Saturday January 3, 2009:

Intention

I love that time between Christmas and New Year. It’s a welcome pause, a time to reflect and to be before the world turns and we are vaulted into the everyday reality of another year. This is the time when I invite myself to withdraw behind thickly closed curtains, to curl up on the sofa with that book I meant to read for months, to occupy my fingers with slightly bobbly knitting lest they stray to the computer and temp me into checking my emails.

It’s a time to sigh deeply and nod off by the gas fire listening to the afternoon play on the radio, to wake again feeling slightly peckish and remember there are still Dunn’s mince pies in the fridge and Lady Gray tea to be brewed in that tea for one teapot.

Tea and mince pie in hand, thinking fleetingly of crumpets I settle down to savour the sweetness of the fruit and the citrus freshness of the tea. All is well in the world … oh if only time could stand still.

But this is the perfect time to go for a walk! When everyone else is cocooned indoors, the green and interesting places of the city are deserted. Only a hard core jogger or dog walker is to be met with, the fair weather walkers are nowhere to be seen and the nutter talking loudly on a mobile phone is somewhere else, possibly on a train! Alone and content one can walk peaceably admiring the winter stillness. Here, one can imagine that this is some secret country grove far away from the rumbling city and not a piece of green reclaimed from suburbia.

Walking the green spaces of London, one is never far away from a warming cuppa and a piece of cake or a flush toilet. What more could one want?

So on a day between the glitter of Christmas and the fizz of New Year, my companion and I walked the parkland Walk to Highgate and back. We met few people. Occasionally a bird would chirrup. The trees watched us pass as we picked our way through queen’s Wood. The more ordered paths of Highgate Wood invited us to perambulate, like two Victorian ladies taking thee air. We sat and enjoyed the peace on a bench dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Tina Grigg. We rested beneath the beech tree she loved, and admired the quiet stillness of the woods.

Via reviving tea and cakes in the Highgate Wood café, we bent our steps along a disconnected bit of the Parkland Walk to Alexander Palace Park. And as we walked, we talked of walks and decided that this year, we would do the Capital ring.

Ever one for doing something with purpose, I went home and meditated upon the idea. 78 miles of green walks linked by pleasant streets sounded like something even I could manage. An impossibility by myself (for I am blind); to walk with a companion who loves to walk and enjoys describing what she sees, what could be more congenial?

Over chocolate coconut macaroons and mint tea, I thought about my intention for this enterprise. The Capital Ring is the thread through the bead that is London, or perhaps to keep with the cake symbolism the jam through the doughnut. I would walk the Capital ring as an act of homage to this city, my own personal walking embrace for the place of my birth and domicile. I serve London in public life; why not quietly honour its magnificence by walking its green spaces?

So my intention in walking the capital ring is to honour and give thanks for this wonderful, diverse and vital city that is London – if you like, a walking embrace!