“We are bored in the city, we really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk.” – Ivan Chtcheglov.
A couple of sources have directed me to a rather
good piece on Londonist.com, under the
headline: How Far Can You
Walk From Trafalgar Square Without Crossing A Road? With the subheading Extreme walker
Victor Keegan reckons you can journey over 17 miles without setting foot on the
bitumen.
Keegan sets off from Trafalgar Square, and
by using bridges, underpasses, and the banks of the Thames, manages to
avoid crossing roads, and he ends up 17 miles away “somewhere in the Lea
Valley.”
Of course at times he’s often walking on
pavements (that’s sidewalks for my American readers) that are very adjacent to
bitumen, but it’s a great expedition, and we all know the attractions of the “constrained”
walk.
Here’s Keegan’s map:
And here’s a link to the piece:
I have nothing but respect for the man,
but I fret about that term “extreme walker.”
I think, and hope, it’s the Londonist’s term rather than his own. It seems to be asking for trouble, like that
band called Extreme Noise Terror. You
listen to them and think, “I’ve heard more extreme, more terrifying noise than
this.” And so with walking. However
extreme your walking, you can be damn sure that somebody somewhere is doing
something far more extreme.
Keegan says, reasonably enough, that he
doesn’t think his 17 mile constrained walk would be possible in any other
city, and I imagine he’s right. You
could certainly clock a fair distance on the west side of Manhattan but I’m not
arguing.
In LA I think you’d be lucky to do more
than a few hundred yards before you were forced to “set foot on bitumen.” And
here where I live on the lower slopes of the Hollywood Hills there are no
sidewalks at all (that’s pavement for my English readers). You step out the front gate and you’re immediately in the
road. The nearest sidewalk – I just
measured it - is a little over half a mile away. True, you don’t cross any roads for that distance but that’s because you’re in
the middle of one. If you had a mind to,
you could cover a good few sidewalk-free miles around the area's tight corners and blind
bends.
There are a lot of Victor Keegans on the
internet but this seems to be the man:
I see he has a blog post titled, “Walking
from Trafalgar Square to Margate – without crossing a road.” That does sound fairly extreme.
