Nightwalking: Four Journeys into Britain After Dark

Product Information

Sarah Moss is one of my favourite writers. I have gradually collected all of her books except for her memoir and I’m so looking forward to the release of her new novel Summerwater. The reasons that I love her work are many and varied, but here are a few of them: Enjoy your whole experience in the dark for this challenge. Starting after late afternoon and finishing around midnight, get ready for a long night under the starry skies of Eryri National Park Snowdonia and Dark Sky Reserve. This is also one of my favorite Christmas walks in London, as the annual Christmas market by the river brings the area to life with festive cheer and decorations. Night walk ascents and descents are via the well-maintained Llanberis Path, returning to the village of Llanberis with the option of a hearty breakfast. Choose a full moon to experience Snowdon by moonlight, or a new moon for real immersion in rare darkness.

This book was really really good! It gives you a unique insight into what it's like to be a mother, and while I've read several novels on family life and the stress that can come with it, I've never read anything like this. Another of my favorite London night walks is one in the area around London Bridge. This part of the city is for you if you enjoy history, food, and riverside scenery in equal measure. I liked the honesty of the marriage that isn’t doing so great. It was nice to see a struggling marriage that still had hope. To often I read about struggling couples and how they just stop trying. The largest change had come slightly earlier, with the introduction of street lighting during (appropriately) the Enlightenment. Although for citizens living away from the main thoroughfares the nights remained “nasty, brutish, and all too long”, as Beaumont neatly observes, for others street lighting completely transformed London. Soon the popular understanding of “nightlife” had expanded to include entertainment as well as thieves lurking in the shadows. Not only did the theatres thrive, pools of gaslight added a theatrical glow to ordinary activities. Suddenly the city was full of spotlights that anyone could step into. Every street corner was potentially the location of a new nocturnal drama. Time slows down for a deeper intimacy with nature, and through Chris’s writing we hear every rustle of a leaf, every call of a bird. He widens the power of our imagination, heightening our senses and revealing beauty in the smallest details.

Climb Snowdon for Sunrise

Whether you love buzzing market stalls or walking past hip restaurants, bars, and pubs (and stopping at one or two, of course), you’ll find a lot to love about doing this walk at night. From twinkling lights to famous shopping streets, waterfront areas to hipster neighborhoods, these night walks in London will take you to some of my favorite places in the UK capital after the sun goes down. Who walks alone in the streets at night? The sad, the mad, the bad. The lost, the lonely. The sleepless, the homeless. All the city’s internal exiles. The night has always been the time for daylight’s dispossessed – the dissident, the different. Walking alone at night in the city by both men and women has, since time immemorial, been interpreted as a sign of moral, social or spiritual dereliction.

She seems to move effortlessly between time periods. Signs for Lost Children was set in the 1870’s, parts of Night Waking in modern Scotland and although Ghost Wall was set in contemporary Britain it may as well have been the Iron Age For Matthew Beaumont, Eliot’s travellers, their “eyes fixated on their feet”, are the antithesis of the modernist spirit, closed off from the creative possibilities of the city’s myriad surprises. In contrast, Mrs Dalloway and Leopold Bloom are unconsciously alert to its ever-shifting mood, which impinges imaginatively on their own. That was in winter. The screaming of a tawny owl echoed off the bare trees. For all of our street-lamp civilization, you can still hear the call of the wild. If, if, you go out after the decline of the day... The restaurants, pubs, and bars are some of the best in the city, too, so it’s easy to spend a whole night doing this walk. It’s a fun London walk to do at night because the atmosphere in places like Leadenhall Market is particularly magical in the evenings. You’ll really feel like you’re in the wizarding world after dark on this walk. You can also see the Harry Potter play en route.Keep an eye out for wildlife: Any night time wildlife encounters in the UK are almost certainly likely to be benign, but if you’re worried it’s worth researching which animals are common to your local area so you know what to expect. Foxes, owls, bats, badgers and deer are more common at night, but the main thing is just to try to be aware of your surroundings. Listen and look for animals, not only so you can enjoy seeing them but also so you can respond if necessary.