LEE PAYNE

Tag: walk

  • I Write Wednesday #5 – 7 mile walk, derby day delight and blimey, don’t Tesco make a lot of money?

    I Write Wednesday #5 – 7 mile walk, derby day delight and blimey, don’t Tesco make a lot of money?

    Hello again. This Wednesday I’m going to tell you everything I have on my mind in a handy bullet point format:

    • In pursuit of Project Happy, I applied for a job last week and had an interview. I liked it and thought it went well, but didn’t get it. That’s fine, it was a good experience. I still have a job to go to while I search.
    • My friend Gavin, whom I met at university and bonded with over a shared hatred of shorthand lessons, went for a light stroll last week and ended up walking 7 miles. The orange juice and lemonade I had at Wetherspoons afterwards had never tasted so good. In future, I must wear proper walking boots and never again let him plan the route. Photos below.
    • Saturday was the East Anglian Derby, the football match that I love and hate in equal measure. I love it because there is no better feeling than seeing Norwich beat Ipswich but the thought of losing to that lot sickens me. Thankfully, Norwich won 1-0 thanks to a cracking free kick from Marcelino Nunez. I sat downstairs from my usual seat, with my mum and her posse of nutters, and the atmosphere was electric. A day that will live long in the memory.
    • Tesco announced their latest financial results this morning and they caught my eye. They made £2.3 billion in pre-tax profit in the year to 24th February, up from an already half-decent £882m the previous year. Dear old Sainsbury’s is the UK’s second biggest supermarket chain by market share, but in last year’s results made less than half as much money. Sainsbury’s will reveal this year’s results on 25th April. There’s no excuse for Tesco not to drop their prices now, right? Or pay their staff more money?
    Gavin and I got so fed up with walking that we checked bus times. It never arrived, so we carried on.
    The view from my seat at the East Anglian Derby
    Mum looking sharp for the derby
    Caught by the Sky cameras at the football
    ‘I swear, I’ll walk out into that road’
    The route Gavin and I took

  • Walking the line

    Three things I love are London, walking and disused railway lines. That makes this book seem like it was almost written with me in mind.

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    The morning after the Arsenal v Norwich match I decided to do one of the walks in the book, starting at Finsbury Park.

    The park itself often hosts big name musicians. In 2014, my favourite band Arctic Monkeys played two gigs there and this week Liam Gallagher announced he would be playing Finsbury Park in June 2018.

    My walk followed the route of a planned extension to the Northern Line of the London Underground which was never completed.

    What I enjoy about disused railway lines is imagining what they once looked like, seeing how they have changed with the ghost of its past still evident. The first example of this was when I came across the building below.

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    This used to be the station building of Stroud Green station

    Stroud Green station closed to passengers in 1954, but 63 years later its building is still intact. There’s no evidence of how the building links to the railway bridge above, so countless people must pass it every day without ever realising its former purpose.

    Further along where the track once was, there is a work of art inside one of the arches. When you’re walking alone, it’s quite creepy to be honest – even though I knew it was going to be there!

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    Spriggan sculpture

    The most intact platforms on the walk are at Crouch End. As you can see from my photo, it’s obvious that trains used to stop here.

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    Crouch End

    The thing I was most excited about seeing were the Highgate Tunnels. The imposing portals are now a sanctuary for bats. The ground in front of them was too muddy for me to walk across, so I had to zoom in from a distance, but you can still see them.

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    The abandoned Highgate Tunnels

    To rejoin the walk, I had to go up to street level. I was now in Highgate, famous for its middle class mums (as seen in the @Highgatemums Twitter account and book). The next thing to glimpse was the abandoned Highgate High Level station.

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    Overlooking the abandoned Highgate High Level station

    It was near impossible to get a good view of it, but the tunnels I saw earlier emerge here. In a BBC documentary made in 2013 to commemorate the Underground’s 150th anniversary, a Tube driver can be seen on the platforms.

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    Still from BBC documentary The Tube: An Underground History (2013) showing Highgate High Level station

    The walk ends at Alexandra Palace, where the World Darts Championships are held at Christmas every year. However, with a train home to catch I decided to stop after taking in this incredible view over London.

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    Looking over London

    I plan on going back to finish off the walk in the future, but I had a great time doing the bits of it that I did.