London can get me down.
My general guideline is: I'm not happy unless I can run for 10km or less and be out of town, in nature. London, at 1,759square-km, doesn't qualify. It can take over an hour and a half to get from Paddington station to Harry's house in South London, crawling darkly and anonymously down the Northern Tube line. This is the same amount of time it takes to get to London from Bath, on the other side of the country.
The Tube is a brilliant idea brilliantly executed. And I think the Tube is the main reason for my problem. I don't know where places in London actually are, I know where they are on the tube map. I have no idea what the stretch of city between King's Cross and South Kensington looks like, except underground.
Which is why this weekend, I empowered myself over London. I brought my bike, and didn't use the tube once.
Suddenly, streets and neighborhoods have real, physical meaning, beyond coloured lines on a modernist map! There is light, there is connectivity, and, my goodness, there is nature. Nearly every neighborhood has its own preserved reserve of green, a place where, even in the midst of over seven million people and buildings forever, you can breath.
And there's no congestion charge for bikes!
"No one is healthy in London, no one can be." -Jane Austen
