London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time.
History time.
And Bastille Day time in France.
Here, in London, our feathers are altogether less ruffled today.
Less ruffled. More agreeable. More melodious.
So let’s tune up.
“Here’s a sentence I’ll bet you’ve never heard before.
London is one of Europe’s great bird cities.”
Really?
London?
The city of red buses and black cabs.
The city of
Buckingham Palace and
Big Ben.
The city of the Tube.
The city of football crowds, theatre queues and nine million people.
That London?
Yes.
That London.
Because there’s another London.
A greener London.
A quieter London.
A London of ancient woodland and hidden valleys. Of commons, marshes, meadows and streams.
A London where every morning the greatest free performance in the city gets under way.
You heard right. Admission: absolutely free.
No tickets required.
No booking necessary.
No standing ovation expected.
Just birds.
Thousands upon thousands of them.
Singing.
Most of us simply walk straight past.
Well, something happened to me the other day.
It started with Charlie’s Ultimate London Walk.
Forty-two miles.
Walking, in fourteen stages, all the way across London.
From the Hertfordshire border to the Surrey Downs.
Charlie’s already completed four of this summer’s seven two-walk days. Come September he’ll set out again. Fourteen stages. Just under a fortnight. We’ve christened it the London Camino.
But this isn’t really about Charlie.
Nor is it really about the walk.
The walk simply made me listen.
Because so much of it threads its way through a London that surprises people.
Not the London of Oxford Street.
Not the London of Westminster.
Instead…
Woodland.
Parkland.
River valleys.
Heath.
Meadows.
What I can only call rural London.
Yes, rural London.
Inside one of the world’s greatest cities.
And suddenly a question occurred to me.
If we’re walking through all that countryside…
Why are we only looking?
Why aren’t we listening?
That’s where a remarkable little app called Merlin comes in.
You open it.
Touch one button.
And suddenly the woodland introduces itself.
Robin.
Blackbird.
Wren.
Jay.
A great spotted woodpecker somewhere overhead.
A bird you’d never have recognised in a million years.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not a birder.
I’m certainly not.
That isn’t the point.
The point is that Merlin quietly introduces you to the feathered citizens of one of Europe’s great bird cities.
And once that happens…
London changes.
Not because London has changed.
Because you have.
You’re no longer simply walking through a wood.
You’re being welcomed into it.
You’re no longer passing through a park.
You’re beginning to understand who actually lives there.
Mind you, we’re not the first people to stop and listen.
More than eight hundred years ago an anonymous poet wrote one of the earliest masterpieces in the English language.
It was called The Owl and the Nightingale.
Not a poem about kings.
Not a poem about battles.
A poem about two birds arguing.
Even then people knew there was something irresistible about birds.
About their voices.
About listening.
Perhaps somewhere along the line many of us forgot.
Every expedition has its own soundscape.
Charlie’s voice.
The laughter of the group.
Footsteps on the trail.
The breeze in the trees.
A brook burbling through the undergrowth.
The distant whistle of a train.
And, almost every step of the way…
Birdsong.
Merlin won’t preserve all of that.
Nothing could.
But it will preserve one beautiful strand of the journey.
Years from now you’ll still have your photographs.
You’ll still have your memories.
Perhaps your diary.
If you complete all fourteen stages, perhaps you’ll pull on your well-earned “I Did It” T-shirt, the one with the route proudly traced across a map of London.
And then you’ll open Merlin.
There they are.
The robin you heard in the woodland.
The blackbird in a hidden valley.
The parakeets squabbling in the treetops.
The woodpecker drumming somewhere out of sight.
You won’t simply remember where you walked.
You’ll remember what London sounded like.
That’s a souvenir I rather like.
And that’s only the beginning.
Next time – yes, tomorrow – we’ll meet up close some of London’s feathered citizens.
The familiar ones.
The surprising ones.
Did you know, for example, that a wren weighs little more than a £1 coin, yet possesses one of the loudest voices, pound for pound, in the bird world?
Or that a peregrine falcon can cross the length of a football pitch in about a second during a high-speed dive?
Those are just two of the extraordinary neighbours who share this city with us.
Because London isn’t just one of the world’s great cities.
It’s one of Europe’s great bird cities.
And once you’ve heard that…
You’ll never hear London in quite the same way again.
And on that chirpy, cheerful thoughtful, see you tomorrow.