I have written here before quite a few times about my passion for trundling: my love of going out in my powerchair and exploring the city, following roads and paths for whole afternoons, just to see where I end up. The thing is, in all my trundles over the years, I have still never managed to get outside Greater London.

There’s obviously a hell of a lot of this city to explore. Even with such a great public transport system, getting around it takes hours. Yet, for all its vastness and for all its diversity, London is still essentially one place: one of the richest, most affluent economic centres of the world; where billions can be spent almost on a whim, the busses and trains run like clockwork, skyscrapers shoot into the sky like corn in a field, and the loudest sound I hear all day is the one that accompanies the bus wheelchair ramp. I started to reflect on this a few months ago: The fact that for all my trundling and bus riding I still haven’t managed to find my way beyond the M25 is starting to feel weirder and weirder, almost as if I’m trapped here, it has become my entire world and nothing exists outside it’s encircling motorway.

London is a great world city, capable of fantastic things. Yet great does not always mean exciting or exotic. Hemingway once famously called London boring, and think I can at last see what he meant. London is wealthy, orderly and privileged. It once seemed so awesome, but I think I have reached the point where I yearn to go beyond it. What about the grittier, more earnest parts of the world? Places which aren’t so privileged, and which haven’t been gentrified beyond recognition? Where people aren’t so used to having access to everything they need or being the centre of national attention? London is a fantastic, stable base; yet the adventurer in me is becoming keener and keener to go beyond it, back into more down-to-earth places. There comes a point where order and privilege begin to feel dull, and you become increasingly curious about the smaller, wilder, less well known corners of the world.