knees. The images are beautifully lit and printed and Earnest who grew up in this community obviously had a lot of love for his home, hard as it was.

There is some irony with these images being hung in a very expensive Mayfair gallery, admittedly it is a South African gallery and primarily hosts work from that country. Other than the staff, who mostly ignored me, I was the only person there.

It was a short hop over Regents Street to The Photographers Gallery for the final two exhibitions. The first by Letizia Battaglia; ‘Life, Love and Death in Sicily’, a collection of reportage images showing the impact the Sicilian mafia had in the 70s and 80s across the state. Like House of Bondage, these were powerful, often brutal pieces of documentary making. Letiza was not afraid to use her skills as a photographer and her position with the daily paper to show how these criminal organisations were destroying community and family. There were many images of the victims of mafia shootings and the their shocked and bereaved families.

Finally, also at Photographers, I saw the photo collage works of the late fashion and art photographer Deborah Turbeville, which were beautiful and a more joyous way to end my viewing day. I particularly liked that some of her works were deliberately out of focus, giving a ghostly ethereal quality which a style I enjoy. Technical perfection can be dull.

I had a small slice of delicious pizza and a glass of wine in a Soho cafe, which was bustling and busy and a little noisy and I should have stayed for a second and attempted the book reading thing, but it was uncomfortable – intentionally I think, to stop people lurking at tables. I spent some time trying to find a pub that looked welcoming to a solo traveller and found one, but the wine was pish and again the seat was awful. I didn’t stay long and meandered to the station for a tube ride home.

I bought myself a new winter coat in the New Year sales to replace three I’d given to a local charity shop as winter set in. This new coat has pockets big enough to take a medium sized paperback as well as glasses and a phone. This meant I could ditch the bag I’d been carrying all day with a camera I didn’t use (all these photos were taken in my phone) and go to a local pub for dinner with nothing to worry about. Those extra large pockets weren’t planned but they are a proper bonus.

We’re off to St Leonards for a night next week and then I’m planning on a night away in Oxford around the middle of February to do a ‘two days in Delhi’ trial run, taking in ancient and brutalist buildings and the odd museum.

A walk from Canary Wharf to Liverpool St Station

London – Saturday 28 December 2024

With the March trip to New Zealand and Delhi largely booked and rapidly approaching, and with the largess of Christmas just gone and two New Year feasts pending, we’ve decided we need to return to the good habit of getting out for a walk when we can. It will be good to walk off some of the food and wine (and gin and brandy and the occasional Old Fashioned) and get some walking miles back in the legs before we go on holiday. I don’t like to say I’ve been lazy since we were in Berlin, but, to be honest to myself, I have.

At just over 15km the walk today wasn’t huge, but it was a good start and with aching knees and hips I’m not really convinced I could do much more than 25km in a day anymore; not without some practice anyway. Other than a couple of frustrations, it was a nice walk. Eleanor and I do walking together well.

I’d completed the bulk of this walk before, though hadn’t realised it was just over 10 years ago until I checked back through some old posts to find what I’d thought back then. I had a good time then as well, though it was a lot warmer than today.

I will get the two frustrations out of the way early; both of which I firmly lay at the door of ‘the authorities’. One should be nice and easy to resolve, but I’m sure it isn’t as it requires a bunch of people from different organisations agreeing with each other, and I know that just isn’t going to happen any time soon.

The walk we did is a section of the well established 298km ‘Thames Path’, so you would think that being a part of a well established route that there would be consistent and constant signage. I can say that there is reasonably constant signage, it’s not brilliant but there is at least some. I can also say it is not consistent at all; I counted six different types of sign in the section we walked. That is ridiculous and confusing.

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Constant and clear signs should be THE bare minimum for something like the Thames Path. My favourite sign was this one, that just points at a blocked off building site. Which leads me to frustration two…

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Bits of public London are slowly disappearing under private management, and as more construction happens around the city, more public access is disappearing or being restricted as the image above shows. Who knows how long that building site has been blocking access to the path or for how much longer, I have no idea.

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That this city is being gifted to developers to do what they will in the name of progress (and council tax) is just so unfair on those of us who live, and the visitors who come to spend time and money, here. There are just too many places that are either completely closed or that come with so many restrictions (no photography being a favourite). That this is acceptable will mean that we can just expect more and all of a sudden the public will be squeezed out and the nice places will be the domain of only those can afford it.

Another classic example is this closed gate.

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We came across it from the riverside where the path beyond was blocked by an old rivers edge warehouse, at first we thought it was locked and would have to back track to get back to the road, though fortunately it was just closed and we could get out. There should be clear rules insisting that gates on the path should be open to send a clear message that the way is open and all are welcome. To be fair, at low tide you can walk along the riverbank and there are a few access ways down to the river.

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I accept that there are parts of the Thames Path closed to the public due to the small number of Victorian era warehouses that line the riverside, albeit they’re all blocks of flats now. What I am unhappy about is new construction being allowed to get away with blocking access; either by building right on the river’s edge or by failing to leave open gates on the section of public path they were ‘forced’ to create as part of their permission.

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Even with both those moans, and as I said before, I enjoyed the walk; it was a still and cold day, with a nice bit of low cloud and there weren’t too many people about until we got closer to the city. It was quiet on both the footpath and the road which allowed for a leisurely pace and quiet conversation.

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We stopped for a nice pint in one of London’s oldest pubs, ‘The Prospect of Whitby’, which for some reason I was too scared to ask about in case I didn’t like the answer, had a noose hanging from a gibbet over the river.

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Not taking the opportunity go for a wee after the pint while we were still in the pub was either a bad mistake or a work of genius as we were forced to stop for another drink at St Katherine’s Dock. This time we added a burger to each of our drink orders and stayed inside for a warming and revitalising lunch (and wee) before partly walking them both off when we walked to Liverpool Street station to get the tube back home.

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Trees

Epping Forest – Sunday 10 November 2024

It’s autumn in the UK and while Epping Forest doesn’t have the autumnal colour ‘wow factor’ that many other forests do, there is still plenty of change going on and it’s my favourite time of year to visit. Today was particularly good as we are a week into an even thin blanket of high grey cloud and there is almost no wind. These are good conditions for photography, though I would have liked it to be a little warmer. Until last week, this autumn has been quite mild, with temperatures, in the UK’s south at least, a couple of degrees above normal. It was a bit of a shock when the temperature dropped mid-week to what is the seasonal average. It was finally time to dig out and blow the dust off the warmer jackets.

I was surprised to find the forest so busy; I don’t visit as much as I used to. Pre-Covid, which was the last time I went to the Loughton Camp area, I could easily be there for a couple of hours and only a small number of other people. I guess it’s a good thing that more people are taking the opportunity to take family to the forest, but so much for relative peace and quiet. I should have put my head-phones on to drown the constant calling to errant dogs, but the forest has traditionally been the one place I don’t need to have music going to block out the world. Next time I will try and get there earlier in the day.

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I had planned to spend a couple of hours walking and managed to fill that time easily enough and other than the dog-callers I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I will go back again another time this winter, if I can fit it into what looks to be a very busy schedule.

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I chose Loughton Camp as, apart from being one of my favourite sections of forest, it’s easy to get to. Loughton is four stops up the Central Line from me and the ‘camp’ is less than a thirty-minute walk from the station. Loughton Camp is the site of an Iron Age encampment/village, potentially lived in by Boudicca as she led the resistance against Roman occupation. The site is just earthen mounds, banks and pits, there are no remains of ancient buildings or stone tombs or anything that shouts ‘ancient site’ but it’s a lovely clear section of beech forest and in the autumn it’ glorious, and it is 2000 years old.

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I must admit to having to get my phone out (I didn’t lose it this time) to check the direction to Lost Pond, not that either I or the pond were particularly lost. I used to come here so much back before the pandemic that I knew my way around quite well, the forest has changed a lot in the intervening years. I was uncertain of which direction was which, and this was not helped by that flat grey sky. Everything seemed so different.

I should have just read the trees.

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Lost Pond was very busy, and obviously no longer lost. I had to wait for 15 minutes to get a photo of this 1000 year old pollarded and copparded beech, which is just off the bank of this small and dark pond. It is my second favourite tree in the forest. There were kids climbing on it and well I’m not going to be pointing my camera at kids in a forest.

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After visiting the old beech it was time to bush crash my way down the hill to the road, and back to Loughton Station and the westbound train towards home. Next visit I will give myself more time and hope to walk most of the way home through the forest.

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The Avebury Stones

Sunday 21 July 2024 – Avebury

I’ve a loose interest in standing stones and the other ancient sites that are scattered all over the UK. The standing stones are easier to be fascinated in than say, Iron Age forts, as there is actually something to see, and in the case of Avebury, and unlike Stonehenge, something you can touch as well.

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As I mentioned in the Stonehenge post I love it that even with all our modern smarts we don’t fully understand what the stones were for and why they are where they are. Just this week it was revealed that the huge alter stone in Stonehenge actually came from 500 miles away in the north east of Scotland (I will walk 500 miles etc, etc) rather than from the far closer, but still a long way, Welsh coast, as had been previously thought.

These stones have been here for 5000 years, why then are they still so mysterious? It’s that mystery that attracts me and many thousands of others to these places. When facts are missing, myths fill the gaps, and where myths exists there is room for all sorts of weird, wonderful and often magical stories. I mean, I even posted a piece of weird fiction I wrote back in June 2021 – The Barrow. While this is not set around standing stones it is set close to here, and barrows are very much a feature of this landscape. Sadly, due to the unsupportive nature of the map I was using in the rental car I didn’t make it to any of the barrows.

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Unlike Stonehenge, Avebury is free to access, though the official car park is not cheap and is definitely aimed at people like me who haven’t done a huge amount of research. There are other places to park not too far away if you know where to go.

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Firstly I should describe what a henge is, as it has nothing to do with stones. A henge is a circular or oval enclosure made of earth banks and ditches. A henge encloses a sacred space and they date back to the Neolithic period; from 4000 – 5000 years ago.

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Avebury is the largest known henge in Britain, and it cuts through the small and gentile village of the same name. I liked it. I liked it because though it’s a sacred site and one of international importance, and a key component of the local economy, there are sheep wandering around the stones. The area is treated with reverence and respect, but also practically and likely as it would have been thousands of years ago.

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As you can see from this short film made by Derek Jarman in 1971 as he walked towards the circles a large number of the stones were still lying where they had fallen over the hundreds of years since they were first erected. A programme to re-erect the stones began in 1931 when the land was bought by Alexander Keiler, the heir to the Keiler marmalade fortune.

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It is quite a special place to visit.

Tilbury walk.

Friday 25 May 2024 – Tilbury, Thurrock, Essex.

I have fairly strong feelings about this part of Essex, in fact I have the same feelings for pretty much all of Essex to be honest. They’re not positive feelings and they’re based on ‘vibes’ as the young folk say, rather than fully researched fact. Let’s just say I never thought I could live in Essex’s southern Thurrock region and after today’s walk that thought was made certain; mind you I did enjoy being out and about and it was a decent walk.

I’m trying to make proper use of my nine day fortnight so, with a seemingly rare Friday with no rain in the forecast I decided to catch the train to Tilbury Town, then walk past Tilbury Fort, along the side of the Thames Estuary to Coalhouse Fort then up to East Tilbury Station and back home. It’s not a huge walk, but I only had half a day and I felt like going somewhere different.

I arrived in Tilbury Town just before 13:00, crossing over the railway track via the over bridge with a full-on nasal assault from the rubbish dump that the road I’m going to follow for a bit runs alongside. I’d hoped to be able to pick up something to eat by the station but all the shops were closed. I only had a couple of hours of walking ahead of me and let’s face it a few hours sans food isn’t going to be a bad thing.

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I’d originally thought about catching the ferry across the Thames from Gravesend in Kent, but disappointingly the ferry had permanently closed in April. The ferry would’ve made for a nice round trip rather than the there and back journey I did, plus it docked almost on the fort’s doorstep which meant I would’ve avoided the dump.

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The walk to Tilbury Fort took about 30 minutes, with half of it down this hideous stretch of busy road mainly being used by large lorries scurrying to and from one of the ports. It was noisy, smelly and generally unpleasant. Welcome to Thurrock.

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There were a few things I wanted to check out on the walk, one of which was the memorial to the Windrush generation on display at the building and wharf where the first migrants from the Caribbean arrived onto English soil in the 50s and 60s; naturally it was closed. I discovered when I got home that the memorial gallery closed at the same time as the ferry.

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I chose not to go into the fort as there didn’t seem to be a lot to see inside and there was a charge to enter and I’m trying to keep my spending down (he says the day after buying a new pair of Doc Martens shoes). The English Coastal Path runs past the entrance and I was planning on following this for the four half kilometres to Coalhouse Fort, the next fort along; heading east towards the mouth of the river.

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Tilbury Fort is one of the finest surviving examples of 17th-century military engineering in England. Built on the site of a smaller Tudor fort, it was designed to defend the river Thames passage to London against enemy ships, though it was never tested in battle. The fort was decommissioned at the end of the First World War.

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Forhe first half of the walk I was following the estuary wall, starting on the inside of the wall, then crossing over some steps to the water side a few hundred metres in.

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Luckily the tide was not in as there was a lot of rubbish and bits of drift wood on the wrong side of the path proving the messages at the start of the path that this area is subjected to a lot of water at high tide. I enjoyed the walk along the wall, preferring the rougher outside of the wall section with its graffiti and weeds and rubbish and feeling of isolation.

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I like these unloved edgeland places between the lived and unlived environments, especially those on the fringes of a big city like London. I like that they are most likely very safe places, but there is just that small hint of danger to keep the outsider on their toes, especially walking alone and on the wet side of a two metre high concrete wall. Every couple of hundred metres there were escape steps over the wall. I climbed up this set and peered over into a wet and weedy wasteland. I think my side was nicer.

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Just before the end of the wall section I came across a young woman painting years on a blacked out section of wall. There were thousands of them. 5050 to be precise. The piece is titled ‘100 years of irretrievable losses’ and commemorates the birth and death years of a tiny number of those who have died in war over the last 100 years.

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I saw three other walkers the entire time I was out, and other than the artist no other person between the forts.

For some reason the wall ended and the path made its way through an area of scrubland, I guess it had risen just enough to not be at risk of flooding, though there was nothing but weeds to flood. The path got quite narrow in some places and at times I was walking with my hands raised over my head to avoid my bare arms touching the reaching thorns and nettles. Warm as I was I was glad I was wearing long trousers.

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I got to thinking about the ‘rewilding movement’ and this mad view that if you let nature take over you will end up with fields of lovely wild flowers interspersed with small woods of oak, elm, beech and ghostly silver birch. That lovely postcard view of a world that only existsin the minds of fantasists. Reality shows that proper rewilded spaces are just a sea of weed and twisted ivy, bramble nettle, long grass and no chance of any tree self-seeding. Rewilded spaces are wild spaces. I’m not saying they’re not pretty in their own way, but no one is going to wildly romping through this stuff to find a site for a spring picnic or an off-piste ‘snuggle’

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I passed a site where they were either taking dirt from the land and dropping it into the river, perhaps to improve flood protection, or were taking silt from the river and dumping it in land. Impossible to tell as there was no-one about. I guess it could have been an extension of what looked to be a buried rubbish dump; though there was no smell to give that away.

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For some reason the path took a turn inland and the concrete was replaced by a mown grass strip between a wasteland and a low-lying wetland. At the end of the wetland the path looped back again towards the river, passing wheat fields, one of which had a small number of red poppies growing in it.

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Soon after I arrived at Coalhouse I asked a walker I’d nodded to earlier in the day if there was a route to the fort along the estuary and he said there was, weird. The inland route I took was the signposted one. I had wondered how he had gotten there before me as last time I saw him he was going in the opposite direction.

Coalhouse Fort is sadly closed to the public, from the outside it looked a lot more interesting than Tilbury. It looked like a proper blockhouse made to withstand the heaviest barrage. Built in the 1860s as the last in a string of defensive forts protecting the Thames and London from river born attack, its construction was marred by the swampy ground it was being built on and by the time it was finished it had been made largely obsolete with the development of better artillery pieces.

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The fort was manned and used by the military until 1949 when it was decommissioned and fell into disrepair. The council bought it and in 1985 a volunteer group was formed to restore the fort, though lack of funding and interest saw the group disbanded in 2020. The grounds surrounding the fort are maintained as a park, and if the café is anything to go by it’s quite popular.

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There was a café in the grounds and to my surprise it was open at 3pm on Friday and it was quite busy. I got myself some lunch and more water, it was hot out and I was getting hungry. While eating lunch I checked the times of trains back to London from East Tilbury station and discovered it was a 36 minute walk to the station, there was a train in 39 minutes and the next was over 40 minutes after. I took a power walk around the outside of the fort and then even faster one to the station, making it with three minutes to spare.

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I enjoyed the walk to the fort, it had all the things I expected and the weather was really nice. The walk through East Tilbury to the station was not quite as enjoyable, it’s not a place I could live. An edgeland town; not of the city and not of the country.

I like edgeland places, but edgeland towns are not for me.

A bittersweet walk in the forest

Saturday 27 April 2024 – Epping Forest.

Today was my first walk in Epping Forest proper since December 2022, and as I used to go at least monthly when I was living in Walthamstow prior to the 2019 move to St Leonards, that is quite a remarkable break. Yes, I’ve really gotten into much more urban walking and photography in the past couple of years, but I love(d) the forest so this still felt like a madly long break.

It was to be a bittersweet return…

The morning started well. The wait for the train from Leytonstone to Loughton was under a minute, I had allowed for 10-12, and it wasn’t raining as heavily as expected, but for almost May it was flipping cold. I picked up a coffee in Loughton for the walk from the town centre to the forest and it wasn’t as bad as the coffee I last bought from the same café.

The late spring forest is my next favourite to mid-autumn forest. I like that there is still some winter colour and that there is still plenty of air between the trees. It’s too busy in full summer for me. The low grey cloud provided the perfect flat light as well as dulling any sound. The light rain meant the forest was quiet. it was almost perfect.

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The plan was to walk from Loughton station to home in Leytonstone, walking almost entirely on unsealed paths and under the cover of trees through Epping Forest and the smaller subsidiary wooded areas through Chingford, Higham Park and Walthamstow. At the least the walk was just under 13kms in length, but I knew that once in forest I would be wandering all over the place and walking another 3 or 4 kms was more than likely.

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I was determined that this would be a walk and not a prolonged photography session, but yeah, who was I kidding. The camera first came out soon after I entered the forest at Earls Path Pond and it really only went back in my bag when the rain was too hard. Needless to say I was enjoying myself. I have taken loads of photos here and at Strawberry Pond in the past and will do so again in the future.

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I crossed over Epping Forest Road and spent some time bumbling about the Long Hills area of the forest, meandering down the smaller muddier tracks, taking photos here and there, changing direction when something caught my eye; though generally heading in the direction of the Hunting Lodge, where I was planning on stopping for (expensive) coffee and lunch.

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I came across a spot where the forest pixies (volunteers) had been clearing bramble and holly and removing crowded saplings and dead and dying trees to allow clearer growth. I found a nice circle of blue bells amongst the stacked felled wood. While one can fantasize over wild forest and whether Epping should just be allowed to go feral and return to its ‘natural’ state without the interference of humans, I just don’t think it would work. This forest has been attended to by humans for centuries, it was protected royal hunting ground and animals foraged here, keeping the undergrowth down. It was also a source of wood for the communities that surrounded it and plenty of ancient pollarded trees remain. If it was let go it would just be a tangled mess of that bramble and holly and almost impenetrable.

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The only place I don’t use my headphones when I’m alone is in the forest, and not for any personal safety thing, I want to enjoy the experience of being somewhere I’m not compelled to drown out the noise of the city. As I was walking I was thinking about how calm I was; I’m not one to overly promote the nature-bathing thing, and I won’t say I could feel life’s stresses leaving my body as I walked in relative peace, but it wasn’t far off that. When I go into the office I’m bombarded with noise from the moment I arrive at the station in the morning to when I leave it again and he end of the working day to walk the six minutes home. My day is surrounded by people who make a lot of noise, from those who talk loudly into their phone on the tube to drown out the rattle and screech of the trains to the constant (often inane) babble of people in the office. I have long realised I’m negatively affected by the constant noise. I need to walk in peace a lot more.

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I was walking along feeling good, taking photos, enjoying feeling unstressed when I came to one of the many path intersections. Not being entirely sure where I was I reached into my pocket for my phone so I could find myself, and….. my phone wasn’t there. Queue much frantic searching of pockets and bag, then pockets and bag again and then the rapid realisation I had lost my phone somewhere ‘back there’, back where I had meandered aimlessly for at least 30 minutes. There was no point in going back and trying to find it. Luckily one of the few other walkers was nearby so I checked I was choosing the right path to get me back to Chingford, and the station, then home.

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Other than ruining what was an enjoyable time, the most annoying thing was my phone was only two months old and it was my cost to replace it. Which, as I had time left in my day due to the early start, I managed to do.

I will try the walk again in a few weeks.

Urban Drift #1

Saturday 10 June 2023 – North London.

Walking is something I really enjoy and it’s something I’ve done for a long time (I guess it’s been since I first learned to walk), an unfocused walk around the streets of a city or out in the countryside brings me great pleasure; or at the least is act of de-stressing. It’s rare i come back from a walk feeling worse than when I left. I’d always thought that the best walking for me was under trees or near the sea but since Covid and coming back from the seven months we spent in Auckland I’ve realised that I’m the most comfortable walking in the city. This has nothing to do with safety or about getting lost, it’s just I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’m a city boy and I like the grot and grime and variety of the urban environment.

Over the last few years I’ve wandered a reasonable amount of the centre and inner east of London, it’s a vast and incredibly interesting city to walk in and the inner city is a treasure trove of buildings and streets and artefacts from its 2000 year history. Each walk has its ‘wow’ moments and I never fail to find something I’ve not noticed before, rain or shine they can look amazing if you allow it.

Over past few months, and again, probably since we came back from New Zealand I’ve become more and more conscious that I’ve been enjoying just spending time on my own or with Eleanor and I’m starting to worry I’m hermiting a bit. While I/we go out a reasonable amount I’ve not made a huge effort to see other people while we are out, so in an effort to try to change this and to meet new people I signed up for a walking group with a difference, ‘Pedestrianists’. Today was my first walk with them.

We were given notice via email to meet at a coffee shop near Euston Station at 10:00 am and to expect to walk for four hours; that was it, nothing other than a start time and place. There is no plan, there is never a plan. This walk was what they call an urban ‘drift’ and drifting with others was the exact reason I joined up, most of my walking has no plan, it felt good to do it with others for a change. This was drift number 7. There were a dozen or so drifters, a couple of other newbies but most had done these before. They were mostly young. The concept is that a random walker selects a card from a small deck then tosses the card in the air. Each card is marked with a direction on each side and the side that lands face up is the direction the walks start off. We walk for an hour in that rough direction, aiming to keep off main roads where possible, then repeat the card toss. No one knows where the walk will end up. I liked it.

It was the first brutally hot day of the summer and for a change I had packed and dressed appropriately, I had the big camera and I wasn’t sure I could walk for four hours; the most I’ve walked in the past couple of years has been two and a bit hours. I hoped my knees and hips would cope.

Our first direction was north and we immediately left Euston Rd for a parallel street and meandered our way through Mornington Crescent and Camden.

We walked past the amazing Isokon Flats building in Belsize Park, I’ve see pictures of it but didn’t realise it was in London, it’s a very lovely grade 1 listed low rise block built in the early 1930s. The building had three very important creatives who fled Nazi Germany before the war; Walter Gropius the founder of the Bauhaus movement, Marcel Breuer, an early designer of modernist furniture and Laszlo Nagy the head teacher of the Bauhaus School. As well as being beautifully designed it also homed designers of beautiful things at a critical time. I only had the fixed 50mm lens so wasn’t able to capture the building in its full glory, which obviously means a revisit.

The second hour had us going further north, though Highgate and onto Hampstead Heath; drifting around residential backstreets rather than marching more directly along busy main roads. This is supposed to be a walk for conversation and feeling part of the environment, relaxing and enjoying what the surroundings offer. This is not a walk to get anywhere or be first. The group stayed together through most of the walk, splitting off into groups of two and three, changing members regularly. I think I spoke to everyone at one point or the other, they were a social and engaging bunch and it was quite enjoyable.

We stopped for ice cream, water and a loo break and Kenwood House before heading east for the third and then fourth hours, taking a slightly executive call to follow the Parkland Walk to Finsbury Park from Archway, the only place I had more than a passing knowledge of.

We ended up at the Finsbury Pub near the park of the same name to get some very well earned liquid refreshment. It had been a hot and enjoyable four hours and we knocked off over 15kms. I stayed for a quick pint before heading home with enough time to have a cool shower and head back out with Eleanor. It was a busy, but very enjoyable day and I will be back for another drift when I next get a chance.