National Park City

London Essays: LONDON’S EMPTY CHILDHOODS

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London Essays: LONDON’S EMPTY CHILDHOODS

From an early age I had the freedom to go exploring. Along with my brothers and friends, I would play well-organised games of ‘hide and seek’, ‘forty-forty’ or ‘capture the flag’ over large areas of woodland. I was good at it, too. While some of my friends would hide behind a log wearing bright clothing, I would camouflage myself with soil and old branches and position myself in the one place hardly anyone looks, on a branch high up in the trees. I would imagine myself as a lynx, a shadow in the woodland’s canopy, quietly watching as people passed below without noticing me. In the heat and excitement of the games, I used these quiet moments to tune into the wild around me. I might watch a woodlouse navigate an archipelago of moss, a woodpecker feeding its young, a family of deer observing my friends trying to find me.

We should not see childhood just as a period of time; we should see it as a place

At the age of 10, we made the most incredible camps. Once, taking advantage of a fallen tree…

Continue reading on the Centre for London’s London Essays website.

BBC Wildlife Magazine: Concrete Conservation

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BBC Wildlife Magazine: Concrete Conservation

Urban areas cover approximately three per cent of the world as a whole, and seven per cent of the UK. They are a distinct habitat that, in the case of large cities, can stretch across entire landscapes. As you’d expect, our largest, most diverse, most complex and influential of these habitats is to be found in London. Covering around 1,600km it’s larger in area than the Peak District, and it’s not just home to 8.6 million Homo sapiens.

It doesn’t matter how often I see a red fox, my heart skips a beat every time. I see them all the time where I live in Hanwell…

The this article in BBC Wildlife Magazine.

Time Out: An urban wanderer walked all the way across London. Here’s what he discovered

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Time Out: An urban wanderer walked all the way across London. Here’s what he discovered

I’ve just finished walking across all of the UK’s 15 national parks and 69 cities: the equivalent of the length of Britain and then some. Without a doubt, the best part of my journey was my 18-hour, 56km leg across London: from Hinchley Wood in the south-west, through the centre of the city and all the way to Grange Hill in the north-east. The UK has many brilliant cities, but none compare to London’s diversity, omnipotence and sheer scale.

Continue reading on TimeOut.com.

BBC Open Country: London, A National Park City?

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BBC Open Country: London, A National Park City?

“There’s a campaign gaining ground to make London a National Park City. But what exactly does that mean? David Lindo meets the campaign founder Dan Raven-Ellison to find out and goes on a journey across London to see for himself why anyone would think the UK’s biggest city could qualify for such a title. Along the way he finds a ghost of a river, an enthusiastic ornithologist, and some paddlers who call Regents Canal their breathing space.”

Listen to this episode of Open Country on BBC Radio 4.