"Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub"

So said Jack Kerouac in his Lonesome Traveler. We join John Rogers as he retraces a walk the Beat Generation novelist once took through London.

As the blurb on YouTube says:

American Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, visited London in April 1957 while on a big trip just before the publication of his most celebrated book, On the Road. He recorded his trip in his book, Lonesome Traveler. 

This video follows the walk he took when he arrived by train at Victoria Station and walked past Buckingham Palace, up the Strand to Fleet Street to St Paul’s Cathedral. He then went to the King Lud pub for a ‘sixpenny Welsh rarebit and a stout’, before taking the bus back to Buckingham Gate. 

In Lonesome Traveler Kerouac wrote, ‘Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub’.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

You may also enjoy a post on Kerouac and Lonesome Traveler by C.G. Fewston.

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Helen Coffey argues that The Traitors, where intelligence is a hindrance that should be hidden at all costs, is a metaphor for society's increasing suspicion towards, and rejection of, intellect, especially when it comes to those in charge.

"It’s really nice when we get people through the yard – the positives far outweigh the negatives ... Farms are very isolated places. It used to be tens of people working on this farm and now it’s just me and my husband." Patrick Barkham meets some of the growing number of farmers who are joining forces with right-to-roam campaigners to boost public access to the countryside.

Harriett Baldwin, a former chair of the treasury select committee, argues that the power afforded to 11 Downing Street can have unintended and negative consequences for democracy.

"For some, school meals evoke memories of austerity and control, as in Daniel’s recollections of being forced to eat everything on his plate. For others, they represent moments of community and care, as Julia’s experience of encouraging her children to embrace school dinners illustrates." Heather Ellis and Isabelle Carter introduce their oral history project on school meals.

"What 1969-70 means is loads of background (and foreground) material beginning with Steve Winwood’s involvement in Blind Faith and ending with King Crimson’s third album, Lizard. Among those featuring heavily are Spooky Tooth, Free and Mott the Hoople, three classic early Island rock bands whose largely student and mostly male following tended to sport ex-army greatcoats, along with plimsolls, loon pants and cheesecloth shirts." Richard Williams reviews the second volume of Neil Storey’s The Island Book of Records.

Casmilus watches the 1971 film Unman, Wittering and Zigo, which stars David Hemmings and is set in a minor public school: "Like all films set in such locations, it gives an insight into the early character formation of the men who play a large role in running Britain for the next 50 years."

A Suffolk hauntology: John Rogers walks from Felixstowe to the River Orwell

From the blurb on YouTube:

A Suffolk walk through the town of Felixstowe and along the coast path past the pier to Landguard point and Landguard fort. We see the enormous container port - the largest in the UK and the Harwich Haven. From here we pick up the Orwell and Stour walk around the dock and along the River Orwell and around Trimley Marshes.

The walk was inspired by the writing of Felixstowe resident Mark Fisher who popularised the term 'Hauntology' and wrote about this coastline on his influential blog k-punk as well as in the books, Ghosts of My Life, and The Weird and the Eerie.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Meet C.W. Allen: Market Harborough's champion walker of the Edwardian era

Remember C.W. Allen, the "pedestrian holder of the 2,000 miles road record" who saw a phantom airship over Kelmarsh? He turns out to have been quite a figure in his day: the newspapers were full of reports of his feats and appearances.

Here is an account of a visit he paid to Great Malvern in 1905, which was recycled by the Worcester News a century later:

How To Walk And The Boots To Wear was a headline in the Malvern Gazette 100 years ago.

It came as Mr C W Allen, the champion long-distance pedestrian of the world, gave an exhibition of his powers in Malvern.

"At six o'clock in the evening, he started from Mr Oliver's boot stores on the Promenade and walked along the Belle Vue Terrace, through the Wyche cutting, round the hills by West and North Malvern, down Trinity Bank to the Graham Road and up Church Street to the starting point," the paper reported.

"This walk, which is practically an afternoon's walk to an ordinary individual, and has plenty of difficult ascents, he accomplished in the marvellous time of 49 minutes, or at the rate of eight miles an hour.

"A considerable number of people watched him en-route and the critics had to admit that in spite of the rapidity with which he travelled, it was a fair and square walk with no suspicion of breaking into a run.

"Mr Allen wore a pair of Oliver's celebrated boots and stated that he never had any others to beat them as regards wear and ease and comfort."

But then Allen, whose forenames I have yet to discover, was a great one for endorsing things. He endorsed the tonic Phosferine tonic in the makers' advertisements, even when he had joined up as an air mechanic in the Royal Flying Corps during the first world war.

Another Phosferine advertisement gives Allen's home address: 43 Nithsdale Avenue, Market Harborough.

The illustration above is one of a number of postcards of Allen that the CardHawk site has sold in recent years. You will see that in this one he is endorsing Harboro Rubber Soles, which were made at the Dainite Mill in St Mary's Road by the Harborough Rubber Company.

Later. A reader has researched this (thank you!) and his full name was Charles William Allen. He was a commercial traveller working for a boot manufacturer, so he was a walking advertisement.

Allen was originally from Stroud. His first child was born in Market Harborough, but he had left the town before the 1911 census and was living on Jersey in 1921.

It occurs to me that he may have seen that airship because he was off his tits on Phosferine.

John Rogers meets the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace Park

John Rogers posted this walk at the end of October. His description on YouTube says:

A beautiful autumn walk in South London. Walk 3 of the Capital Ring starts at Crystal Palace Park and goes through Penge, Alexandra Park Sydenham, Cator Park Beckenham, and our walk ends at the wonderful Beckenham Place Park with sensational views. 

The Capital Ring is 150-mile circular walk divided into 24 stages. This walk was around 7.5 miles with rail and bus connections at either end starting at Sydenham Station and ending at Beckenham Junction.

Best of all, we get to see the Crystal Palace dinosaurs near the start of it.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

John Rogers walks the Walbrook from Islington to the City

Another walk with our favourite psychogeographer, John Rogers. This time it's:

A walk from the Angel Islington to the City of London exploring the northern branch of the River Walbrook, one of the lost rivers of London. We start on Amwell Street then go to the White Conduit in Barnsbury Road. 

From here we locate the possible source of this branch of the Walbrook in White Conduit Street near Chapel Market. The route then basically follows City Road to Moorgate where it meets the branch of the stream that rises around Shoreditch. 

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Return to the Stiperstones Inn

I spent my last day in Shropshire at Snailbeach and Stiperstones village. Here is the Stiperstones Inn with the hills behind it.

The pub, I can report, now has inside toilets and more dining space, including a pleasant outside area. And, unlike some remote establishments I could mention, is still friendly and welcoming, serving food all day, every day.

It doesn't do bed and breakfast any more, but owns some self-catering accommodation nearby. This seems a general pattern in the area: everyone wants week-long bookings, and the sort of places I stayed at for one night in my walking days seem to have disappeared.

I should add that, despite the carving over the door where you used to go up to the accommodation at the Stiperstones Inn, I was never sacrificed to their local pagan deities.

The last days of the Ilfracombe branch

I remember passing through Ilfracombe while walking the coastal path in the summer of 1988. Every bed-and-breakfast establishment had its prices in the window, trying to undercut the place next door. It was great for a walker on a limited budget, but not a sign of a prosperous resort.

My theory at the time was that the town had not recovered from the closure of its branch railway from Barnstaple. Certainly, reading about it now, I find that line generated lots of holiday traffic almost to its closure in 1970, but attracted too few passengers apart from that. 

The last stretch of the line into Barnstaple had become part of the coastal path by 1988. I can remember sitting outside the fence of RAF Chivenor listening to Test Match Special - every time the radar transmitter turned towards me there was interference with the reception.

It was the summer of 1988, so England were losing horribly to the West Indies. I fancy the test I was listening to was the one in which Chris Cowdrey (son of Colin and godson of the chairman of selectors, Peter May) captained the team.

His selection was described at the time by the great Matthew Engel as "a combination of nepotism and wishful thinking". Cowdrey fils did not prove a success and, after going down with a minor injury, was bundled out of the team, never to play for England again.

Where were we? 

The video above, narrated by Victor Thompson, shows the last days of the Ilfracombe branch and tells us something of its history. Thompson does have a thing about nasty accidents on level crossings, but it's a good watch.

As a bonus to make up for all that cricket, here's footage of the same line shot in 1898.

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John Harris says the government needs to start giving people hope and quickly: "Among all the numbers, there is a huge story here about the everyday reality of people’s lives. What I would call ambient austerity – litter everywhere, overgrown grass verges, potholed roads, rusty slides and swings – is now deeply ingrained. It sits at the heart of the cynicism towards politics and politicians that is intensified by social media. It has also been a sizeable part of most of the political ruptures of the past 14 years, not least Brexit – and, at the election, the way that Reform UK seized on so many resentments in traditional Labour heartlands that it often finished second."

Continued austerity is a danger to national security, warns Tom Woolmore.

John Stewart on the history of the feeding of schoolchildren by the state: "Local activists revealed that recipients might be subject to deliberately humiliating treatment or be given sub-standard food.  Frank Field ... was thus moved to write reports with titles such as The Stigma of Free School Meals (1974) and Free School Meals: The Humiliation Continues (1977)."

Paul Salveson remembers Britain's biggest mass trespass in support of the right to roam, which was held at Winter Hill in 1996.

"As a star of numerous revues and sketch shows, she played just about every conceivable kind of female character, and made each one of them sound distinctive, amusing and, in their own peculiar way, believable. Her sheer range, and comic craft, were truly remarkable." Graham McCann celebrates the career of Betty Marsden.

For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD." But what is a cockatrice? Seana Graham finds out.

A walk along Roman Stane Street from London Bridge to Tooting with John Rogers

John's blurb on YouTube explains:

Part of a series of videos exploring Roman London, this walk follows the Roman Road that led from the Thames at London Bridge to Chichester. Our journey starts at London Bridge and a stop at the Wheatsheaf pub. The road leads us through Elephant and Castle, Kennington, Stockwell, Clapham, Clapham Common, Balham, ending at Tooting in the Trafalgar Inn.

A collaboration with Young's Beer.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

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"It doesn't matter what statistics Musk does or doesn't announce, or which advertisers stay or which leave - this statistic is the real ballgame. Engagement numbers that can't even reach a dozen, for an account that boasts over 30,000 supposed fans, is an outright apocalypse." Hunter Lazzaro offers a post titled How to Kill Your Tech Company (Elon Musk edition).

Katie Rosseinsky claims Euston Station is hell on earth: "You stand, neck craned towards the departures board, squinting under artificial lights that seem perfectly calibrated to induce migraines. You dodge passengers who stampede like wildebeests towards platforms announced moments before trains are due to leave."

Simon Price says Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history. Hear him.

"Art historians look carefully at images to search for incongruities. In authenticating or attributing a painting, we don’t just look at brushstrokes and pigments. We consider the painting’s ownership, the hands through which it has passed, and other information about the history that the painting has accumulated along the way." Sonja Drimmer suggests the profession will be invaluable in the battle against misleading AI-generated images.

"For many urban planners, desire lines are a sign of failure; evidence that a public space hasn’t quite met the needs and wishes of the people who use that space. And there’s some truth in that. But for me, they’re also a reminder that our cities are uniquely human places, and the ones that function best are those that are safely navigable not by private vehicle, but on foot." Laurie Winkless celebrates desire lines - the unofficial footpaths the public makes for itself by repeated use.

J.J. Jackson on the ticking time bomb that threatens south Essex: "The SS Richard Montgomery was a United States Liberty Ship. It was transporting explosives from the USA, to use in the war against the Nazis. She ran aground and broke her back off the Kent coast in August 1944. Salvage crews were able to remove 5,000 tons of explosives after the wreck. But they had to abandon the attempt, leaving 1,400 tons still on board."

An epic adventure to Sniggs Alley and the oldest pub in England

From the blurb on YouTube:

Great walk to find a location from best-selling author Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of books nestled in the Chilterns countryside close to where Pratchett grew up - and also my childhood home. Sniggs Alley is a place in Ankh-Morpork on the Discworld. It's also an ancient footpath that runs from Loudwater to the village of Penn in Buckinghamshire. 

Our quest to find Sniggs Alley starts in High Wycombe and we walk along the A40 London Road to Loudwater before walking into the Chiltern Hills. We then turn towards Forty Green, near Beaconsfield, where Terry Pratchett grew up. At Lude Farm we pass the field where a B17 bomber crashed on 12 August 1944.

At Forty Green we stop for a pint on the Royal Standard of England, which is the oldest free house in England and has existed for over 900 years. The final part of the walk takes to Beaconsfield Library where Terry Pratchett spent much time reading and studying.

Penn, incidentally, was the home of the philosopher Karl Popper.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Walking the Mardyke Way in Essex with John Rogers

John Rogers's blurb on YouTube:

A Walk following the Mardyke Way from Purfleet, Essex through the countryside on the edge of Greater London to the village of Bulphan. The Mardyke is an ancient river that has been following its course for over 30 million years. 

The route I took from Purfleet was around 11-miles followed by around another 3 miles to West Horndon Station. This is great walk through fields, meadows and fens.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

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"Between 2012 and 2019, austerity was responsible for an estimated 335,000 excess deaths. The rate of prescription of antidepressants in England has doubled since 2011: nearly 20 per cent of adults now take them. The average height of children who grew up under austerity fell relative to European benchmarks." William Davies on 14 years of Conservative rule.

Guy Shrubsole analyses Labour's environmental policies.

Naomi Fisher says we’re in the middle of a cultural clash in the way that we understand mental health: "The way that we understand distress is deeply rooted in our culture and time, but it doesn’t feel like that to us. We tend to think that the way we understand things now is the right way, superior to previous generations and other cultures."

"On the May Bank Holiday weekend, I was walking with a group of refugees. We managed a couple of short strenuous climbs, a gorge scramble and long open stretches along the contours of the hills. The walks were tiring and testing, and the wind, rain and sun took turns to blast us. But they were joyful and exhilarating walks. I saw people stretch out their arms and point their faces up to the sky as I do. Their eyes sparkled and their smiles broadened with the beauty and the expanse of it all." Stella Perrott believes the beauty and health benefits of the countryside must be shared with everyone, regardless of background or financial status

"Went the Day Well has been praised for its stark realism, including hostage-taking, numerous close-ups of shootings, threats to execute children and the murder of an elderly vicar during a church service.  Some critics find this surprising in the context of wartime propaganda.  But this is perhaps to misunderstand the film’s purpose, which was surely instructional as much as it was morale boosting." Jeremy Burchardt watches Went the Day Well?, Cavalcanti's 1942 masterpiece.

Emine Saner talks to Cyndi Lauper: "The song Girls Just Want to Have Fun wasn’t written by Lauper, but she changed the lyrics and the feel of the song and it became a huge hit. Suddenly she was famous, but isolated."

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Liz Gerard says that newspapers coverage of Sunak's retreat from the beaches of Normandy has been desperately inadequate: "The Mirror aside, every one of them missed or misinterpreted the biggest gaffe of the election campaign so far. And at the same time rendered meaningless all the reams of newsprint dedicated to saying how much we respect and owe to those D-Day heroes."

"I have lost count of the number of examples from previous cases where a house parent has received complaints of abuse by another house parent, but done nothing to take the complaint further. The point is that the offence of failing to report by someone in a position of care of children should be on the basis of 'reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed', rather than 'observed recognised indicators of child sexual abuse'." Peter Garsden is not impressed by the government's response to the recommendations on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

"It is moments of sudden change, for example, the case of Cirencester Park, that provide us with the opportunity to look beyond the status quo towards alternative models of access and ownership of the natural world." Henry Snowball looks at the wider questions raised by the Bathurst Estate's act of shutting public access behind a ticket booth.

Alex Massie debunks the mythology that has built up around George Orwell's stay on Jura, the Hebridean island where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.

"With the exception of Potter’s 1986 masterpiece The Singing Detective - which is now generally available on BBC iPlayer - the writer’s output is scattered to the winds of out-of-print and costly DVD editions or lo-fi stints on YouTube." Fergal Kinney on what remains of Dennis Potter.

Hadley Mears discovers the fascinating and varied life of Maria Rasputin, the daughter of Russia's greatest love machine.

Walking the Regent's Canal from Limehouse to Paddington

On the day of the London Marathon, we walk with John Rogers along the entire length of the Regent's Canal from Limehouse Basin in East London to Paddington Basin in the west. 

We pass through Mile End, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Haggerston, Shoreditch, Islington, Camden, Regent's Park, Marylebone, Maida Vale and Little Venice.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

A walk from Mile End to Poplar via Limehouse

We join John Rogers on a walk from the 18th-century Novo Cemetery to Hawksmoor's St Anne's Church, Limehouse, via the Regent's Canal and then two historic locations in Poplar.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

A walk with John Rogers: Roydon in Essex to Ware in Hertfordshire

The Harcamlow Way is a figure-of-eight path through Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. This John Rogers walk follows it from Roydon station in Essex to Ware in Hertfordshire.

We visit the mediaeval moat in Moat Wood and cross the River Ash, passing through what John calls "some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen on my walks".

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

What on earth is psychogeography? John Rogers explains

I post John Rogers' videos here regularly. In an attempt to be fair, I limit myself to one a month, never choose his most recent and always include a link to his Patreon account.

John was interviewed recently for The Tap Into Podcast about his walks and videos. 

As the podcast puts it:

January 31st 2024 and author, flaneur, youtube sensation and friend of the Tap John Rogers chatted to a sold out crowd about his life, his influences and to discuss just "What on Earth is psychogeography?'. 

A fascinating evening talking about our relationship with the built environment, bad jazz, the Situationists and why you should never shoot a hare amongst an awful lot of other things

Listen to his interview here.

Walking the ancient Black Path from Walthamstow into the City

John Rogers writes on YouTube:

The Black Path was a drover's route that led from Epping Forest to the markets in the City of London - primarily Smithfield Market. It dates back to at least the middle ages but some local historians believe its origins may stretch back further in time. 

The path starts at St James Street, Walthamstow then passes down South Access Road to Leyton Marshes after which is crosses the River Lea and passes across South Millfields Clapton, along Powerscroft Road to St John at Hackney and the medieval church tower of St Augustine. 

We then follow the Black Path along Hackney Grove, Martello Street to London Fields, Broadway Market, Goldsmith's Row, Columbia Road, Virginia Street ending at St Leonard's Church Shoreditch on the junction of Old Street and Ermine Street. 

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.