Walk #3 - Jubilee Greenway - Chapter 1

 CHAPTER 1

BEGIN AGAIN

The date of my previous blog (still unfinished) belies the sheer length of time that has passed since my last walk. Many are the reasons for the interval - lassitude, relentless work, the British weather (of course!) and an inability to re-engage with the inevitably time-consuming process that is polishing a decent journal.

Today, however, the to-do list has shrunk considerably and the sun is shining, its rays spilling over through my office window and gently lapping my right cheek and temple, teasing me out of my chair. Today is a good today to begin again.

I seek out new routes to try, discarding one after another as they proffer me maps of already-trodden ground. My aim is not to walk circles in a small patch of city, but to tread new environments.

Finally, I alight upon a route that appeals - the Jubilee Greenway - which forms the subject of this blog. Unfortunately, the Greenway is 60km long - one kilometre for each year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II as it stood when the route was created in 2012.

This will not, therefore, be a one-day job. This will take many days (over many weeks) and - who knows? - might not ever be finished. But a great task is an exciting challenge, and so I shall be seeking out every available window to add kilometres to the distance I covered the previous time.

As a result, I have broken this blog out into separate chapters covering my individual efforts, each one no doubt beginning and ending with a station for the Tube to swift me away from my monotone workplace and reluctantly convey me there back again each time.

Before heading out, I peruse on my previous two blogs with a view to rekindling my perambulatory spirit. On reflection, I find them technical and dry, reciting bland facts on minor monuments that littered my routes, as if in an attempt to justify their mention or the time I had dedicated to summoning some modicum of interest in them.

This blog will be different. Being broken into many parts (as it shall be) and written on the days immediately after each segment (or so I intend), more likely it will manifest as a stream of consciousness, the varied, unstructured thoughts that dart through my mind as I make the walk, as well as those that regroup and assemble once back in my cubbyhole.

It will be less about the walk itself than the thoughts it generates, and for that I hope it will be more interesting. You can be the judge of that.

A ROYAL BEGINNING

The Victoria Memorial; Buckingham Palace; the start of the Jubilee Greenway

The Jubilee Greenway begins, fittingly, at Buckingham Palace, a former residence of the late Queen and now a residence of King Charles III. Wikipedia somewhat drably describes it as the "administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom", a rather defiant attempt to remodel an iconic landmark as a bureaucratic hub.

In truth, there is nothing particularly enchanting about Buckingham Palace. It is an 18th century building much like other 18th century buildings that surround it, only bigger. Any residual magic the palace might promise has been smothered by the dozens of tourists and the dowdy metal security fencing that crowd the drive outside. It is dull, and slightly dirty.

It's a little odd, but I feel to a large extent an impostor here. I've never experienced an affinity for the concept of nationality, but this is in all meaningful senses "my" country, "my" capital and "my" (I use the word loosely) sovereign. The area, though, belongs to the visitors and their selfie-sticks, the modern raison d'être of the royal institution to draw in overseas cash. I don't belong here.

Be that as it may, one doesn't stand in front of the once-beating heart of the British Empire without capturing a memento so, after taking photographs of it and the somewhat more tended-to Victoria Memorial before it, I set off on my stroll.

TO THE PARK

Constitution Hill; the Hilton Hotel viewed from Green Park; the Commonwealth Gates

The Greenway passes through three of the four great open spaces of central London: Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Palace Gardens. (The fourth is, of course, Regent's Park.) The route leads me across Constitution Hill and onto the south side of Green Park.

It's the penultimate day of January as I begin my journey. The trees are bare, the ground hard and brown, the grass trodden away in large patches by pedestrians, the weather not yet clement enough to afford it recovery. The air is certainly fresh, but not cold, and the sun continues to grace the park, as if to push away the winter and usher in spring. I realise that, by the end of the course of the weeks it will take me to complete the Greenway, nature around me will look quite different, leaves returned and the odd flower in bloom.

This is a strange part of London. On all sides it is surrounded by block after block of buildings - offices, restaurants, old townhouses now often converted to bed-and-breakfasts. Traffic and crowds throng through the city and bring with them inevitable noise and kineticism.

Here, though, it is stiller. Cyclists pass by calmly and walkers amble in leisurely fashion along the promenade. Between the garden walls of Buckingham Palace on my left and the park on my right, Constitution Hill is part of another world, one that evokes countryside and the deep thick of mud from a rainy morning, or the perimeter of some country estate now encroached by a village. In truth, that is what Buckingham Palace is: a country pile now hemmed in by urban development.

I'm trying not to be too pessimistic on my first day of the walk, but it's hard to get excited about Green Park. Sure, it's a sweet little open space to which one can escape to decompress, but there is little more to say about it than that. One can curate a park too much, and I am very much in favour of allowing nature to just "be", but Green Park has the look and feel of a place once treasured and now not quite abandoned, but certainly less tended and loved.

Perhaps this is in no small part because of the season; with the return of foliage, it will no doubt take on a different aspect. The absence of leaves, however, provides different perspectives, affording a view of the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, a powerful concrete triskelion that stands proudly above its neighbours. Its towering presence is enough to remind me that this is still a metropolis, but the building's solitude, with no other skyscrapers keeping it company, ensures the fantasy of a rural exclave is unbroken.

FROM ONE PARK TO ANOTHER

Hyde Park Corner, with the Intercontinental Hotel and Apsley House in the background; the Wellington Arch; the screen at Hyde Park Corner

Following Constitution Hill to its conclusion brings me to Hyde Park Corner. Here, the city no longer feels like rural England, but not quite London either. The name of this singular point is alluring, invoking images of a quiet spot at the edge of an idyllic tree-packed expanse.

In reality, Hyde Park Corner is a huge, five-lane rotary whose dense and weaving traffic and triumphal arches and gates are more redolent of central Paris. The roundabout yields in three directions to heaving dual carriageways, the modern behemoths of Park Lane, Knightsbridge and Piccadilly now superseding the ancient roads to the North, the West and the City of London.

From Hyde Park Corner, one can see many impressive buildings. The Intercontinental Hotel, Apsley House (the London townhouse of the Dukes of Wellington), the rather quaint Lanesborough Hotel, and the Australian and New Zealand war memorials. The whole place has a touch of Empire about it.

Making my way carefully across the road, I reach the centre of the junction and the Wellington Arch, a 19th-century monument to the 1st Duke of Wellington, who famously defeated Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo. A significant moment in European history. Funny, then, that the monument should be sited in the middle of a traffic island.

Although it's perfectly safe on this pedestrian sanctuary, the excitation of vehicles on all sides generates a sense of disquietude and precariousness, as if the ring of traffic might suddenly collapse in on itself and attack like a swarm of hornets. This is no calm spot to admire the Duke's victory, and so I move on, across the other side of the rotary, to the gates of Hyde Park.

WEST TO THE LAKE

The path through Hyde Park

The Greenway continues into Hyde Park along the dubiously named "Rotten Row" (it actually comes from Route du Roi) and on towards the Serpentine. The thrum of busy persons getting on with their busy lives gradually fades away behind me.

At this point, I should be able to relax. No more roads until the end of today's leg of the journey, and so I have space to breathe cleaner air and extend my arms.

But somehow, I can't relax. Because, really, I oughtn't be here. After all, it's Monday, a working day.

I work diligently in my job. I always deliver what I need to on time. I put in extra hours when required, often glued to my computer screen well into the late evening. I never do things by halves and I volunteer actively. I have my finger in many pies, and my performance evaluations are always glowing. If I take time out during the day, it is always because I have no urgent tasks to complete, and I compensate by adding time on at the end of the working day.

We are encouraged to get away from our desks. My employer admirably promotes mental health and well-being and actively advocates walks in the fresh air as a tonic.

By all rights, I am entitled to be here.

And yet, I feel anxious. And that anxiety, for the time being, inhibits my capacity to enjoy my surroundings.

For over a decade now I have experienced moderate anxiety. Don't misunderstand me: I don't suffer from the kind of terrible, crippling anxiety that many people in our 21st-century society now experience, hampering their thinking, casting shadows at every turn and, in the worst of cases, imprisoning its victims in their homes.

But I have developed a capacity to worry about the most unworryworthy of things. This is a trait of my profession. Transactional lawyers are risk-mitigators. We are trained to actively seek out and identify the most unlikely of miserable scenarios and to attempt to head them off in advance. This kind of indoctrination quickly morphs into a general worldview, with many of us inadvertently redeploying our work skills in our personal lives. Hope for the best, expect the worst and all that.

What is happening while I'm away from my desk? Will someone need my urgent assistance? Are the emails piling up? Perhaps my boss popped round and saw me away from my desk. Is he right now putting together another of his brusque, bordering-on-passive-aggressive emails?

We are also trained to work hard. When we've finished working hard, we take a quick break for coffee, then we work hard some more. When all the hard work is done, we try to bring in more business so that we can work hard on it. Sometimes, even though we're working hard, we feel we're not working hard enough, and so we work even harder to compensate. The result of this Dantean circle of hell is that, when we're not working hard, we feel bad. And so, even outside of work, we strive to find things to do - housework, hobbies, side hussles. We never rest, never embrace a moment of inactivity, of doing nothing but being.

I carry on through the Park. On my right I pass the Hyde Park Rose Garden. I imagine this to be a stunning and vibrant display in the summer when the flowers are in full bloom. Today, in the middle of winter, it is desolate and barren. And so no uplifting promising photograph of the rose garden. But, then, I never promised you that.

The Serpentine

Continuing on, I eventually reach the Serpentine, the great man-made lake at the heart of Hyde Park. The area was originally fed by the River Westbourne (or Kilburn) and one of its tributaries. The river, like many of London's ancient waterways. has since been culverted, and the lake is now fed by boreholes from which water is pumped.

Water has always had a deeply tranquilising effect on me. The slow ripple of waves lapping against the concrete edge of the pond is mesmerising and soporific. As I approach the lake from Rotten Row, it is hidden behind a bed of reeds and bullrushes, creating the sense of some marshland preserve.

The image is soon broken as the path leads me past the screen of plants and towards an impressive panorama of the lake. A sign sternly proclaims that swimming is prohibited, at least in this part of the pond, not that I was particularly tempted. Boats bobble on the water near the other side.

Lakes and ponds like the Serpentine can be found in parks up and down the United Kingdom. They are a sort of lacustrine focal point for people to gather, breaking up the monotony of solid level ground. In forcing a diversion, they cause the mind to re-engage and provide relief and interest.

The Serpentine Lido

I amble alongside the lake until I reach the Serpentine Lido building. Here, open-water swimming is allowed (nay, encouraged). Funnily enough, I don't see anyone participating today and so I decide give it a miss this time and carry on west.

Children bound down the path in the opposite direction, giggling and screaming in delight. It reminds me of time spent as a child, when my parents or grandparents would take me and my brothers to the park to engage in that most quintessential of British pastimes: feeding the ducks.

The memories ignite a yearning for the simplicity of youth, without care or responsibility, when we entrusted things to our parents, who seemed to know all that needed knowing and directed our lives so we needn't think for ourselves.

I once read that we are born and we die, and everything in between is just finding things to do. I suppose this holds for those of us privileged enough to live in developed societies, where pestilence, famine and natural calamities are, by and large, a thing of the past. It is a bleak outlook but undeniably true.

As we become adults, we somehow manage to find more and more things to fill that interval. We have children (this is probably the most monumental task of all and brings with it more busyness than one can possibly contemplate at the time); we buy a house and a car; we insure our house and our car; we spend inordinate amounts of money on maintaining our house and car; we take up hobbies; we volunteer for countless things. We make our own admin.

TO THE BOUNDARY

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial; Serenity by Simon Gudgeon

As I continue, I pass the fountain memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales. I have never felt a particular affinity for the Royal Family. If I were setting up a country from scratch, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose primogeniture as the basis for the head of state. But we have what we have, and I can't help but in many respects admire the front-line members of the Royal Family for their hard work and stoical dedication in the face of intense media scrutiny and their destined inability to lead a "normal" life. Those that try are effectively excommunicated and treated as pariahs.

Diana always attracted a particular attention beyond that normally afforded to the other Royals. It was a mixture of affection, admiration and even more intense media scrutiny that, as we all know, ultimately ended in tragedy. I will never forget the morning I woke up to the news, splattered across every paper and television channel, that she had died. It is one of those moments, like 9/11 and the falling of the Berlin Wall, that will remain perpetually seared on my memory.

The memorial is a most pleasant and relaxing structure. Water is fed round a large, irregular-shaped loop, lapping up the sides at occasional points where the current collides head on with the barrier. At one point, visitors can sit next to a small cascade that provides sonoric stimulation alongside visual. A small walkway provides access to the centre of the loop. I hover over the flowing waters and contemplate the transience of life for a moment, before heading back out.

Along the way to the edge of the park is a beautiful bronze sculpture of the animal form of the Egyptian goddess Isis. The artwork by Simon Gudgeon, titled Serenity, was installed in 2009. It's worth viewing it from different angles, as the bird takes on different aspects.

From the front, she appears stately, regal and commanding, a presence that warns off potential predators from the treasures she is guarding. From the side (see photo above), she is tender, almost nurturing, a mother bird preening herself or bending down to her offspring. Her curved neck and wings strikingly complement the arcs of the Diana Memorial behind her.

INTO THE GARDENS

The Serpentine Gallery

Walking further west from here brings me to West Carriage Drive, which splits the open space into two. Technically, this is the end of Hyde Park. To cross the road is to enter Kensington Palace Gardens. The distinction is principally legal and administrative. To the everyday gadabout, the two are but one.

As I walk south down the drive, I pass the Serpentine Gallery on my right. Bright yellow-and-black signs scream out "FREE ART GALLERY". There is something slightly disconsolate about an attraction that so prominently proclaims its complimentariness, a sort of desperate cry to passers-by to devote a slither of time to the art inside because it's no drain on their wallet, a plea drenched all the more in pathos by the anonymity of its maker. "Please visit us," it begs, "we won't even charge." Today the gallery is bedecked with scaffolding, its hopeful windows poking through and yearning for company.

I have no time to stop here today, and so perhaps I become a part of the problem. I have, at least, visited the Gallery before, and so, as a patron of sorts, I assuage my guilt slightly and resolve to make another trip there soon.

Kensington Palace Gardens

I push on through the Gardens, in form indistinguishable from Hyde Park. My anxiousness has now subsided somewhat and thoughts of the office become more distant. This is a peaceful place, more so than its easterly neighbour. Bare trees stand proudly, displaying their bending branches in shapes that evoke images of curtsying servants.

The crowds in this part of the park are fewer. Perhaps many were diverted from the path by the road to make a detour to the Serpentine Bridge. My dedication at times spills over into mild compulsion, making me reluctant to contemplate such a diversion from the established route. I cling tightly to the Greenway as if, by meandering, I might slip away from its comforting grasp.

Professional dogwalkers in the Gardens

As I continue, I pass some professional dogwalkers. This has become a big-time career path now. People too busy to walk their own pets offload the burden to dedicated caninambulists (yes, I made that word up) so they can make better use of their time.

This strange phenomenon makes me wonder why such people get dogs in the first place. Surely walking the dog three times a day is part and parcel of the joy (duty?) of owning one.

I grew up with dogs and so will always retain a great affection for them, but that kind of chain I do not need around my ankle, so I can understand the temptation to delegate in this way. But to own an animal yet not interact with it seems similar to having children but leaving a nanny to rear them. What is the point?

Perhaps I'm just jealous that I've missed a trick. According to one newspaper (whose name it makes me feel nauseous to mention), a professional dogwalker can earn up to £64,000 a year. And the job comes with enviable amounts of fresh air and exercise. Time for a career change?

THE FINAL LEG

The Round Pond

I'm now on the home stretch for today's journey. As I round the corner of the Gardens, I come onto The Broad Way, a wide track that stretches from the south-west to the north-west corner of the Gardens along the front of Kensington Palace.

To my right is the Round Pond, an ornamental lake commissioned in 1730 by George II (who spent precious little time in Great Britain). It is a lie - the pond is actually a quadrilateral, but the powers that be don't want you to know that. Whatever its shape, it attracts the birds and plenty of visitors and gives this part of the park a decidedly but pleasingly manicured appearance.

Kensington Palace; the Broad Way

I wend my way up the Broad Way, past Kensington Palace (home to Prince William and Princess Catherine, among others), which is not quite what one imagines by the word "palace". Yes, there is no denying that it is a grand building and, I am sure, quite comfortable inside. But it has more the feel of a modest country mansion than a royal residence, a handsome, red-brick building that resonates well with its surroundings but projects no glamour or grandeur.

It does, however, in its favour, have a rather fabulous-looking orangery and so fuels my envy of a private Mediterranean kitchen garden. But I question whether I would want to live with three of my first cousins twice removed. Even in such a large home, that makes for close quarters.

As I near the Black Lion Gate and Bayswater Road at the north end of the Broad Way, I realise my time here is nearly up, and thoughts of my no doubt now much-increased workload flood back into my head. I find reasons to stall, stopping to admire the view back down the path, indulging in a spot of people-watching, fiddling with my phone in the hope there might be some urgent messages I need to respond to that warrant putting off my return. That could only ever last so long.

And so I make my way to Queensway underground station. Although this is the end of segment 1 of my own journey, it is not yet the end of section 1 of the Greenway, which carries on up through Paddington and Marylebone and on to Little Venice. This I grasp as something to look forward to in my next segment, whenever that may be.

Segment 1 itinerary