Departure lounge ramblings on music, places, climate change and stuff outdoors

Posts from the ‘Walthamstow’ category

All things E17

Save Lea Marshes

The Leyton Marshes, part of the Lea Valley which flows down from the Chiltern Hills all the way through London to disgorge into the Thames near Poplar, is a rare haven for wildlife and tranquility in the great metropolis in which markontour lives. Indeed, the beauty of the Lea Valley’s parks, canal and marshes is the main reason we moved to Walthamstow fifteen years ago. Yet now it is threatened by a badly conceived development put forward by the very authority that was created to protect it. It has to be stopped.

John Kemp Starley and the two wheeled revolution

The ever-wonderful Vestry House Museum is currently showing a great little exhibition about the development of the modern bicycle and the Walthamstow man who invented it. As Walthamstow successfully experiments with mini-Hollands – neighbourhoods designed for pedestrians and cyclists – it’s fantastic to know that the bike itself has its roots in E17.

The laughing GP

Yesterday I visited my local doctor (General Practitioner, or GP, in the British vernacular) about a hypochondria based toe-injury, and got a lesson in psychological medicine.

The Booth of Truth

Last weekend I made my first ever record – an improbable mash-up of Dylan Thomas and Steve Earle – recorded straight to vinyl via a 1950s BBC-issue ‘Record Lathe’. This means, of course, that all markontour’s dreams have now come true and I didn’t even need to leave my own neighbourhood to achieve them, courtesy of the wonderful people at 42 Pearl Road and the E17 Art Trail.

Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock

It’s E17 Art Trail time again, the annual community-led arts programme where the good people of Walthamstow turn their homes, shops and pubs into temporary art galleries. This weekend we only had time to sample of a few of the highlights in the Village, but the Art Trail runs until 14 June so there’s a bit of time to explore more. Here follows markontour’s highlights written, in keeping with the departure lounge ethos of this blog, on a train to Stoke for a Sunday of boating.

Tangled Yarns

The William Morris Gallery has done it again, with another great guest exhibition. This time Alke Schmidt’s Tangled Yarns has taken over the space at the…

Walthamstow

Somehow, in eighteen months of blogging about my favourite things I have managed to omit Walthamstow. In my defence, there didn’t seem to be much of…