spring equinox london walk

A spring equinox walk

Half in light, half in dark

Hackney to Twickenham

19 and a half miles

Saturday March 22nd 2014

1.30pm – 1.30am

Dan, David and Sue

Well Street Common

Victoria Park

Lambeth Palace Park

Richmond Park

 

Southwark Bridge

Vauxhall Bridge

Putney Bridge

Richmond Bridge

Fox

Fallow Deer

Black Cat

Blackbird

London Chest Hospital

St Thomas’ Hospital

Lister Hospital

Queen Mary’s Hospital

Battle of Cable Street

Houses of Parliament

The Fulham Group

The Putney Debates

Headteacher’s Car Only

Beware Guard Dogs

This is a designated locked site

Commit No Nuisance

 

We skirted south around The Gherkin and then The London Eye.

They were in the near distance, lit-up, electric, a yoni and a lingham.

The London Stone on Cannon Street was hidden, grimey, recessed and dim.

The wheel and the skyscraper appeared to have taken over the pulsing ‘sacred geometry’ of the city now.

 

The Worshipful Company of Management Consultants

The Worshipful Company of Fanmakers

The Worshipful Company of Fuellers

The Worshipful Company of Turners

Approach Road

Globe Road

Cyprus Street

Alderney Road

Savage Gardens

America Street

Copperfield Street

Ravenna Road

 

The Cheesegrater

The Walkie Talkie

The Shard

The Trembling Lady

 

A man who said his dog ‘Caesar’ wouldn’t hurt us

A janitor who gave us the exit key code out of a Chelsea cul-de-sac, 37 37

A man who asked for money, saying his girlfriend had kicked him out

Three people who said ‘I love you’ to us under Twickenham Bridge

 

Sitting in the dark in Richmond Park, Dan read a passage from W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz:

‘It was then, after my work of destruction in the garden and when I had turned out my house, that I began my nocturnal wanderings through London to escape the insomnia which increasingly tormented me. For over a year, I think, said Austerlitz, I would leave my house as darkness fell, walking on and on, down the Mile End Road and Bow Road to Stratford, then to Chigwell and Romford, right across Bethnal Green and Canonbury, through Holloway and Kentish Town and thus to Hampstead Heath, or else south over the river to Peckham and Dulwich or westward to Richmond Park.  It is a fact that you can traverse this vast city almost from end to end on foot in a single night, said Austerlitz, and once you are used to walking alone and meeting only a few nocturnal spectres on your way, you soon begin to wonder why, apparently because of some agreement concluded long ago, Londoners of all ages lie in their beds in those countless buildings in Greenwich, Bayswater or Kensington, under a safe roof, as they suppose, while really they are only stretched out with their faces turned to the earth in fear, like travellers of the past resting on their way through the desert.  My wanderings took me to the most remote areas of London, into outlying parts of the metropolis which I would never otherwise have seen, and when dawn came I would go back to Whitechapel on the Underground, together with all the other poor souls who flow from the suburbs towards the centre at that time of the day.”

 

All photos (as well as conversation about The Eye and The Gherkin) credited to David Williams.