Sorry for the Group Email

Blisters, eh? Like large, unwanted house guests who show up uninvited, wee on the floor and then bug you for weeks afterwards. If you asked me now what made walking 25 miles seem like a good idea at the time I would only be able to say I had a day off and nothing to do. Worse, it didn’t seem too far at the time - after the first 10 miles it’s easy enough to put your head down and simply plod.

Afterwards, Google reckoned 21.9 miles but there was some unneccessary dallying around in Battersea - a depressingly close-to-home place to get lost. Then, in the last hour, some despondant trudging around increasingly familiar country roads; after a while the grass-cutting residents of south Bromley started waving and shouting encouragement.
The first three and a half hours were distinctly lacking. Brixton aside, London becomes characterless suburbia pretty quickly. And once you’ve seen one road with nothing but two-up two-downs, you’ve seen them all. In fact, the speed with which London becomes suburbia is only bettered by the speed with which is becomes countryside. Bromley, the urban areas of which are populated largely by scooters carrying tracksuits, goes from chip shops to green hills in the space of about half a mile.

I was also pleased that the British propensity for thoughtless road and town names began at the same time - I was so taken with this road name on the map that I actually made a two mile detour to find it to take a picture:

The point was to get to Biggin Hill airport. After taking five hours to walk 25 miles, I spent the next hour covering roughly twice the distance. To anyone stupid enough not to want to spend an hour in a space roughly equivalent to half a refrigerator, 2,500 feet up, in the same airspace as jumbo jets and other planes piloted by students, I can tell you it’s pretty weird. So weird, in fact, I didn’t take any pictures, but I did manage to have a go on the controls. There’s nothing quite like banking, looking through the window and realising that nothing more substantial than a Mini door stands between you and a shockingly long drop.

Flying’s great, though, and I recommend it to anyone with a pulse. The only problem with it is on a per hour basis it’s pretty much up there with a decent cocaine habit.

(I took a train back.)

More pictures in the Flying set on