A child’s map of Crystal Palace Park, or panic fear in the unwild.

Is it acceptable to call replica Sphinxes ‘The Guys?’ Who is The Headless Lady with no arms (who has arms)? What terrors await when you stop paying attention in the maze?

All back to Asselega’s place

Is it possible to be haunted by a place? I think that I may be. In this case it is Ashley Vale in Bristol – an exceptional urban oasis caught between the tracks, containing allotments, woods, hilltops and a pub next door to a farm.

Along a side street Somewhere: In search of an anonymous suburb

I recently went in search for an ‘anonymous suburb’.

This is what I discovered.

No one should mourn a coffee shop

Today a coffee shop near where I work in Clerkenwell disappeared…

The Impossibility of Worthington lakes

Let’s say I was there.

For work.

In a hotel near three reservoirs for Wigan.

Let’s say I slipped out back on an unexpected walk,
on a circular path…

Under Norwood: West Norwood Cemetery’s catacombs

Norwood is yawning but awake: shopping, grabbing coffee, heading for breakfast, haircuts, workouts, dates. Watching Saturday unfold beyond the cemetery gates, it’s a little difficult to picture a time when almost none of this was there.

In 1837 London was growing rapidly and expanding at the edges. The city had an urgent need for space and not just for its living. Traditional city centre churchyards and dissenters’ burial grounds were full to bursting – the metropolitan dead also needed somewhere to go.

Up Brandon Hill!

Brandon Hill aside, other hills in Bristol have their own distinctively languid charm and grace, such as Park Street, while a few are simply brutes.

One of these is the short and abrupt St Michael’s Hill, stretching from Upper Maudlin Street to Cotham. The lower slopes are dotted with attractive iron street furniture, step-work and historic buildings – including the pretty Colston Alms Houses – but don’t let these architectural gewgaws deceive you – it’s a bastard.

Common Ground or Private Park: Whose Nature (writing) is it anyway?

This post originally began as a rant about ‘gatekeeping’ in so-called ‘New Nature Writing’. Since then, I’ve tightened it up a little, and updated some of the links, esp. re lack of diversity in nature writing, creeping nativism and more.

On the listening ridge

I’m back. It’s been a while. The woods behind my parents’ house on Tickenham Ridge haven’t changed hugely in the last few months – the seasons have cycled through and for now the hill is a shining riot of green in a dozen shades.

An hour earlier I was in these woods in company with my two boys, my sister, brother-in-law, two nephews and my Dad, but this time I am alone and things feel different.

A Stray Field in South London

An ordinary looking grassy field, at the foot of Gipsy Hill in South London, turns out to be anything but…

(I don’t want to go to) #Midtown

Not far from where I work in Clerkenwell, a series of large orange and white flags fixed to lampposts line the major thoroughfares running through Holborn, Chancery Lane, Bloomsbury and St Giles. They state blithely that you are InMidtown, before in tiny print, grudgingly acknowledging the actual names of the places they are attempting to reinvent.

Waiting in the boneyard: Abney Park

Stamford Hill Motors is not the most romantic of destinations, but I always feel a frisson of excitement when I have to go there. I used to live nearby but no longer, so the annual MOT has become an excuse to visit one of my old North London haunts. It also gives me a legitimate reason to simply…

A chamber of magic beneath the A212: The Crystal Palace Subway

Crystal Palace, geographically at least, is defined by its height: Palace = Hills.

But, hidden beneath busy Crystal Palace Parade, there is something else, a stunningly beautiful place that is usually inaccessible to the public.

Escape to a wilder city: London as National Park

I must admit that when I first heard about the campaign to make London the world’s first National Park City, I thought it was a joke.

And yet the more I thought about it, the more interesting the concept became.

Make a break for the trees: Crystal Palace’s Stambourne Woodland Walk

It gives me hope a place like this. A small brown sign outside the Queen’s Hotel, Church Road the only local clue. Stambourne Woods this way, down that gravel drive and through the gate. On the house next door another sign gives red framed warning of a moose who isn’t there. This sliver of…

Shopping for identity: a trip down Norwood Road

You can tell a lot about a place from the local shops.
Especially on Norwood Road.

Unlocking Crystal Palace’s Magical Sprite Village

Guest post by Abi Gilbert

When I were a lass – growing up alongside the North Yorkshire moors – my daily life was infused with the magical stories which my Dad told me about sprites and fairies.

No trip into Ilkley, tramp up Hebers Ghyll, or mere visit to the shops was left uninhabited by these mythical beings. I was reliably told, and believed absolutely, that they were hiding behind walls and trees and under bridges. I built homes for these friendly folk, and they sometimes visited in the night to collect the food that I left for them, but I never, ever saw them.

Lyrical by the sea: Clevedon’s Poet’s Walk

Clevedon: the most boring seaside town in all England; filled with dusty, fusty little sepia-tinted shops, selling dull stuff like lacework, horse brasses and pink and blue vintage porcelain salt-and-pepper sets in the shape of Edwardian ladies.

At least that’s what I used to think…

To the top of Tickenham

Tickenham, North Somerset is a long village strung along the B3130 road to Clevedon. On the surface, it’s nothing special, a fairly non-descript ribbon development – the kind of place you either live in or pass through on the way to somewhere else.