I’m sure most people will have heard of “The Knowledge”, the legendary system in which London taxi drivers memorise every road and route in the capital in order to get their passengers from A to B. If you ask me, I have serious doubts about whether that is actually possible. While it may have been in the past, now that London is so vast and sprawling, I cannot see how anyone could learn the entire map of London.

Out on my trundle this afternoon, I was slowly getting more and more lost: as I have said here before, I often like to just follow my nose, exploring roads and paths I have never taken before. More often than not this leads me to losing my way, but that is half the fun; the longer I live in this city and the more I explore it, the more intriguing and labyrinthine London seems. Today though, I was following more and more obscure roads, and soon began to go in circles.

Of course I eventually found my way again, but it made me think: how could anyone memorise such a maze? How could anyone possibly learn all the road in this massive place? I struggle to find my way, and even then I stick to a relatively small corner of the metropolis. There must be tens of thousands of roads and junctions in London: I find the notion that someone could remember them all, knowing by heart where each one of them leads, frankly beyond credible. How on earth could any human brain grasp the entirety of such a vast, complex, dynamic system?