The archive

I don't believe in magic. That said, there is a strain of mysticism which seems to synchronise with the practice of walking. The ancient lines which are inscribed in the land, though buried beneath asphalt and brick, are present for reasons we'll likely never entirely know.

Walking the suburban margins of London I have stumbled - sometimes with surprise - across a range of housing estates. The explosion in population in the outer reaches of the capital travelled through the 20th century like a shockwave.

After the relative return to normal service last month, things didn't look so good for today's excursion. The weather, doubtful all week, had closed in over the last day or so, leaving a high chance of heavy rain.

When I wrote a somewhat belated introduction to my series of London's Other Orbital walks, I perhaps played down just how obsessively fascinated with roads I was as a child. For a chubby, shy and relentlessly bullied boy from the Midlands, getting…

There was just a little hint of the old days - rising early and heading out in the dark to get to the beginning of a railtour used to be a fairly commonplace happening. But today it felt like something of a rarity - and I surprised myself by being…

Over the past few years, as my explorations of the Thames have taken me further and further eastwards, I've begun to appreciate the estuary in a different way. It's fair to say that, until recently, the wide expanses of flat empty land almost terrified me.

I'd worried all week about whether my new winter coat would arrive in time for this walk. Commuting to work in sub-zero temperatures during the past week had alerted me to the simple fact that I was ill-equipped for a December jaunt, reminding me…

It's been a long-standing tradition here to escape between Christmas and New Year. There's something about getting back out into the world after a period of staying indoors, eating and drinking which is both refreshing and cathartic.

It's become almost customary to write a little update at this time of year. Partly because, despite my cynicism and dislike of many aspects of the festivities, the time spent with my family over Christmas is often a calm, quiet and pleasant interlude nowadays.