I think Walter Benjamin once wrote that the only real way to get to know a city is to walk around it: to become a subjective observer and enter into it. I would definitely agree: one can only really know a city if you live within it as one of its citizens. The only problem is, walking takes energy. No matter how fit anyone is, they can only walk so far before they get tired.

That’s why it’s much better, if you ask me, to use a powerchair. In my chair I can trundle for miles around London, absorbing all its wonderful labyrinthine diversity. Today, for instance, I had a good one: quite incredibly, today I managed to roll all the way along the Thames from Greenwich to London Bridge. It took about three hours or so, but thanks to my new incredible batteries I had no problem. For the most part the path was smooth and unproblematic, although at one point I suddenly came across a flight of stairs which I had to find my way around.

It was a wonderful trip, past all the old docks along the south bank of the Thames. There was an amazing amount of history to take in. For instance, at one point I came across the very wharf which the Mayflower departed from, carrying the pilgrims to America. At another, I had to roll along narrow paths between warehouses hundreds of years old, remnants of London’s former life as a commercial port but now immaculately restored and redeveloped.

To be honest, trundling contentedly along as I was, it came as something of a shock to see Tower Bridge roll into view – had I really come that far? The metropolis suddenly seemed much smaller than it once did. But then, that’s probably a result of getting to know it; a natural result of living in a city, of rolling around it and exploring all it’s streets and alleyways. Where London once seemed so sprawling, massive and unknowable, it now feels more compact and liveable. And where Londoners once seemed cold, defensive and distant, for the most part they now seem friendly, welcoming, and indeed charming in their own urban way. Thus Benjamin was right: you can only really know a city if, like the flaneur, you walk it’s streets. The only way I have got to know London is to roll around it in my powerchair. In a sense, then, I am a wheeled flaneur.