It had always been my intention to skirt the edges of the capital and I felt that I had succeeded that morning as I strolled past paddocks of well loved horses. Even the houses on the lanes could pass for cottages at first glance. Most, I soon realised had been modified and extended. Their driveways were clogged by three or more cars. Everywhere I looked there were prominently positioned alarms. I had tried to avoid London so London had decided to come out to meet me.

Inside the M25 I ran out of open space and after a stroll beside the River Wey I was forced to walk the B road heading north from Byfleet. Slowly but surely my walk was becoming urban. My resurrected senses were being tortured.

At Weybridge I watched a game of cricket for a while, sipping a drink by the side of the pitch. A century of this cricket club had really seen some changes - one hundred years ago this patch of open ground was at the heart of a village. Now it has been rolled up into one ubiquitous city.

My head hurt as I walked towards the river.

Amongst the blank walls of houses the Thames was a line of life running through the desert. I stood on the bridge at Walton a while and watched the pleasure boats potter their slow way upstream from Hampton Court.

There is an awful lot of humbug talked about the ‘mighty’ Thames. Here at Walton it’s a lazy fat fellow, more homely than imposing, like a favourite old uncle. Anyone could have swum it from bank to bank if they did not mind risking the pollution. Even at thirty thousand feet the Volga looks larger, but like most of England, the importance of the Thames goes beyond its physical size. Its the spirit, the parent of the oldest great city of the modern era.

The last myth I met on my walk was Old Father Thames. He escorted me across the bridge and welcomed me to North London. I did not question his right to personification.

On the north side of the river the feeling of affluence faded. Here there were houses and flats built in unexciting estates that were dwarfed by the reservoirs and the arterial roads. This was the Outer London I knew from my childhood.

I began the long walk which would take me across London’s lovehandles, across the middle-aged spread that came when Victorian London finally burst out of its corsets in the 1930’s. An explosion of building that sent this metroland pouring over the villages from Ashford to Ruislip. I heard the growl of geriatric Routemasters and black cabs and suddenly I knew that I felt at home. I was off on a Sunday drive to one of my two Nans.

As a kid, West London seemed to be seamless. A world of windows, of cars, of mock Tudor pubs and of houses and houses going on forever. Everything looked like everything else. Nothing ever came between one bit and the next.

When we were young my mother picked out places to mark the route - tourist spots like Northolt Firestation and Rayners Lane Tube. Stepping stones of difference in the limitless sprawl. Forget Westminster, Big Ben or the Tower: I know when I am in London when I pass the Kodak factory at Harrow. The sounds of the streets brought back the years of sitting at the lights by the ABC Bowling watching red buses crossing at the lights.

I headed north along the streets towards the airport, passing reservoir after reservoir.

By the time I reached Stanwell I was being swamped by the noise from the nearby motorway. Ever since I had come down from Box Hill I felt like someone was slowly turning up the volume. However even the row of the M25 was dwarfed by the roar of a jet attempting to take off. I felt that I was struggling, drowning in a riptide.

I staggered up the western side of the airport parallel to the perimeter road . A steady stream of planes came ever lower, hitting the runway that was just to my right. An Air Canada flight came in over-head and sent me scrabbling around for my camera to capture the massive bulk in the air.

By now my head was spinning and I was keen to get out from underneath the flight path. What I found a nightmare, others found fascinating. Right under the approach to the busy runway was a group of middle-aged men kitted out with telephoto-lenses. There is a certain sort of man that likes to spot things. I am sure that come the apocalypse, one of these blokes will be there noting down the bridle numbers of the horses as the Four Riders finally scream by.

Ordinary traffic noise seemed like a relief after being sandwiched between the M25 and the airport. I passed the hotels that line the airport’s perimeter and kept heading north to cross the M4.

I was happy to reach Yiewsley, to get off the road and pick up the tow path of the Grand Union Canal.

Suddenly it was quiet. I was shocked by the stillness as I dropped down into this quiet corridor of stale water. The sounds at street level were shut out by the backs of shops and factories. Despite a long summer the air near the canal felt cold and damp. I walked past a broken bottle and a pair of old pants.

I walked a mile, my feet crunching on the towpath from milepost to milepost thinking this was it- the last named route- the tow path that in a few miles would take me back to Leighton Buzzard. I tried to remember the number written on the mile board near the Globe but just could not bring it to mind, despite an entire winter of passing it eve ryday. I had been away too long.

My last stop before Leighton Buzzard was going to be Watford and I followed the canal up the Colne valley. It was a Sunday afternoon - just right for a stroll and this narrow corridor of countryside was filled to overflowing.

I thought I knew Watford. I was sure that I knew Watford after all hadn’t I been born here? and yet here I was confounded by the Ebury Way. The tame dog of my hometown had turned and bitten me. It took me awhile to get my thoughts organised.

I knew the old goods line out to Croxley had finally gone to be replaced by a cycle track. I had to dig the map out of the rucksack for one last time. I pin pointed my position in the Sea of Nostalgia. From here on in, I surfed a rolling wave.

Oxhey. The park. I was circling in to the minute details of my past. To the small set of swings where Pauline and I had first gone as teenagers to be alone.

The first winter we met we were so excited about each other that we barely noticed the cold of those first frosty nights. We were on the very edge of childhood, the last moments of innocence. We kissed and held hands before swinging high up into the night and the stars.

For the first time in my adult life I experienced a similar euphoria. I knew now that I had made it.

I wanted to get home. To my adult home. I wanted to shut the door behind me and I wanted to slide down it slowly until I hit the floor. I wanted to preserve this feeling of well being.

I was struggling with the mental equivalent of coming home from holiday and finding that you have to bulldoze your way through an avalanche of postman’s droppings. I had articles to write, interviews to give. Most of my thoughts on the canal that morning were worthless, like those pieces of paper that tell you Mister Stewart that you have won first prize in the draw of a lifetime. Junk mail which I abandoned as I tried to read the postcards written by posterity.

I had been convinced on leaving Leighton Buzzard that I had made a mistake. That I would either fail to get round the country or worse, that the walk would turn out to be a waste of time. The heaviest thing that I put in my rucksack in May had been self-doubt. It had taken the whole trip to convince me otherwise. The most surprising things had turned out to be most rewarding.

It was when I reached Marsworth that my doubts came back. The circle was closed and the dream became a bubble. A bubble of hot air that blew away from me to become another crazy idea in another crazy head.

I approached Leighton Buzzard and I was staring at a vacuum. The walk was almost over and my life would now go on. I was glad in the end I had become so tired.