As someone who finds spending time with people enjoyable and exhausting in equal measure, I came out the back of two weekends spent hosting friends feeling a little frazzled. So on Monday, I headed into central London with no real destination in mind. This is what I do when I want to find my way back to me. The quiet, curious, contemplative girl who exists beneath the surface waiting for the soul-bearing, memory-sharing, wine-fuelled gabbling to be finished, so she can get back to doing what she likes doing best – walking around and seeing what happens.
I tell myself I'll go to a museum, stop off at the cinema, sit in a cafe and read, but there are days when I can't land. Did you know a swift can stay on the wing for 10 months, catching food as it flies so it never has to touchdown? Monday was one of those airborne days – where I'm propelled forward by some biological necessity, pausing briefly to order coffee. I love the self-sufficiency of getting somewhere under my own steam. To decide which direction to head next and navigate a city independently of its trains and trams and taxis. The autonomy and the anonymity.
With the first mile comes a sense of release and relief – freedom from the stationary, static, seated world of work and an end-of-term excitement for what’s ahead. I have a few well-worn routes that, thanks to the city’s constant evolutions, offer up different sights and sensations every time I tread them.
Walking around and seeing what happens is what’s informed some of my happiest travels. Before smartphones, I spent a week in Naples gazing up at street signs to orientate myself on a huge paper map – damp paper in sweaty hands, the whole city folded and unfolded until the creases started to come apart. I strolled around Quartieri Spagnoli, walked Santa Lucia’s seafront and tripped over while staring at churches on Spaccanapoli and – when I had to admit defeat – caught a train to Pompeii and a hydrofoil to Ischia, sleep instantly overtaking my sun-weary limbs. The following week, I continued to Rome and emerged from my hostel dorm room early each morning, wet hair just about keeping me cool until the sun hit its midday heights. Orange juice for breakfast, coconut ice cream for lunch, wine and whatever came with it for dinner. I was on a tight budget. I moved between the biro circles I’d marked on my map the night before – the Colosseum, Castel Sant’Angelo and Campo de Fiori, which saw me crisscross the River Tiber – the slap of a loose sandal sole soundtracking the route.
Too excited to sleep, I arrived in New Zealand and spent hours walking around Wellington, where jet lag turned a trip to the Te Papa museum into a near-hallucinatory experience. Later that year, I stopped off in Bangkok before meeting a friend in China and, because it took five minutes to wander between Wat Pho to Wat Arun, decided to ignore the waves of rickshaw drivers and walk everywhere else – a battered Discman and a few bootleg CDs my only companion. I’d been studying Robert Frost at university that year, and while I’m sure he didn’t have the outskirts of Thonburi in the middle of monsoon season in mind when he wrote Acquainted With The Night, certain lines kept running through my head.
As for walking around an unknown city alone in the dark, I’ve always felt as safe as when I’m heading home after a night out in London. In other words, not always that safe, but far too stubborn to let it stop me*. Plus, walking gives me a feeling of control and confidence that I don’t always have when sitting solo in some bar.
So just as walking has rewarded me with architectural details I might have otherwise missed and delighted me with unexpected interactions, invitations to sit at kitchen tables and stumbled-upon scenes that outshine anything written about in a guidebook, it also allows me to explore on my own terms. I can linger if I like somewhere and change direction if I don’t. It also gives me access to a city’s quiet corners and permission to stop and stare**. A woman roaming around at night might look vulnerable, but a man waving at children as he wanders residential streets by day might look suspicious. If that’s the trade-off, I’ll take it.
Sometimes, my desire for perpetual motion is thwarted. I’m looking at you Kuala Lumpur with your distinct lack of pavements. But, not to be defeated, I devised several walkable routes that passed places of interest and were punctuated by air-conditioned cafes during the year we lived there. I loved my time in India, but its larger cities don’t really lend themselves to mindless meandering. Consulting a map isn’t easy when surrounded by crowds and chaos, so I’d plan a route as best I could each morning and stride out into the scrum looking determined and purposeful. More often than not, I’d end up frustrated and fall into the closest tuk-tuk.
Over the years, marriage and Google Maps have threatened to ruin my walks. Marriage means I rarely arrive in a new city unaccompanied. Thankfully, he’s very quiet so I can still do some of my best thinking and I’ve realised it’s nice to spot things and share them with someone else. Meanwhile, Google Maps – and phones in general – mean we no longer get lost. Rather than heading in a general direction, we can track the distance to our next destination in metres and minutes. To really walk a city, you need to deviate and dawdle.
Looking back, Rome was peak roaming. Freshly graduated, I had the whole of August to do what I liked before returning to London to find a job and find a flat and find out what being an adult was all about. I wish I had some photos from that trip. I got several films developed at my local Boots, but they haven’t survived multiple house moves. I remember a couple – an obelisk casting a shadow on Piazza del Popolo, sunlight catching the spray from a fountain. And one of Piazza Navona where I met someone I liked so much I stopped walking and sat down to dinner with her. Almost 20 years later, we’re still friends. In fact, she came to stay last weekend. We soul-beared and memory-shared, and there was plenty of wine-fuelled gabbling. But we also walked around, because how else do you experience a city – whether alone or with someone – if not by seeing what happens?
* See my post on arriving in Mexico City, which defied all expectations
** However I’m acutely aware that as a white, cisgender, straight woman, I already move through the world on a cushion of privilege – walking or not