In London, we are like urban hikers traversing acres and acres of sidewalk everyday. I should have trained for this trip the way people train for the Appalachian Trail or Kilimanjaro, logging miles and miles on foot prepping the body, getting comfortable with the strain, figuring out the right shoes and gear for the journey.
I study the other city hikers on the train with their comfortable shoes, their tote bags with provisions, their wires and screens and pods to insulate and pass the time, their shoppers and snacks. And their English armor: a straight ahead stare into a daze on the train looking for signs and arrows on platforms and looking into the station’s horizon as they make their way out into the asphalt terrain.
These city people could cross countries and continents on their feet. We join them on the trek each morning to sightsee for hours following the footsteps of poets and princesses, fictional characters and historic greats marveling at wonders on every corner.
The trains quickly become our primary mode of transportation if we don’t count our feet. We loved being on the trains, going underground in one corner of the city and emerging into the bright sun in another corner of the metropolis. Some trains are bursting with people, a cacophony of humanity with crying, laughing, chatter, feet, breath. Even the hopes and expectations seem to have a sound or seem to make noise, a vibration of expectation.
I watch a teenage girl, forlorn on the Overground with no purse or phone trying to get somewhere. I see a family on the Great Western Railway. The daughter is reading New Moon and the son is watching a movie on a device. In the bustling Paddington Station, I pass a pregnant woman wearing a Baby on Board button on her dress and I wonder if she gets jostled in the rush hour fray or if people mind the baby bump the way they mind the gap getting off the trains.
The best thing we passed walking to the train station one morning at about 8:00 a.m. was a man in an electric wheelchair covered in tattoos with a woman riding shotgun on the armrest. Rob Zombie’s Dragula was blasting full tilt from a boom box on the chair as they rode through the streets. The city is an endless escapade.
Our home station for this trip was Stoke Newington, and waiting for the train here became a ritual for us. The old brick surrounding the cavernous platform and track transported us to another era. Entering the station was always the beginning of a new adventure and exiting equated to reconnecting with the familiar each day. We emerged from the station turning left to head towards Church Street and its many restaurants and stores.
It was impossible on these journeys from the Overground to the Underground not to think about the Battle of Britain and the use of the subways as protection, a shelter in place during bombings and storage for precious antiquities during raids. At some stations, there are sculptures of children with suitcases in hand as reminders of a time when the most vulnerable were evacuated to the countryside during the war. The past is everywhere in London, and the collective efforts to preserve a way of life and the things treasured is on display for new and old passengers to see and remember.