How well do you know your neighbourhood?
I’ve lived here for over 20 years and, until the first lockdown when I had to work out what the best routes for my daily perambulation, I hadn’t realised that I used the place as a base and pretty much everything I did happened at least 2 miles away and usually in another town.
I’m still WFH and last week I took a slightly different route home from the Co-op in order to listen to more of my audiobook*. I walked along a gently curving road and realised that not only did I not recognise any of the street names, I had no idea which way I was going. I was less than a mile from home!
When I was growing up (in a very similar type of area), I knew every street, close and alleyway because a. I helped my mum do a door to door collection, b. I went round collecting jumble for the scout jumble sale and c. Everything had to done on foot or on my bike.
Am I alone?
*I have a rule to only listen to books while I’m walking as it makes me take more exercise.
Not really: I love a new route and always try different paths and roads. The delight when they add up and join together is immense. Comes from when I was a student in that London, a favourite was to spend an afternoon being just to walk, in any direction, and see where I arrived. Sometimes humdrum, sometimes edgy, always fascinating, especially popping into dodgy boozers and local caffs for sustenance. (If the boozer looked too dodgy, hence the caff option.)
As I read the rest of the responses here, and with that tendency always there, I wonder if my line of work has accentuated that. The most important piece of kit, at least when I began, was an A to Z, pre sat nav, followed by a spade, for if you drive into a snow drift, and a torch to look out for house numbers in the dark. I love the back streets and byways.
I always look suspiciously at people walking, wondering what nefarious activity they are up to. Unless they have a dog. I have two, avoiding all suspicions.
I’m always out and about walking and don’t have a dog, proving your theory to be valid.
What was the last nefarious activity you got up to?
Not telling. Tis a secret nefar.
Yes and no. Probably in the past I was a bit more myopic, but like most of the population I’ve been walking a lot more since covid. I love finding all the funny nooks and crannies and hidden wee paths around where I live.
I’ve recently moved back to pretty close to where I grew up, in the middle of Barnsley. In fact, I live a few hundred yards away from the hospital that I was born in. I was very much a tarn lad and growing up in the middle of Barnsley in the 70s/80s you either had to be hard, have a best mate who was hard, or be a fast runner who knew every single getaway route within a mile of your home. I fell into the latter category. My mates weren’t as fast as me though, so we had to rely on the local knowledge, like where every alleyway led to, where the holes were in all the fences, which fences were easily scalable, etc. Even now, when I take my lad up to the cricket/sports club for his goalkeeper training, I could take him about a dozen different routes from here. I wouldn’t rely on the holes in the fences still being in the same place though.
Our house backs on to a timber yard. When I was a teenager we used their car park to play football in during the winter, the reason being that the security lights acted as floodlights, so we could play all night. In my mid-20s in the 90s, when I was living and working in Hampstead, enjoying the nightlife in Camden Town and taking advantage of everything that London had to offer, had you told me that one day I’d be living back round here I would have thought you’d gone crackers.
Fair play to you Paul but I could never move back, I was never the hardest or fastest but like you I knew every inch of my local estate and every path, tree, bush and shortcut in the park behind my house. About once a year when I’m on my way to Oakwell I spend 15 minutes driving around Wombwell just revisiting old haunts and thanking anything that may be listening that I don’t have to live there anymore.
I walked down the hill into the village. Yup, still there. Nodded to Jean-Marie. Walked home again. Once again Mount Everest successfully conquered.
My sense of direction is awful, I like to say that I’m “geographically dyslexic” (I’m sure there must be a special term for it), and I can never translate the landscape on a map to the real life surroundings, they just don’t match in my mind.
But I’m very familiar with my local surroundings – I have to be, or I’ll get lost all the time!
Actually, I often do get “lost” anyway, if I happen to arrive at a street from the other direction than I usually do – it’ll take me a good while to understand where I am when that happens. And I don’t know the names of barely any streets either, as my memory just refuses to store them.
Still, I know how to walk to get anywhere I want to, even though some part in the middle of the walk will be a bit hazy, but I’ll still get there. And I know all of the small obscure shops and where to buy that particular object that nobody else sells. The part of downtown Stockholm where I live is so full of interesting shops and restaurants that there’s very little need to go anywhere else for those reasons, but I’m always walking all across the city for hours anyway, just enjoying myself and getting some exercise.
If I for any reason need to go to a particular shop in the very center of the city, I’ll still call that “going into the city” like I did when I was young and lived in the suburb, even though I now live in “the city” and the part I mean takes me fifteen minute to walk to…but in those days there was basically two or three streets and one mall that we’d visit so I tend to still call those bits “the city” to this day.
So, short answer: I can go anywhere, but I can’t tell you how to get there!
I must admit, I – or rather Mrs F – discovered another path only a quarter of a mile from our gaff. I had not investigated that area as it runs from (a) housing estate to (b) church, neither of which are if any interest to me.
It does, I suppose, give me another route option to the cafe, although I’d have to cross the main road twice to get there. I’m quite happy cutting through the old hospital grounds and jumping a ditch*.
(*) the Scouts built a wooden bridge, which the hospital land-owner takes down every year as it fails “Health & Safety”. So the Scouts build a replacement. Until the next year, etc…
Yeah, I know my area pretty well. It comes of walking everywhere – I was already doing this pre-lockdown, but obviously that intensified a lot during covid. I don’t think there’s a street within a couple of miles of the house I haven’t walked down at least once.
Walking is wonderful – understanding how the little chunks of town and country you’d otherwise roar through at 5 times the speed actually connect. I live in Windsor and can pretty much find my way home blindfold from anywhere in a 10-mile radius. I know people who couldn’t get from Ascot to Slough without a car, or even imagine such a feat were possible.
I love walking. Finding your feet again is the best favour you can do yourself. (And that’s even without the sheer joy of running thrown into the mix.)
You had me at “walking is wonderful”… then lost me at “the sheer joy of running”….
Try it. Persevere. I’m not kidding. I went from a seriously overweight man who used to baulk at walking half a mile to pick my kids up from Brownies, to a man with a BMI of 23, a bit of a six pack, and two half-marathons under his belt (not to mention countless 5 and 10K daily runs).
Of course I hated it at first, it’s hard! Good stuff always is. But there aren’t very many better feelings than being in mile 4 of a 10k, and thinking “I could do this all day”.
My last half marathon, if it hadn’t been for muscle and foot soreness, I genuinely wouldn’t ever have wanted to stop. From a lung and heart POV, I felt utterly invincible and full of joy.
At the end of 2019, to put this in some perspective, I couldn’t run 5 kilometres, at all. Not even close. The first one I finished, I finished in something like 46 minutes and was delighted. Now, I do it in a little over 20.
The change in my body and mind is unbelievable: I do 75 pushups every morning! I can do 30 pull-ups, in sets of 10 (a year ago I’d never done one). The weight I used to be, I now deadlift.
All this started with walking, and it’s still a vital part of my day. And yes I’m extremely evangelical about it. Sorry. 😉
Chapeau, @hedgepig. I’m envious! I was a hardcore distance runner until my early 40s, when injuries put paid to it. And doing the strength work, too, is so important. I do plenty of that, along with indoor rowing and outdoor swimming, but nothing beats the joy of running.
You certainly are an evangalist! I’m glad it’s something you enjoy so much.
I have dabbled in running in the past, when I was in my mid-thirties. From ten minutes jogging feeling insurmountable, I built it up over a few months a few minutes at a time until I was doing 30 minute runs twice a week. But I never got that euphoric feeling that runners always seem to go on about. (Only bleeding nipples on one memorable occasion I was wearing a white tshirt….). Plus I was never a sociable runner – I hated the thought of joining a running club or anything like that.
I then worked up to doing a 10k (56 mins) and a half marathon – the latter took me almost two and a half hours and I didn’t feel euphoric crossing the finishing line, just drained. I thought at that point, I just don’t have the body mass or the brain type to appreciate running, or something like that. I’m not really sporty in general and am quite heavy footed. And I started out running expecting to lose weight but found I actually put on nearly a stone – probably just eating too much, in the belief I could eat what I want as I was exercising. Anyway, I’ve basically never run again since then! No doubt you would despair at me giving up like that.
Walking, however, is a total joy for me. Just out of interest I used an app for a while, and my normal speed is about a km every 10 mins on a flat road, which is a reasonably brisk pace I think? I suppose on average I do at least two 4km walks a day (just me and the dog), with longer ones up to 8 or 9 km at weekends fairly often. Out of interest I calculated my BMI this morning and I’m somewhere between 24 and 25, which seems all right. I’ve been a lot heavier over the years.
Good stuff @hedgepig. Got to know my neighbourhood much better when I started running around it, also built up to a half marathon over a long period (and ended up in hospital!). Change in my body not as big as yours though.
Haven’t run for about 6 weeks and miss it a lot, my left knee is causing me much pain (bit hot for running at the moment here anyway). Am going to see a specialist. Arthritis? Hope I can run again.
I had periods when training for the half marathon (2019) when I got completely in the zone (after about 10 or 11K) and felt I could just keep going, was like being on drugs.
Left knees are a bastard. Mine is also tricky – I had nearly a month off with a pulled something or other. I’d got busy at work and hadn’t been walking as much – I’m certain that’s why it happened: loss of strength from loss of walking. Hope yours gets better soon!
Cheers. Mine just started hurting without an obvious cause. Ran a couple of times and it was really painful a day or two afterwards. So I stopped.
Have an appointment with a sports injury specialist in a couple of weeks, nothing more than (light) walking for a while I think 🙁
Walking is indeed wonderful.
We are descended from primates who lived in trees, until a few decided to get up on their hind legs and walk around. Suddenly, our menu expanded. As a result, humans are hard-wired to walk.
As we walk, our hearts beat a bit faster, making us more alert, paying closer attention for prey or predators, or simply enjoying nature. When our feet strike the floor in a regular rhythm, it creates a resonance in our circulatory system improving blood flow everywhere, especially to the brain. We can think better and quicker. We feel brighter and full of life.
Walking makes us feel good.
Couldn’t agree more. I did a training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) therapy a while back, the method that involves the therapist moving their hand from side to side like the pendulum of old school hypnotists. The method came about when its originator went for a walk in nature and felt better after strolling through a wooded area, with the sunlight dappling down through the trees. It struck me that the walking itself played a large part in that feeling better.
@barry-blue
Interested that you are trained in EMDR. My 17 year old son is a good 8 months into a course (for early life trauma.) I can’t quite get my head around it. Part of the therapy involves, I think, moving memories from one part of the brain to another so they can be accessed, by blinking your eyes.
Hi @freddy-steady – the crux here is that the eye movement elicited by the movement of the therapist’s hand (moving lights are also available) resembles the REM of sleep. The shortish cycles of REM at night are when we process that which hasn’t been processed the day(s) before. Experiences become proper memories, stored in the hippocampus as if with the label ‘This happened then. It’s over’) Traumatic experiences, by definition, haven’t been processed (sent to be healthily stored in the hippocampus), and are in a fragmented state, triggering amygdala (smoke alarm) activation when something slightly associated with them appears to the senses (the colour red in Hitchcock’s ‘Marnie’ being a classic instance).
EMDR enables the client to work through those traumatic experiences (and the consequent beliefs that have arisen) whilst in that REM state, and with frequent breaks and grounding work.
As a practitioner I actually prefer using hypnotherapy, but the foundations are similar, in that we only truly process and progress when we’re in that genuinely calm, spacious state that REM is a part of.
I hope your son benefits from the EMDR!
@barry-blue
Thanks…I kinda get it! Slowly, very slowly, things do seem to be unpicked. It’s been a year so far, nearly every week, with another load of sessions due to be signed off. ‘Tis amazing.
What is your “walking pace” song? I always seem to walk in sync with the African drumming bit at the end of Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn Part 1.
Recently I’ve been listening to, or rather revisiting, the Deep Heat compos from the turn of the 90s: I’ve found that Jack to the Sound of the Underground is pretty good for sustainable forward momentum.
Then Stakker Humanoid if you’re a bit late and need to put on a spurt (Hur)
120 bpm is ideal as it matches the lub-dub of the heart.
Jimmy Clîff – I Can See Clearly Now
I very rarely listen to music while walking. Audiobooks all the way. But if I do, it’s “classical” (I have a pedantic hatred of that word being applied generally, for some reason). Beethoven piano sonatas suit a long walk very nicely.
For running, it’s as you’d expect: bangers. I tend to find electro pop and hard rock / metal are the absolute ideal: I once shaved about 5 secs off my 5k time because RATM’s “Know Your Enemy” came on about 2 mins before the end!
I went for a walks around my childhood environment when I was last in England 5 years ago. If you quizzed me now about street names I’d be terrible, but walking around there in person and at that time, the memories kick in and you *do* know the name of the street coming up on the right, even though it’s been over 40 years. I briefly stood outside a house I lived in as a teenager. An old man was in the front garden next door and gave me a bit of a double-take look. I didn’t know him so I walked on. It was only later I realised it could well have been the same neighbour from the 70s. We lived next to a young family and he was the dad – in his 30s at the time.
One of the great benefits of Lockdown 1 was wandering but a few kilometres from our door, turning left instead of right and gasping “Bloody hell, you can see Spain !”
I know exactly where I am locally but couldn’t tell you the street name. It’s a 70s suburb and they did that 70s thing of theming roads. On my side of the main dividing road it’s flowers, across the road is artists, a bit further south it’s birds and south western towns. I couldn’t tell you at any point if I’m on Candytuft, Exeter or whatever – just ‘the birds bit’ and so on.
That’s not just a 70’s thing. I live on an early 60’s estate and, as it was built on a farm, lots of the roads are named after cows!
I had a similar “epiphany” about a year ago, and even did a google map to demonstrate to my wife just how small my world was when I was a child:
Infant school – 4 minute walk from home
Aunt/babysitter – 5 minutes
Other Aunt – 6 minutes
Cousin (emergency babysitter) – 8 minutes
Primary school – 8 minutes
Mum’s work – 10 minutes
Library – 8 minutes
Once I joined the cubs, the HQ was around 20 minutes’ away… another world!
My parents didn’t have a car until I was 17 as my father worked for British Rail and we lived on a commuter line to London (my dad was based at King’s Cross, my mum worked in the local office of a firm based in Moorgate). Family of BR enjoyed discounted travel (25% of normal cheap-day ticket, IIRC).
So, from the age of 8 or 9 I’d travel up to London on my own, often in the Guard’s or Driver’s cab if it was a friend of my dad’s on shift. I had a tube map on my bedroom wall and could get anywhere, and tell you which side the doors would open, and which end was closeset to the exit. In the other direction, with one change, I could go to York or Edinburgh for the day.
But the rest of the country involved going into and then across London to a different main line station. Milton Keynes was less than an hour away by car, but three hours each way by train. I still have a distorted view of the country based upon the overground rail map.
I’ve never driven, and I think that this, combined with a tendency in childhood to escape into reverie because of ever-present threats of violence, mean that I can be a bit like @locust when it comes to directions and knowing where I am. It’s a right-brain dominant kind of thing, having more a broad sense of things than the left-brain thin-slicing and staying with specifics (street names etc).
I went to university in London in 1981, and was the only student I’m aware of who had to make their own way there (I came down on the train from the north east). I arrived at King’s Cross station late one Sunday night with the address of a hall of residence in South London, and a cab took me there. I’d never been to London before, and the cab ride caused me no small degree of panic when I realised how far out the place was. The dark didn’t help either. I eventually became comfortable with the area and the routes into the centre of the capital, to the degree that I’d often walk through the subway at Elephant & Castle in the wee small hours after going to nightclubs. Man, the naivety of youth.
One fellow student was even less geographically-inclined than me, and one day he got off the bus when he spotted what he thought were our halls of residence. They weren’t, and he received a kicking from some of the actual residents of the council block.
I’ve lived in Brighton for 28 years, and I know it like the back of my hand. Ask me for specific directions, though, and I’ll not have a bloody clue. Apart from how to get to the sea.
“It’s between the land and the sky”
And you know you’re in trouble if you have to go up to get to the sea.
The fastest way to get where you’re going is the route you already know
That’s a theory that I’ve always found works well in London but less so if you’re planned route takes in the M25!
Not quite local (about 8 miles away) but since becoming a Postie I’ve learnt 11 different rounds, 10 rural. With between 280-500 addresses on each.
I know the all back doubles between Hove and Littlehampton after 30 years of work journeys between the two.
Plus I could still show you around Islington pretty well and walk to Victoria Station from Maygood St.
I’ve always found that riding a bike is the best way to discover routes close to home. It’s how I discovered a lot of different running and walking routes at both of our homes in Texas and it’s been very helpful now we live out ‘in the sticks’ in Ireland. Having the ebike now has allowed ne to venture even further although I now have a GPS when I go out as I’m often up to 25 km away from home as opposed to 10-12km on a regular bike. So, if you ever want to know 5 or 6 different ways to get from Kilcullen to Athy I’m your man.
Frank Sidebottom once said: “shortcuts are fantastic right? Even if you have to go the long way round to take it.”
I’m with Frank on this.
Rebecca Solnit writes well on the topic of walking- I’m currently reading Wanderlust, and that captures the purposeful aimlessness of walking very well.
Favourite walks, anyone? All my favourite walks seem to be on my own, so I must be a solitary beast at heart.
Only just a few weeks ago I think I walked my favourite walk of my life so far, but to be fair it was the perfect afternoon for it, and I was on holiday which probably helped my mood. A short circular walk, just a few miles, along part of the Ridgeway path in Oxfordshire – around the Uffington White Horse then along the Ridgeway to Wayland’s Smithy (a neolithic burial ground). it was eerily quiet and Wayland’s Smithy was breathtaking.
I can’t say I have missed the office and consider the sudden enforced move to WFH a slim silver lining of the grim cloud of the pandemic. I dislike my office or colleagues but I enjoy my own company and working at home alone suits me better.
The one thing I have missed is the walk there and back, a perfect length at 2 miles to give me a half hour or so buffer zone at the start and end of each day, though some leafy parkland. When everything kicked off, I tried circular walks at the start of the day but I found that spent them thinking about work matters. For a long time now I have incorporated a walk into my lunch break, taking a full hour for the first time in my working life, and another when I switch off. I could walk the handful of 15 to 30 minute routes available blindfold but couldn’t tell you then names of any of the streets.
Walks at lunchtime rock. To my shame, since working from home I’ve actually done this a lot less, and just worked through lunch a lot. In the office I made the effort every day to get the hell out of there for an hour each day.
I’ve done more since WFH. Not only are they 5 days a week now (I never used to go for a walk on POETS day), but, on these hot days, I’ll go for a walk before it gets too sweltering, this morning that meant back before 8am.
Re-Reading that I should be clear that I made a bad typo and meant to say ‘I don’t dislike my office or colleagues’.
Oh that’s a shame. I was reading it and nodding my head in agreement furiously. 🙂