Last night I had a dream in which I met my friends Paul and Nathan immediately after a job interview.

I was extremely dopey and out of it but the plan was for us to meet in Sydenham and walk up to Crystal Palace station, to meet Chlöe, Paul’s partner.

It’s a very easy and nice walk through Crystal Palace park, and as I joked to the two of them, “it’s funny doing this without Kirby!”

I could see the route up past the transmission tower but I veered slightly to the left, and got us slightly lost – the park turned into a road, we went past a museum, and became stuck at an urban motorway Great West Road Ravenscourt Park style.

I apologised to the lads and we doubled back, and climbed the hill. But I could no longer see the transmission tower or the postwar Crystal Palace swimming and sports centre. But I kept going, feeling increasingly embarrassed and discombobulated.

We started winding up a hill along a footpath with high old walls on both sides, and I stopped to take a photo of a strange Googie / Gothic hybrid architecture church.

I knew we were lost and so checked my phone for google maps, the last refuge of the desperate. Paul was chill and said we were fine for time, I think it was 2:40 and we were meeting Chloe at 3.

My phone wasn’t getting any reception so a mistake was made in the dream: we handed over responsibility for finding the way to Nathan.

Nathan looked at his phone and said don’t worry, it’s just a bit further up the hill. This felt wrong to dream me but he said “oh, so I WAS heading in the right direction!”

We continued uphill as the path narrowed and became busier. It now more closely resembled Camden Passage in Islington, and at a fork in the path we turned left into a Victoriana arcade built into the hillside.

This turned out to be a busy warren of stalls, shops, and passages. Nathan was still confidently following google maps and led us down a series of spiral staircases and corridors until we came to what seemed like a backstage area.

Security happily let us through and I was still willing to believe this was the most direct way to Crystal Palace station.

We passed through a bar with a dancefloor, where people were drinking and dancing tho it was still daylight.

We headed out the entrance of the bar which opened up into a 1960s shopping centre, but Nathan and Paul were moving too fast and I lost them in the crowd.

There were more normal people here, away from the partygoers of the cavernous Victoriana. Shoppers and families doing their Saturday afternoon duty in the mines of conspicuous consumerism.

I realised that Nathan had led us astray. This wasn’t Crystal Palace but a suburb / New Town to the north of London, which was nevertheless still on the tube and rail line.

I exited the mall briefly, the centrepiece of which was a tall, early modernist tower, surrounded by late nineteenth century, Metroland style architecture but also a faintly medieval town centre.

I went back underground. The station was connected to the shopping centre and I walked in trying to find the platform for Crystal Palace, but the crowds were impatient and carrying me along, and I was too shy to ask a member of staff.

I searched all the platforms – the station was beautiful – and there were lines I’d never heard of, going to all sorts of banal and unexpected destinations.

There were Thameslink trains in a giant old engine shed. They loomed over us, as there were no platforms, and it was not immediately obvious how we were supposed to access the carriages.

There was an incredible view over the hillside through the glass, and I think it was some kind of rail museum as well as being s functioning transport hub.

Beyond the shed I could see the roundel informing me of further platforms. Perhaps this was were the platform to Crystal Palace, or Wimbledon as my brain was now calling it, lay.

I headed in this direction, again jostled by the crowds that had been ever present since the arcade. One person walked into the back of me and I turned around angrily, only to find it was a small dog on a lead held by a benign soul.

I walked up some stairs and then down to join the queue inside the covered platform, when I realised this was a miniature railway line. A tourist attraction.

For a few hopeful seconds I hoped it might be a still geographically useful tourist line, like the steam train in Devon, but it soon became clear the trains just travelled on a loop around the hub. The engines were weird Kraftwerk-stylised versions of 1950s diesels.

I doubled back out of the platform, pushing past the crowds, and as one of these tiny trains made off on its run I made my way alongside it back to the station entrance, and the staff, who showed me to the correct platform.

On arrival at Crystal Palace there was a well detailed and beautiful map showing where I’d gone wrong on the walk, and the route up the hill I’d taken, the church, and the fork in the path leading to the arcade.

It turned out this was a whole beautiful and very tourist friendly area of London I’d previously been unaware of, and I remember feeling happy that there was more to explore.

Nathan, Paul and Chlöe were nowhere to be seen.