A collection of 5 stories
London's Other Orbitals
London’s other orbital roads connect the places between its better-known routes. Across the northern suburbs, old lanes and numbered roads thread through town centres, river valleys and stretches of surviving countryside. Walking them reveals connections which are easily missed from a train window or behind a windscreen.
This collection brings together the introduction and four walks from the 2017 project: the A503, A110, A504, and the A5109 and A109. The routes lead through everyday London, where inherited boundaries, earlier road schemes and the lives of successive communities remain visible. The introduction comes first, followed by the walks in their original sequence.
4 of 5 stories mapped
In this collection
London's Other Orbitals: A (late) Introduction
I set out to write a fairly ordinary report on a long, satisfying walk I recently completed - and as the introduction grew, I knew I was in fact writing something else.
London's Other Orbitals: Walking the A503
I've written before about my early interest in roads - one that has never really gone away, and has often reawakened at times I've felt challenged or frustrated.
London's Other Orbitals: Walking the A110
I realised as I sat on the near-empty Northern Line train, shuddering noisily into the light somewhere in Finchley, that my previous visit to this part of the London had been a very long time ago.
London's Other Orbitals: Walking the A504
A little after arriving home from this trip, news began to filter through of the terrorist attacks on London Bridge and at Borough Market. It was hard to map the scenes of quiet, empty desolation on…
London's Other Orbitals: The A5109 & A109 - A Middlesex Arc
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.