LEJOG Rides and London Walks

As some of you may know, for the past year or so I’ve been trying to kick-start a writing career. Having spent considerable amounts of thinking attempt to find out where the path of speciality lies, I decided that it should focus around the area of travel writing and the delights of the great outdoors. After all, travelling and outdoors has been essentially what I’ve been doing as a job for the past six and a half years.

I decided that the first major foray into my writing would be to undergo a bus journey all the way from Land’s End to John O’Groats. That took place in the summer of last year. Again, buses because they’ve been another core element of the job I’ve done. The mission to travel between the two famous landmarks stretching on entirely opposite parts of British mainland was successfully accomplished. Of course, one of the first thoughts that came into my head upon completion was that “now I’ve done it, now I can write about it”.

So, you might ask, what progress has been made about this write-up that has the potential to be turned into a book? Well, eight months have passed since that bus voyage from Land’s End to John O’Groats and there has been some writing going on. However, whilst that journey was indeed a colossal challenge, actually writing about it is even more demanding, especially when it’s done in whatever spare time is available as a result of attempting to earn a crust in order to survive the perils that life may present to you elsewhere. Of course, having to make sudden personal changes before the end of last year meant that not much could be done in terms of writing, and as a result of this, things just lied dormant for quite some time.

Whilst I attempted to adjust to my new surroundings, I also spent time monitoring the bus scene in parts of the United Kingdom, mainly along the route I had travelled as part of the Land’s End to John O’Groats adventure. It occurred to me that it is frequently forever changing, and not just in London, which is of course the area to which I am accustomed to. Having mentioned London, I did of course travel through the capital city as part of that journey. The idea behind this was to compare travelling and fares with other parts of the country, in order to gain a clearer picture as a whole. Needless to say, it soon dawned on me that it would have been much simpler and convenient not to travel through London, and if I had done this would have got to a point much further north for that day.

I of course have decided that I would like to attempt the Land’s End to John O’Groats again someday, though not at this very instant. What I have done then is decide not to continue with the write up of last year’s journey for now, but instead take a selection of the photos that I took throughout that journey and include short captions with them to describe various events surrounding that photo. All the photos I have selected have been uploaded on to my Facebook page so that people can have a look at them and comment, should they deem necessary. The collection of photos will also help me in good stead so that when I do attempt such a feat again, I can be more prepared to what to expect and make the whole experience for myself a lot much better wherever possible. And maybe then I will have collected more than enough information to get working on a proper book about the expedition.

This now brings me on to my next planned writing venture – a series of walks throughout all of London’s postcodes. How the idea came about was as a result of hearing of other people’s various walks through the capital. Some people I know of go along routes that parallel the Tube and Underground network wherever possible. Another person who I’ve spoken to uses an A to Z in order to work their way around. In an attempt to find my own unique way in doing something similar, I chose the great and wonderful feature that is the postcode in order to not enjoy the pleasures of both walking and writing, but to potentially come across areas of London I may never have seen before.

How this would be done is as follows: Take this example, which is my first planned walk. I would start in the North London postcode area, so this means I would start in the postcode area N1, which happens to be Angel Islington. I would then walk to the postcode area N2, which is East Finchley. The next postcode walk would be from N2 to N3, and so on until I have completed the last postcode walk for this area, which would be N21 (Winchmore Hill) to N22 (Wood Green). Once this walk is completed, I would then move on the East London postcode area, and so on in a clockwise direction until all of the postcodes in the London area have been visited. I feel that there is a lot of potential to be fulfilled in writing about walking in these areas, and I hope this is something I can accomplish over time.

I have been planning this idea for a few months now, and there is still some work to do before I finally get going, hopefully within the next few weeks. For now though, I hope you all enjoy the Land’s End to John O’Groats photographs, and that what has been written in this entry is an outstanding example of my future writing to come....