Would stating that I would like to get out of London a bit more imply that I no longer like it or don’t appreciate living here? To be honest that’s a dilemma I’ve been caught in for a while. I’ve been living in London for sixteen years, and as incredible as I think the metropolis is, I’m sure there are other places to explore. I think I’ve written here before how I can go months without getting beyond the M25. As I began to reflect a couple of days ago, perhaps the fact I’ve now lived here for so long means it is also starting to seem dull: the well-maintained paths I trundle along so often in my chair, through the parks and by the river, have now lost their novelty.

The thing is, I don’t mean one of my trips with John or Dominik. As awesome as such escapades are, I now feel the need to get out of the city by myself. If I’ve been trundling around London for all these years, surely I can get myself beyond the city. After all, it isn’t that huge a metropolis really. The thing is, that might not be quite as simple as it might sound: I obviously need to use public transport, so given the tube system doesn’t extend beyond London buses would be my best option. That basically means that I would need to take a bus to somewhere near the perimeter of the city and get another bus from there, since London and the surrounding counties have two different public transportation systems.

That is essentially what I began to investigate today, catching a bus to Bexleyheath and then one to Dartford. It was just a preliminary journey, and I didn’t go any farther because I was already feeling the need for head home for lunch. Yet nonetheless I noticed that there were buses I could take from Dartford down into Kent on a future trip.

It’s very, very peculiar how London now almost feels like my entire world, to the extent that the idea of going outside of it feels pointless, or almost dangerous. That is, if I do somehow manage to get somewhere outside the M25, how can I be sure I’d be able to get myself home again? I know that isn’t the case, but my day to day life has been centred around the city for so long that I seem like have forgotten that there is anything outside of it. However, I now feel it’s time to put that right, and to start trying to go beyond the sprawling urban labyrinth. Frankly, as much as I love living in one of the greatest cities on earth, as someone born and brought up in Cheshire, I’m really starting to crave the fields. It isn’t that I am growing tired of London, just increasingly conscious that there is a world outside of it full of different places to explore.