travel
-
South London by Thameslink
In Croydon there are towers high, lean, and empty. At the station, an older woman with a natty blue rinse limps for the front carriage, and passes a human-shaped package in a pushchair. This is topped with a hat with bear ears, poking out from the swaddled layers below. High visibility clothing must be worn Read more
-
Amersham (4am Eternal)
I’m currently cat-sitting at the end of the Metropolitan Line, deep in John Betjamin’s Metro-land. O Metro-land! Is all still pleasant in this Tory suburban eternal? All early data points to no. Amersham-on-the-Hill is where the old Metropolitan Railway now ends, an almost-place with a little mock-Tudor high street, two vainglorious kebab shops, and a Read more
-
Pells Pool, Lewes
For all its myriad charms, Brighton lacks a good, old-fashioned, public outdoor pool or Lido. [1] It had one once – at Black Rock, below Kemptown, before the dirt, dust and noise that came with the construction of Brighton’s crappy Marina put punters right off their morning breast stroke. It closed in 1978, and the Read more
-
Walking from Lewes to Rottingdean
On a windy, sunny Sunday afternoon, I got my butt out of my usual, sometimes self-defeating patterns of weekend behaviour and took myself up into the Downs. I’m very lucky to have the South Downs National Park on my doorstep, and I have been rationing bits of it out to myself slowly. My brain forever Read more
-
The Hovercraft from Southsea to Ryde
The Hovercraft from Southsea in Hampshire to Ryde on the Isle of Wight is the last commercial passenger hovercraft service in England, and one of two left in Europe. [1] Hovercrafts were the future, once. A British invention, from the endearingly stereotypical crackpot eccentric Christopher Cockrell, these were the postwar zeppelins: a mode of transport Read more
-
A wander up Chanctonbury Ring
“Chanctonbury is a place where time slows” [1] The last time I made it up to Chanctonbury, the world was different. It was 2019, and I was walking the South Downs Way. I was lost, but not in a geographic sense, as it’s hard to lose one’s bearings when walking a giant ridge of chalk Read more
-
Cycling London to Berlin, Day #2: Tooting to Harwich International
“Once you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life,” as my Dad once told me, quoting Samuel “L” Johnson out of Blackadder. He didn’t tell me this was a quote, of course. I found this out much later. And I didn’t know the full quote until now: “When a man is tired of London, he Read more
-
Cycling London to Berlin, Day One: London St Pancras to Tooting via Westminster, Vauxhall and New Malden
Day #1: St Pancras to New Malden via old haunts, then New Malden to Tooting. 23 miles in total. Legs: fine. Butt: pretty much fine. I’m cycling to Berlin to raise money for the RNLI, in memory of my Dad, Adrian, who died this summer. Dad loved the sea, and never quite made it to Read more
-
You are now leaving the American Sector (aka: three nights in non-tourist Berlin)
Berlin was excellent. I continue to adore it, though I have no idea what it makes of me. I was there to catch up with wonderful Halie [1] rather than to do tourist things. We enjoyed many excellent conversations [2], catching up on love and life and academia. It had been a while: we last Read more
-
London to Berlin, via Harwich Ferry and European Sleeper
Last time, I came to Berlin via the night ferry and then a day train from Amsterdam. It’s now possible to flip reverse it: the day sailing from Harwich, and then a sleeper from Holland. [1] My journey started at 5:25am in Furzedown, near Tooting Common, with Murphy the dog forlornly watching me get underway. Read more
jamesofwalsh 