Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I just found a note, sent by young man who could not have known it would be a much older man who read it. Like a message in a bottle, it was just a scrap in a box that has floated around the world, following me since I wrote it in 1987.
I walked from Westminster to Primrose Hill on this date in 2019. I walked past Regents Park Zoo, drug dealers and The Beatles’ Apple Studios. I didn’t see any tourists searching for Freud, apart from me. Over by Abbey Road, the street was alive with people taking selfies on one of the most famous pedestrian crossings in the world.
If you visited with us over a weekend while we lived in London, it’s likely that you joined us for breakfast in Colbert. It’s a restaurant that we often visited for breakfast but never went at any other meal times.
Many say that the Irish coastline is about 3,200 km long. Others believe it to be perhaps 6,347 km. Or maybe it’s closer to 16,000 km. Distance perception was on my mind as I was photographing the Muglins and Kish Lighthouses yesterday because The Kish lighthouse always seems relatively near on a clear day.
‘Write and tell us when we are going wrong’ said Aung Sang Suu Kyi at the end of her interview with Fergal Keane in 1995.
I wouldn’t know this but for walking along Offa’s Dyke for a few days in 2019. My walking buddy and I found ourselves in a bookshop in Hay-on-the-Wye where I picked up a used copy of Fergal Keane’s Letter to Daniel, published in 1996 for his new-born son. While I’ve enjoyed dipping into these stories over the last fifteen months, I realise that Daniel must be around 24 now and I wonder what he thinks of his Dad’s letters. And I wonder if Keane ever wrote to tell Daw Suu how they were going wrong.
This day eleven years ago, trapped for the weekend in Uxbridge by heavy snow, I thought I’d walk to Windsor for lunch. Some 16 km and five hours later, I was cold, tired and very hungry. I’d missed Sunday lunch by a few hours so I settled for a dinner before catching the train back. But trains that serve Windsor don’t go by Uxbridge so it took a few hours to return. I’m glad I did the walk because the Berkshire countryside was utterly transformed in a way that I only saw that once.
