19th November 2012: Preparing for next week’s Bach cycle-long nights of gentle work, and walking. Today. Epping, Amesbury Banks, Wake Arms, High Beach, Lippits Hill, Pole Hill, Picketts Lock, Lea Navigation, Walthamstow Marshes, Hertford Union, Regents Canal, Limehouse Basin, home. Epping Forest in autumnal glory-and here, drawing on the hoof….’Long Running’-near the neolithc fort south of Epping

pushing through a brake of ferns not far from the lost Fairmead Lodge, an owl bursts from beneath my feet (echoes of other walkers around here-John Clare, de Stael, Viotti all around)