LOST IN SPACES

 I know I’ve led a sheltered life but even so I’m surprised it’s taken me so long to find out that the line ‘Not all those who wander are lost,' which I think is a pretty good line, comes from Tolkein’s poem  "The Riddle of Strider," written for The Fellowship of The Ring.

 

I’ve always found Tolkien pretty much unreadable, but somehow his reputation has survived this obstacle, and that quotation (with variations) has thrived on a lot of those ‘inspirational quotation’ sites around the Interwebs.  

Now, there’s nothing quite like an inspirational quotation to bring out the cynic in me, so you can imagine how pleased I was, while looking for something else, to find this, which I subsequently found in various other versions :

 

And finally, to prove, as if proof were needed, that not all who walk are noble, moral or decent, here is a picture of a walker, in fact power walker, whose name shall not be spoken.

 

IT'S ALL TOO BEAUTIFUL

     

What other walking adventures did I have to in London?  Well, I went walking in Little Ilford Park in East Ham, which may have been the inspiration for the Small Faces song “Itchycoo Park,” although it may not. 

“What did you do there?”  Mostly I discussed map/territory relations and Victorian notions of public good, with Travis Elborough.  More about that later, probably.

I went for a walk along the Regent's Canal from King's Cross, past Gas Holder Park (which surely could be an inspiration for a song), to Camden Lock and beyond.  I was with members of the Royal Photographic Society, who do that kind of thing.

         It was a good walk but I sometimes felt uneasy about the narrowness of the path and the imminent threat of silent but potentially deadly cyclists.  Signs like the one below weren’t really very reassuring.

And in Walthamstow I did see this bit of (I suppose you’d have to call it) street art -

“Not all those who wander are lost,” is a line from Tolkien apparently, though I didn’t know that at the time.  It’s undoubtedly true, although equally I’d say that not all those who are lost do any wandering.