I was staying in Buxton in The Peak District recently and
before setting off had marvellous dreams of days walking up undulating peaks
and standing, windswept and interesting, gazing at the view.
Sadly the days were eaten up with sensible things like a
visit to Chatsworth House, and spending time with godsons, so the furthest I
got was a walk around Buxton’s beautiful parks.
When I returned to South London I resolved to complete a
long walk anyway, and started to think about the walk that I had undertaken
from my front door to Central London a few years ago. I was shocked to discover
that a few years was actually nine, so decided to try to repeat it on a quiet
Friday lunchtime.
The route is one of the least picturesque that it is
possible to take, but directness is a requirement. I walked for half an hour
through urban Croydon to get to the main road heading north, and then continued
northwards, with a few diversions, until I reached the Oval Cricket Ground in
Kennington.
The route takes me through Norwood, across Beulah Hill,
straight through Brixton and ends at the Thames by Lambeth Palace, home of the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
The first thing to note is not a revelation at all. In
South London, people like fried chicken. I did not count the number of chicken
shops on my way, but think that there could be mileage in research to discover
how many US States and cities have been appropriated, following Kentucky, to
name them.
They are as ubiquitous as ale houses must have been a
century ago.
The second thing I realised, which is something that is
now firmly entrenched in life as to not be noticed by most people, is that I
was the only person who was not looking at a mobile phone all the time. Everywhere
I looked, people were staring down instead of looking up. Hardly anyone pays attention
to his or her surroundings.
I thought for a while as I walked about the experience of
approaching London in this way a hundred, and two hundred years ago. The main
geographical obstacle is Norwood Hill, from which you get a first good view of
the capital. It is no longer dominated, as it had been for three hundred years,
by church spires. In fact, at St Luke’s West Norwood the church comes into view,
and behind it, miles away and many times higher, now looms the city.
The experience of navigating from one church spire to
another might be something from fiction, an Austen-like creation. However, what
is real is how small churches seem today. At the start of the route is the 43-storey
monstrosity of Saffron Square, and at the end the huge towers of the city of
London.
There are places on interest en route. CamillePissarro painted the area around Norwood from the 1870s when it was a village.
He had come to London to escape the Franco-Prussian War. His wife was from
Croydon.
I also unknowingly
passed right by the place when the Jules Rimet Trophy (the original Football
World Cup) was discovered by a dog called Pickles in 1966.
The villages are gone. From South Croydon, in an unbroken
sweep straight to the northern boundaries, one conurbation stretches punctuated
only by the name changes of the boroughs and the occasional park. Sometimes an area
is poor, and dominated by bookmakers and budget supermarkets; and from time to
time is gentrified and marked by expensive looking barbers and bjiou
second-hand shops.
Brixton is the last clearly defined town and has retained
some of the venues that make it distinct. It still has a proper cinema that is
not part of a multinational corporation, and a thriving market. Music venues
continue to draw in culture and free thinkers. It still has edge.
It peters out to the north and becomes just another
magnet to wealthy developers, and rich young people looking for somewhere with
an exotic postcode and identity.
And then it all changes. The roads get busier, the
atmosphere begins to feel like that of a major city, and quite suddenly there
is a sense of how people are drawn towards the centre, and how they always have
been. The Dick Whittington idea persists, as the national centre for nearly
everything is London. Having been in Manchester two days previously, it was an
interesting contrast. Manchester strives to appear large (which it is), and
important. London has no need.
I continued my walk along from Lambeth Palace and met
family for a meal that evening on South Bank. In total, I had only walked
twelve miles. It is a distance that a long-distance walker of the past would
not have even felt, and yet my feet ached and I was glad to sit down. I
pondered how people walk all the way to Rome, or from John O’Groats to Land’s
End. I would struggle.
A conclusion of sorts is that I should walk further and
more often. Too often we whistle past in cars, and hardly stop to look. Too
often we never even look up from Candy Crush.
