"Not all those who wander are lost" Tolkien
We don't stumble anymore, we search.
We don't look for old books in old book stores, we search online and find them and have them sent to our house. I've been looking for a book about a guy who took his family to Paris and wrote about it. I'd been to a few book stores, unable to find it. Then a few weeks later I was in an old book shop I'd been seeking out. I found the store, but alas they didn't have a copy. They could order it, but I said "no thanks." I still had an hour before my next meeting so I ambled across the road and found another book store, one I'd never heard of, and there in the travel section was one copy of the book. Pure delight.
People have been writing about walking and exploring in London since Pepys. In a city like London anything can be an adventure, or a chore, depending on your perspective. Virginia Woolf wrote one of her great essays about her adventure to buy a lead pencil as she went "street sauntering" "street rambling" and "street haunting."
For me London is meant to be explored and all the difficulties of city life (the trains, the delays, the jostling, the dirt, the noise, the rain, the mess) is all part of the adventure. An adventure that must take place on foot. We have hoofed it from Abbey Gardens to Golders Green, Whitehall to Westminster, from Hampstead to Hampshire, Ealing to Edgeware, from London Bridge to Leadenhall and Lime Street. No matter the sector of the city, if there are sidewalks we walk it to learn it, to know it, to stumble upon it.
I set out part of every week to walk London and find something. And it rarely disappoints, finding the great new places which existed, always hiding in plain sight.
We don't stumble anymore, we search.
We don't look for old books in old book stores, we search online and find them and have them sent to our house. I've been looking for a book about a guy who took his family to Paris and wrote about it. I'd been to a few book stores, unable to find it. Then a few weeks later I was in an old book shop I'd been seeking out. I found the store, but alas they didn't have a copy. They could order it, but I said "no thanks." I still had an hour before my next meeting so I ambled across the road and found another book store, one I'd never heard of, and there in the travel section was one copy of the book. Pure delight.
People have been writing about walking and exploring in London since Pepys. In a city like London anything can be an adventure, or a chore, depending on your perspective. Virginia Woolf wrote one of her great essays about her adventure to buy a lead pencil as she went "street sauntering" "street rambling" and "street haunting."
For me London is meant to be explored and all the difficulties of city life (the trains, the delays, the jostling, the dirt, the noise, the rain, the mess) is all part of the adventure. An adventure that must take place on foot. We have hoofed it from Abbey Gardens to Golders Green, Whitehall to Westminster, from Hampstead to Hampshire, Ealing to Edgeware, from London Bridge to Leadenhall and Lime Street. No matter the sector of the city, if there are sidewalks we walk it to learn it, to know it, to stumble upon it.
I set out part of every week to walk London and find something. And it rarely disappoints, finding the great new places which existed, always hiding in plain sight.
One my best stumbles is the English Restaurant.
The English Restaurant is my single favorite place in London. I go in the morning, they have dairy free cake and tea and banged-up chairs, and knotty tables and funny young people making coffee and a steady stream of world weary walking through.
How I Stumbled:
-One day I went to see "Dickens in London" an exhibit at the Museum of London.
-After the exhibit I looked through the gift shop finding a book called “Quiet London” which listed quiet places within the city, including libraries, gardens and coffee shops.
-The next week I followed the book to the Bishopsgate Institute Library. A nice old creaky, dusty library, just North of Liverpool Street.
-Afterward I walked down a side street until I bumped into Old Spitalfields Market, a Victorian market hall which is now filled with what can only be described as rows and rows of vendors selling bric-a-brac.
-Later as I walked back to the office I bumped into a restaurant called the Grenadier, which of course required me to stop and take a picture.
-One day I went to see "Dickens in London" an exhibit at the Museum of London.
-After the exhibit I looked through the gift shop finding a book called “Quiet London” which listed quiet places within the city, including libraries, gardens and coffee shops.
-The next week I followed the book to the Bishopsgate Institute Library. A nice old creaky, dusty library, just North of Liverpool Street.
-Later as I walked back to the office I bumped into a restaurant called the Grenadier, which of course required me to stop and take a picture.
-Next to the Grenadier I saw a coffee shop called the English Restaurant.
As soon as I stepped foot in the place it grabbed me by the throat and pulled me in. The people kept me there. A constant stream of clever playfulness permeates this tiny space which to me is everything English.
It's run by a couple who keeps everything, quintessentially English. The food is well-bragged about, though I've never had a meal. "You've got to try the kippers with mustard butter for breakfast," they tell me, but I get the bagel and lox. "Then come back for dinner the venison casserole and pan-friend Guinea fowl with steak and onion pudding is out of this world," and all I ask for is another slice of dairy-free cake.
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