Praeterita

I like walking. I walk at least a mile every day, just to stay in some sort of shape while I'm waiting for a recently injured tendon in my lower back to heal. But I've always loved walking as a way of exploring the place where I live. I was born in the UK, and I've lived for periods of between six months and eight years in cities outside England: Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and now Chicago. Soon after I arrived in each of those places, I would get out onto the streets with a Walkers' Guidebook in hand, following the different itineraries to famous and not-so-famous places. Even when I lived in London, I used to do this sort of thing, doing the south-west London river walk that ended up in Kew Gardens;  the East End Jack the Ripper walk; the Bloomsbury walk; and so on. It's a great way to get to know a city, and needless to say you see so much more than taking even a bus tour. Nowadays, there are some great apps out there that enable you to do all of this using ...