February 28th, 2024 was the last day of a two-week solo trip that started and ended in London, with a climb up Solsbury Hill and 8 days on trains across the Scottish Highlands sandwiched in between. I took the Caledonian Express sleeper train from Inverness to London the night before, and I had a full day in London before my flight the next morning.
I planned an ambitious walk, starting from my hotel in Earls Court. The map is below.
I knew it would be a long day, so I allowed for a tube ride back to the hotel at the end. I included several places I had previously seen, in some cases several times, but I was sure to add in a few new ones. The overall length, around 13 miles, was ambitious, though I did walk it all except for a tube I took from Embankment to Tower Hill.
I started from my hotel and my first stop was Holland Park. It was a lovely neighborhood park, with a Japanese garden, and bulbs starting to bloom. Families played in the open spaces locals walked their dogs and stopped for conversations. I walked out of the park and through the posh neighborhood around it, on my way to Hyde Park.
On Kensington High Street I passed a Whole Foods where I shopped with my wife and daughter 11 years ago on a London trip. At the other end of the park were the neighborhoods of Mayfair and Marylebone, followed by the busy tourist shops around the Baker Street underground station.
From there I walked a bit of Regent’s Park, another nice bit of nostalgia from that trip with my wife and daughter. We visited in the summer when all of the roses were in bloom. There was not nearly as much color on display in February, other than the sprouting bulbs.
Then I walked down Regent Street, stopping in a few shops along the way, with diversions along Savile Row and through Soho, two parts of London I had never visited before. I walked past a Premier League footballer with a few shopping bags.
I continued south past Picadilly Circus towards Pall Mall, another new bit of London for me. My wife and I have enjoyed watching “Fake or Fortune” and I wanted to see the Philip Mould gallery that featured prominently in it.
In Trafalgar Square, I noticed the line for the National Gallery was short, so I stopped in for a quick visit and a peek at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
I had spent the previous 10 days walking, tramping around Bath then all over Scotland. In the spirit of traveling light, I only packed one pair of shoes and they were hiking boots, perfect for the mud I encountered earlier in the trip on Solsbury Hill but not great for the pavement. My feet were starting to hurt. I opted for a tube from Embankment to take me to my next stop, Tower Bridge.
Tower Bridge was another London highlight I had somehow missed in the past. I paid to walk across the elevated walkway high above the road and tested my latent fear of heights looking down through glass panels in the floor.
First, Sadness
When I arrived on the other side of the river, with the sun setting, I realized I did not want the day or the trip to end. It hit me suddenly, how much I was going to miss this place. How much I was going to miss getting on a train in the morning to go to a town I had never seen before. I had no idea when or if I would be doing it again. I had put so much thought and energy into the planning and the journey. This wasn’t just a thing I did, it was who I am. This wandering is now an integral part of my identity. The end of the adventure was hard to accept.
I kept pushing on, though my feet ached. After Tower Bridge I stopped at Borough Market for dinner, followed by a quick walk through the Tate Modern.
Then I exited the museum and consulted my map. I was out of stops. Emptiness and sadness set in. The thought of the day and the adventure ending was overwhelming and heavy. I walked along the south bank of the Thames in a drizzly gloom and struggled to accept that it was over.
I approached Westminster Bridge, where I would cross over to take the tube back to my hotel.
Then Something Magical Happened
When I turned right onto the bridge, a flashbulb went off in my brain. I instantly froze in the middle of the sidewalk, pedestrians shoved past me on either side. I looked down at my aching right foot. In my head, I saw the image of that same foot, from a day in London 25 years earlier, when I felt that same pain.
One sunny day in the summer of 1999, I was on a work trip to London, it was my first visit to the city. I was in the car with a colleague driving across London after lunch when I had the sudden urge to get out of the car and start walking, and I did it. It was my first real adventure traveling. I walked the new and unfamiliar city until it was nighttime and I was too tired to continue.
It was as if I stepped on a live wire that shocked my brain back to that memory.
I picked my head up and looked around. I had been here before. I was standing in the same place where I stood 25 years earlier, with the same tired aching feet at the end of my first walk around London. I feared the end of the day, exactly as I had in 1999. It was all the same and I was connected to that place and time in my memory. I stood there a few moments longer and breathed, looking around at the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, and the river. I was transported back in time, had nothing changed in all those years?
It took some time standing there to realize that something had changed. I did not need to fear the end of the journey, I had feared it this same way on that first walk so long ago, but now I was back again. I stood in the same place I stood all those years ago. But here I was again. I came back. I had nothing to fear. And in that moment I knew everything would be OK, that I would be back again someday. I took a few deep breaths, smiled, let go of my fear, and let my journey end, confident in the knowledge there would be another.
Free of the weight, I took one last tube ride to my familiar Earls Court station, then walked back to the hotel in a strangely brilliant blue twilight in the rain. The light from cars and lamp posts reflected brightly off the rain-soaked street.
The lights were like beacons guiding me home.