walking – Page 2 – Where is Phil now?

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.

A brutal weekend in Norwich

Sunday 18 June 2023 – Norwich.

I haven’t gone away by myself for quite some time, and now I’ve a tenant is in my flat the option for a weekend or a couple of days away with little cost has also removed itself. I like some time to myself so decided I’d go to Norwich for a night and spend the two days walking about looking for and photographing the brutalist architecture the city is known for.

I used to really enjoy taking weekends away in random places before I bought the flat and have visited a few places around the south of England, mainly walking and photographing things. I was sitting in a pub on Saturday afternoon sheltering from a brief, but heavy shower on the way back from walking around the university when I realised that I rarely go to countryside/beach places anymore and most of my walking trips are now urban. I barely even walk in Epping Forest anymore and that is 10 minutes from home. I’ve become almost exclusively an urban walker.

I took a train from Liverpool Street Station arriving in Norwich 100 minutes later. Time that disappeared in a blur of bad station coffee and a terrible fruit muffin, music and gazing wistfully out the window. I love train travel.

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I walked around for a bit looking for a record shop that might have some keen local enthusiast who could advise if there was any gigs on tonight, the internet was telling me nothing other than dire cover bands were performing in a student orientated city, something I found hard to believe. I got misplaced and couldn’t find the street I was looking for so walked to my hotel instead. The city centre is busy but like a lot of city and town centres it’s looking a bit sad, especially with large chain stores like Debenhams closing down.

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I needed to dump my backpack and work out how to get from the hotel to the University of East Anglia (UEA) campus, the site of some very good brutalist buildings and the main objective for the weekend. UEA was only a 40 minute walk from the hotel so I walked there though it was a bit warm out.

I have to say right up front that I totally loved the brutalist bit of UEA, it would have been so much nicer if bits of it weren’t covered in scaffold and if there were less students behind the huge slabs of glass that make up the front of their flats in the Norfolk Terrace building; though I guess they are more entitled to be there than I am. I took a lot more photos than those below.

I’m a big fan of concrete brutalist stairs and UEA had some great examples.

I was also really surprised when I arrived at the top of a set of stairs and was confronted by an Antony Gormely statue. There are three of them on the campus, and they’ve not been without controversy. Which is good in some ways, art should be talked about.

The highlight of the visit is the student accommodation block, like the rest of the interconnected brutalist part of the university it was designed by Lasdun and construction was finished in 1970. The site is true brutalist megastructure and the student block is the crowning glory. I tried to get up close but there were too many students working away in their lounge spaces behind those huge windows.

Leaving the university I caught a bus most of the way back to the hotel, stopping for a rehydrating pint at a decent pub on the way. I’m glad I stopped as the rain came in a sudden and heavy downpour just as I sat down. I waited out the rain before carrying on my journey. That evening I walked into the centre and found a not too bad tapas bar to sit down for some food and a glass of wine or two while I read my book.

Sunday I got up lateish after a lacklustre sleep, my room was warm but otherwise comfortable but I drank that frustrating amount of red wine that had me too drunk to fall asleep quickly but not drunk enough to drop straight off. I had planned a walk around central Norwich to look for some of the brutalist era buildings that fringe the old city centre.

There was plenty of concrete about and some classic late 60s/early 70s buildings that may take the fancy of a brutalist purist, but my god they were photographically dull and I pretty much spent two hours walking round the city with a backpack of clothes, laptop and a novel and bag with camera and a spare lens and a bottle of water.

I got hot and wished I’d had an open return train ticket rather than the significantly cheaper booked service at 14:00. I did find some great bits of city wall down a dusty and overgrown path which was nice.

My main objective for the day was a visit to the Anglia Centre which sounded like it was due to be bowled over any time soon. The Anglia Centre was in the north of the city and on the far side of the river so I took a slow and enjoyable walk along the bank, looking for shade where I can.

I had kinda hoped that any shops that were still there would be closed on a Sunday morning and it would be a bit deserted, though annoyingly that was not the case. It had the right rundown feel and was nice and grey and concrete but there were too many people about and it’s a bit run down and it felt wrong to be taking photos; I’m not into poverty porn.

I walked through the shopping area to the carpark at the back and took a couple of photos of the graffiti covered tower above the centre and briefly wished I could go inside then realised I’m on my own and a chicken.

I wandered back through town and up to the castle trying to find coffee that wasn’t from a chain. I found a place in the mall, but the coffee was pretty bad, I should have a gone to a chain. I took a photo of the original and most brutal building in Norwich, the castle, and then carried on to a pub near the train station where I had lunch and a cooling pint. It was hot out and I’d earnt it.

That London

May and June(ish) 2023 – London.

The last couple of months or so have been a bit of blur; mainly a happy blur of family and friends from New Zealand and excessive eating and drinking. I’m pretty sure I’ve added more weight and gotten slower in the last two months than the preceding two, and I thought those were bad. Much as I’d like to break the cycle it’s going to last until the end of summer. I’m not complaining. I like eating and drinking with friends.

May was a mad busy month, I’d started a new job and it’s been pretty full on, but so far I’m enjoying it and it’s been good being back with some familiar faces in a department I’d worked in before. My Auckland sister came to stay with us for a couple of weeks after attending a conference in Valencia. She timed it perfectly to arrive between the kitchen being renovated (contents of the kitchen stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere) and the bedroom she is staying being converted into a bathroom (contents of the bedroom/bathroom stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere).

I have been reading Tom Chivers’ book about what lies beneath the feet of Londoners, ‘London Clay’, and he mentioned the Mithraeum Museum, a small, free museum in the Bloomberg building near Bank station. It seems that very few people know of it’s existence, which absolutely adds to its allure… It was the perfect place to take my sister to. History mixed with something underground; in both sense of the word.

In 1954 while digging the foundations for a new construction on one of the many World War Two bomb sites archaeologists discovered the ruins of a Roman temple. It proved to be a temple to the Roman god Mithras. The ruin was moved to a nearby site so the construction of the building could be completed. This was subsequently demolished in 2014 for the Bloomberg Building to be built. Archaeologists we given access to the site again and hundreds of artefacts we found. Bloomberg had the temple moved back to its original site, now the basement of his modern building. It was very cool.

There was an installation on the ground floor above the Mithraeum; a bunch of small vessels, such as jugs, vases and small barrels, hung from the ceiling with microphones in them, created a weird drone as we walked around them. I really liked it. Definitely a hard recommend for something to do in London that is slightly different to the norm.

After the Mithraeum we took a slow stroll along the north bank of the Thames then up to the National Galley where we saw a post-impressionist exhibition which was quite interesting, though impressionism remains my favourite period in European art. We had a walk around the gallery’s impressionist collection as well.

This was followed by an even slower stroll through China Town and Soho where we had an early dinner booked at the utterly fabulous Gautier restaurant. The food was amazing, as was a remarkable red dessert wine we had.

In an attempt to bring my sister back down to reality we decided we would go back to North Cheam, in the south London borough of Sutton and do a walk-by of 177 Windsor Avenue; the house we lived in before we went to New Zealand in 1973. I had visited in 2013(ish) but my sister hadn’t been back since we left. I lived there for three months or so when I came back to the UK in 1985 and stayed in a shared flat with some old school friends and I often wonder if they still live in the area and if they are still friends. I guess now I’m over 60 I should wonder if they are still alive.

It was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed more than I did ten years ago; maybe because I was visiting with family and maybe because it was sunnier. North Cheam was seemed less rundown than it did then. We did a short loop walk, past Allerton Gardens where I stayed in the 80s, past my old primary school and then on to our old street and house.

177 Windsor Gardens.

We then looped back to the high street where we stopped for coffee and a wee in McDonalds; the other option was the Nonsuch Inn, which was the pub we frequented in 85, but is now a Wetherspoon’s pub and I won’t give their scumbag owner any of my cash.

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The following day my sister attended evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral, not something I wanted to attend at the time, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and it sounds like it was a magical and uplifting experience, even for those who don’t believe. It’s a beautiful building and I’ve never really explored the inside. I must add it to my to-do list.

While my sister was singing songs to someone’s Lord, I took the opportunity to drift around the streets around Smithfield Market. I had no plan, just wander where the streets take me and grab some photos on the way if I saw anything interesting. I have yet to explore the Clerkenwell area, but with only 30 minutes available today I didn’t get far.

My sister was here for two short weeks and it was great having her stay with us while she was in London and her visit was over all too soon. Before she had even left some friends from NZ arrived in London, though they were staying with other friends for a few days when they arrived. Two days after my sister left I took one of our friends on a walk from Camden, down the canal to Kings Cross for lunch at Spiritland, then further down the canal to Shoreditch; stopping for beers on the way. Out first stop was the Hawley Arms, where Eleanor and I had our first date ten and a bit years ago; not that we have been there much since Eleanor stopped working in Camden. The Hawley is a rock n roll pub and was a hangout of Amy Winehouse, The Clash, The Libertines and many others.

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It was a good walk. I’ve not done the canals in a while and it was a nice reminder of how many nice places there are to walk in London.

It was a really hectic couple of months, with visitors and work being done on the house, but it was fun and I’m grateful we had visitors from NZ over to stay. I’m writing this in mid-July, a month after our friends have left and since then we have had a bathroom fitted, but the work is almost over.

St Magnus House

Saturday 07 January 2023 – London.

London, London, London. I do love you so. Sometimes I question that love as it’s very one-sided, and, though today wasn’t the best outing, it also wasn’t a day to be questioning how I feel about this magnificent, crowded, dirty, occasionally smelly and deeply frustrating city I have chosen to (mostly) live in. I wonder if you can have a truly bad day here; other than something untoward happening, which I guess is always a possibility, however unlikely it seems. Of course, if I lived in Paris, Rome, New York or Berlin or any other major city I’m sure I’d feel the same way there as well. Much as I love the wilderness. if I’m honest with myself cities are my real habitat. I should just embrace that more. You can be alone in a crowded place if you want to be, and today I was after a little solitude.

It’s cloudy and grey and cold and windy and rain is threatened, there’s also a train strike affecting all the mainline services into London, though thankfully not the tube. It sounded like a perfect day for a random street walk photo mission into a Saturday deserted city. I had a loose plan, walk about a bit and then take some photos of St Magnus House on Lower Thames St then cross London Bridge and take some photos of Colechurch House on the direct opposite side of the River Thames. Both brutalist buildings. The owners of Colechurch House appear to have big plans for a renovation which I suspect will lead to the destruction of what is already there so it would be nice to capture a little bit of its brutal loveliness.

I have been wanting to take photos of Colechurch House for a couple of years. It is directly opposite the always busy London Bridge Station which is where I leave the train when I go to St Leonards and it’s always busy with far too many people hanging and basically getting in the way of my image taking. I was hoping that with a train strike today it would be quiet. I was going to be disappointed.

Popping out from the tube into the ‘London fresh’ air at Liverpool St Station I was pleased to see it was pretty quiet on the streets with only a handful of people on the ever crowded footpath. I usually come to this part of the city on a Sunday morning; this is the business area so there is little need for anyone to be on the streets, the shops are closed and other than a few stumbling zombies heading home from the Shoreditch clubs the whole area is quiet. I crossed the road and went straight into the back streets and the private Devonshire Square.

I took a couple of photos here, nothing worth sharing and carried on walking through, with no real plan other than ending up by the Thames near London Bridge. I was happy to be aimless and let my camera lead me around.

On the far side of Devonshire Square to Liverpool St is the Middlesex Street Estate, built between 1965 and 1970, with the 23 story Petticoat Tower as the centrepiece, it is named after the much older and world famous Petticoat Lane Market which crowds Middlesex Street during the week then explodes into many of the nearby streets every Sunday. The estate was an unexpected brutalist bonus.

The walk took an unplanned turn for the negative once I left the estate and discovered to my horror there were loads of people about, not thousands but enough to put me off, there didn’t seem to be any reason for the volume of strollers, maybe everyone else thought that a random stroll around London on a train-strike day was a good idea?

I crossed Whitechapel and plunged into the back streets, usually the best bit of any city. I have no idea of the names of the streets I actually walked down as I looped back and forth towards the river. I took a turning here and popped through an alley there though found very little that piqued my photographic interest.

I ended up much nearer Tower Bridge than expected and walked down the riverside towards London Bridge, capturing this reflection of The Shard on the way.

St Magnus House, it appears, was built in 1984 though has the look of classic late 60s brutalism, though missing some of the flourishes. It’s a tough building to photograph as it rubs up closely with its neighbours.

There is a dance school in the building and a number of young dancers were eating lunch and practising on the balcony between the building and the river, prowling around taking photos felt a somewhat inappropriate so I took a couple of images from other sides of the building and then left, hoping for better luck on the other side of the Thames.

For a strike impacted city and train station there were loads of people milling on the streets outside Colechurch House. The roof bar was unexpectedly open, it’s late morning, and there were two bouncers minding the door on the walkway outside; a graffitied area I wanted to take photos of. I left without getting the camera out of my bag, crossed back over the river and walked up to Chancery Lane where I caught the tube home.

it was great getting out for the first time in a while and I really enjoyed the walk, but was ultimately disappointed that I didn’t get to take many photos; however, as I said at the start it’s hard to have a really bad day walking in London.

Hollow Pond in the snow.

Monday 12 December 2022 – Leytonstone.

The temperature has taken a turn for the cooler in the past couple of days, though I was still surprised last night when Eleanor called out from the kitchen to tell me it was snowing. I jumped out of a slump on the couch and stood watching a decent fall out the window for a few minutes. I love fresh snow fall and was a little disappointed that it was coming down in the dark of a late December Sunday afternoon, never the best time to be going out to take photos. I was even more surprised, pleasantly so, to see the snow was still coming down when we went to bed a few hours later and there was already a good layer on the ground. I got the camera and some clothes ready for the morning; just in case.

Which as it turned out was very wise. I was awake early (as usual) and a quick peer out the window showed the snow had stopped falling but there was a good solid four inches on the ground in the garden. The most I’ve seen since coming to the UK ten years ago. I had to be patient as it was still dark and there wasn’t sufficient light and it’s Monday so I’m going to be a little late for work; oh well.

I waited till there was enough light to take photos and headed out the door, given how much snow there was on the ground it was surprisingly warm. Or rather it wasn’t that cold and by the time I got home I had my beanie off and my jacket mostly undone, the gloves didn’t even make it on to my hands.

I took a photo of the front of the house before I left.

I’m not writing much these days, nor am I doing much photography, or much of anything else either if I’m brutally honest with myself. Due to this lack of writing I have failed to mention that we have moved house. Eleanor sold her house of 26 years in Walthamstow and has bought slightly further east, in nearby Leytonstone. We moved in early November. The ‘new’ house is 150 years old, doesn’t appear to have any 90 degree angles inside it and is very charming and we are quite happy now we have fully moved in and unboxed our stuff. Though I must confess to not yet putting my records into any sort of order; and I hope they all made it to the new house.

The walk from the new house to Hollow Pond is about 10 minutes, significantly less than the old house. Once I get back on my bike, which I promise I will do in the new year, I can easily ride from Hollow Pond to Epping Forest, though there will be a few shorter rides to be made to get my legs and lungs back into shape. Unsurprisingly the streets were quiet for a Monday morning, it was slippery. Suburban London looks lovely on the first morning following a night of snow.

I was surprised to find there was hardly anyone at Hollow Pond, I expected it to be busy with people experiencing the snow or like me and taking photos, I guess many have to go to work and perhaps schools were open, I don’t know. Maybe folk just don’t like the snow as much as I do. I like it on day one anyway, London snow on day two and onwards is more a grey icy slush than a pristine cold white blanket.

I took a few photos as I gingerly walked around the outside of the lake; it is beautiful.

I’ve tried to take photos of this tree on numerous occasions in the past, it’s my favourite dead tree, though I’ve rarely been successful enough with the images to share them here. I liked both of the ones I took today.

This is a Monday, a work day, and while I was happy to be a little late to the ‘office’, I didn’t want to linger too long, though I could easily have wandered for much longer and tried to get a few more photos in the trees. I did take a lot of photos though and was very happy with my work and with getting out of the house.

I’m hoping for more snow as the winter progresses, though I guess I ‘m happy there was at least one good fall that I managed to experience.

A brief moment of solitude.

Saturday 26 November 2022 – Epping Forest.

There was a moment this morning when I had no idea where I was; I mean I knew within a few hundred metres where I was, I was in Epping Forest somewhere roughly around Loughton Camp. What I didn’t know was where I was in that bit of forest, or to be perfectly honest, where Loughton Camp was. This bit of forest has changed since I was last here and I was discomforted by this, normally I know exactly where I am and which direction is home. What was worse was I knew I should walk towards the sun, it had been behind me on the way in, but it felt wrong, and it was an effort to ignore the wrongness and keep walking into the low-cloud covered sun. I ended up back at the broken chair I’d photographed 30 minutes before. I never did find Loughton Camp. Next time I will take the path straight to it.

It’s been so long since I was last in Epping Forest proper that I had to do a blog search to find the date; 23 May 2020, over two and half years ago. This would have been inconceivable a few years back when I was going there almost weekly. Admittedly I’ve walked in the forest fringe, in Walthamstow Forest and Wanstead Park since returning from New Zealand in February, but today was the first venture into the main forest. Once back under the tree canopy I realised how much I had missed it. One of the prices I pay for trying to live in two different places.

This trip was made specifically to take photos so took a couple of lenses and the tripod, which for a change I made extensive use of. I chose Loughton Camp as the first section of the forest to visit after my absence as it is reasonably easy to get to from the new house in Leytonstone; Loughton Station is only two stops up the Central Line from home, and it’s a only ten minute walk to the forest from the station.

I took a lot of photos in what was really only a sort visit; a couple of hours spent wandering and snapping. It was extremely enjoyable, for a change I hit autumn just about dead on.

Amsterdam

Wednesday 21 September 2022 – Amsterdam, Holland.

Amsterdam. The final city in our three city whistle-stop holiday, which sadly was all over far too quickly; both the holiday and our stay in this wonderful city of canals and cobbled streets.

I deliberately chose to go to Amsterdam on a Monday rather than over a weekend, I’m not a party person and the thought of a city full of stag-dos and hen parties was horrifying. I want some semblance of peace and quiet while I holiday and don’t want to be lumped in with the louder drunken English tourist.

All our inter-city travel has been via train, it’s long been my favourite form of travel. Headphones on and gazing out the window as we move through the world is one of the true joys of travelling. I like to take photos through the window as we go, mostly unsuccessfully; a lot of attempts went into a virtual bin to get a couple that I liked. The countryside is mostly flat and rural, I was looking for olde worlde windmills but didn’t see anything other than large modern wind turbines; though there is a beauty in those as well; I’m glad I don’t live near them though.

We loved Amsterdam, as in Brussels and Gent we stayed outside the centre but within easy walking distance; though we really didn’t do much in the centre, a quick walk through and that was it. We missed all of the central city attractions, mostly deliberately. I’m not that sort of tourist.

We walked past Rembrandt’s house, I knocked, though he wasn’t in.

The view from our hotel room in the Jordaan.

We spent most of our time walking around the canals that fringe the centre of town. Canal side walking was such a joy, just like Gent the inner suburbs were dominated by cyclists and pedestrians. There were cars, but few and they all seemed to give way to those not in tin boxes, it was quite civilised. I don’t recall the constant blaring of horns at any minor inconvenience caused by someone cycling slowly up a cobbled single lane road. The Heineken sign is above the door of my favourite bar of the whole trip.

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One of things that I found very amusing was the number of (often white) vans parked on bridges, I have so many photos with unexpected and unwanted vans in them.

I took a lot of photos of canals and bridges. Did you expect anything else?

There were some great houses here, though not all of them were straight. I like the variety of residential architecture in the different European towns and cities I’ve visited over the years; different weather and environmental conditions has led to a different style of building. This makes urban walking so much more interesting.

I loved these tiny cars, there were a lot of them about, some powered by cranky old petrol engines that sound like they’re held together with gaffer tape and ancient congealed grease and street dust, the newer ones are electric and silent; neither seem to move very fast. I’ve not seen these anywhere else.

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As in Gent and Brussels we found a number of quite chilled cafes and bars (not the ‘special’ kind’) to hang out in, mostly out of the main tourist areas. There was a bar round the corner from the hotel that I spent a couple of hours in over a couple of small beers while I read my book and listened to the dub reggae they were playing. It was the local bar I dream of having where I live but have never found. I guess everything looks better through the rose-tinted glasses of a holiday. On our last night we found a whisky bar that had a nice range of whisky based cocktails, we stayed for a couple; the music was good and they place felt nice; admittedly there weren’t many other customers. Like the gin bar in Gent on our first night this place also had ladderlike stairs going to the toilet, not a place for cocktail wobbly legs.

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When we planned the trip we intended to visit the world renown Rijksmuseum art gallery, but wow, it’s expensive!

We decided we would visit the MOCO Modern Art museum instead, it was a bit cheaper and was focused on street and pop art rather than the classics. Amongst the Banksy and Warhols they were exhibiting a couple of Stik paintings, the kind of thing you normally see painted on city walls.

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MOCO was in the same precinct as the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, another nice part of Amsterdam about 30 minutes from where we were staying. There were quite a few people here, probably the largest volume of other tourists we’ve seen. A lot of accents and languages being spoken around the coffee and waffle cart tables. It was nice and I miss that sort of thing quite a lot; I find a joy in being amongst strangers, who have all come to somewhere else to gather a drink coffee. Of course I don’t talk to them, that would be madness.

All too soon it was time to head back home; a week away was enough to refresh, and enough for a taste of the low countries, but I left wanting more; which is a good thing. Like most other places I’ve visited, I would willingly come back.

The train back to London was really busy and I really should have checked out seats before we left, our view was, um, limited. At least we were near the bar.

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Gent, Belgium.

Friday 16 September 2022 – Gent, Belgium.

There won’t be a lot of text in this, nor the following couple of posts, though there are quite a few photos in all three. Gent, Brussels and Amsterdam are photogenic in their different ways.

We loved Gent, I think we possibly could have done with one more day, though we saw most of the things we planned on seeing. The main thing we missed was the ‘Adoration of the Lamb’ altarpiece in St Bavo’s Cathedral. Something for next time; I like to think we will go back one day, it is a place to return to.

Gent is a medieval town surrounded by canals, very similar to the more classically beautiful Bruges. Gent had the edge for me as it has a student population and is a little more ‘grunge’ than Bruges; there is street art and some graffiti and student type bars with decent music. It’s not just a tourist town, though tourism must be one of its primary income sources, it’s a lived in and loved place. For an ancient town it is young and it felt right.

Some highlights.
Gin.

Le Alchemist. We popped in because it was raining and stayed for two very nice, and expensive, glasses of gin and tonic each. They had a nice range of different gins and tonics, the music was great and we were the only customers for a while; it was mid-afternoon. The steps to the bathroom were not for the faint hearted; nor the drunk.

t’Druepelkott. A number of people advised us to visit this tiny canal side bar in the tourist area, and all those people were right. What a place! The (I assume) cigar smoking owner only serves hots of flavoured gin, poured into a large or small shot with a shaky hand. The glass is filled to brim and you have to sip from top before lifting it from the bar to take back to your seat. 70s and 80s funk sound tracked our couple of drinks and it is up there with the top moments of the trip.

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The food was great as well, vegan food is common, we found a couple of places that were 100% vegan; it’s not overly cheap, but it was very nice and we ate well.

Walking.

Gent is an easy town to walk and cycle, there were definitely fewer cars than most other places. The narrow and cobbled streets twist and turn and cross the canals that edge the town. We walked a lot, an awful lot. It’s the only way to see and feel this place.

I took a lot of photos. Castles, cathedrals, wonky ancient houses and street art from throughout the ages, who could ask for more?

Street art.

Castles and cathedrals.

Streets and canals.

S.M.A.K. The museum of contemporary art is lovely gallery with a great exhibition featuring some small works by Derek Jarman part made from items found around his Dungeness Beach home. As a recent Jarman convert these were the first pieces of his I had seen up close.

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