THIS city was made for walking. Far from being an inhospitable concrete jungle, London has woodland, river meadows and heathland, not to mention countless parks. Alongside bike stations and bus lanes, Transport for London devotes a whole section of its website to walking, including, under Walk London, seven routes that encompass everything from the crisscrossing towpaths of central London to fields and forests at the furthest reaches of the Tube map. Signposts embellished with kestrels and crowns lead to hidden delights, from the sweep of Oxleas Meadows to atmospheric corners, such as the Railway Children Walk, near where Edith Nesbit lived, and the tumbled graves of Abney Park Cemetery.
King of the walks is the London Loop, a 150mile hoopla around the city’s edge, sometimes called the walkers’ M25. Launched in 2001, it is monitored by Loop Leaders, volunteers from the Inner London Ramblers, who will run the Love Your Loop festival this September. The 24 sections pass along the mysterious ‘ghost roads’ near Nonsuch Palace, parallel concrete tracks the origins of which remain unknown; over Capability Brown’s Five Arch Bridge to Foots Cray Meadows; through the ancient hornbeams of Foxburrow Wood, near where Henry VIII’s daughters played in youth; and past Upminster’s rare smock windmill.
Denne historien er fra July 07, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra July 07, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
