The Silent City

A Night Pilgrimage to London's Soho

I've always liked the night. It possesses a certain fragile serenity and barely contained volatility. I like walking as well, and before I gave up on exercise as an effective method of weight loss, I used to walk up to thirty miles a week. After a couple of months of doing that, I came up with the idea of walking through the night, from my home in Essex all the way to Soho, the place where I feel most comfortable. I think the hankering for some kind of adventure was borne from the pandemic, which had me working from home, sitting in the same room all day in a house that is normally empty. I added 'night walk to Soho' to my list of 'fun things I want to do.'

Soho has always been one of my favourite places, though the area's magic has been depleted by recent development, turning what was once an edgy wonderland and the heart of London's musical, artistic and cultural history into another bland, soulless city that looks like every other boring, soulless city. I'm not the only one who laments the bland progress, and somehow I convinced a good friend to join me for the sixteen-mile walk "before the developers make London suck like all the other identikit cities." Once it was agreed, we set a date.

He got to my house a little before midnight. We had a meal, I told disgusting jokes, and we laughed until we nearly passed out. Trying to keep our voices down made the whole thing even funnier. We left my house just after 1am with a rucksack full of sandwiches and drinks. It would take us eight hours to reach Soho, much longer than I had anticipated. Until my phone battery died, I took photographs, which I'm sharing in this article.

You'll get murdered in the country park at night.

According to one of my colleagues, walking through a country park in the dead of night would probably get me killed. But we had to walk through a country park, and we didn't get killed. The park was empty, and all we could hear was water flowing and our own footsteps. The amount of light at 2 am in the morning was surprising. There was no need for a torch.

On the other side of the park was Dagenham. We'd both been looking for a toilet, and after a few minutes, we found some porta-loos, the kind you find at makeshift Christmas fairs, funfairs, and building sites. They stank like hell, but we were both desperate enough to use them. It was part of the adventure. My companion needed to rest between relieving ourselves and getting to the town centre. Apparently his middle aged hips were playing up. He sat at a bus stop, a beacon of light in the cool night, and I waited.

I didn't know there was such a place as Dagenham until twenty-five years ago. I grew up in East London, and Dagenham was in Essex's 'scary' part. It was scary if you were not white, at least. I've lost count of the number of racist assaults I saw and experienced on trains going through Dagenham as a teenager in the late nineties. I never imagined back then that I'd walk through the area in the dead of night. But it's not really that bad.

Two years previously, I'd taken a job that involved seeing clients in their homes. A lot of those clients were in Dagenham, and I'd gotten to know the area. Seeing the town centre, identified by the library, gave me a sense of progress in the early stages of our walk.

Beyond Dagenham is Becontree, built after the second world war as the largest council estate in the United Kingdom. The long, straight roads and neatly arranged rows of houses lead to Barking. Until my introduction to Essex in 1995, Barking was about as far East as I'd previously traveled. The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is home to Eastbury Manor House, which is also known as the haunted palace.

In my school years, there was a cinema in Barking town center. I went there with friends to watch films like The Last of The Mohicans, and I remember seeing the advert for the upcoming Terminator 2 movie, which I thought was the most frightening trailer I'd ever seen. That cinema is no longer there. Barking is now really just a market town.

I really wanted to get to the next borough, Newham. That's where I had grown up. Walking those streets was bound to feel good; they were full of memories. Before we made it across the line from Barking to Newham, my friend began to feel tired. He needed to sit down. Later he would tell me he'd considered giving up as we approached Newham. I wouldn't have continued without him. Before we reached 'home turf,' we took shelter in a supermarket carpark. My companion sat down and fell asleep. I began to worry that it was all over.

An illuminated oval sign marks the entrance to Newham. That was a big psychological marker for me, the first really important landmark. It placed us just over a third of the way to our destination. Seeing the grand town hall, where I had seen A-level art displays nearly thirty years earlier (my sister went to college there) and attended weddings later on in life, gave me a burst of energy and enthusiasm. After the town hall came the Boleyn Pub, once part of Anne Boleyn's castle. The castle was knocked down to build the old West Ham football stadium, which features in the movie Green Street.

On the borders of Newham, in Canning Town, I thought we might be quitting again. We were both tired and in need of a toilet. At a McDonald's, we bought coffees, but the toilet was not fit for use.

Those coffees were like magic, though. We no longer felt tired, and the second half of the walk felt much easier than the first. Another oval sign marked the end of Newham. Beyond that were long open roads and a lightening sky that created a cinematic quality. We stood on either side of the Greenwich Meriden Line, then continued. The buildings became progressively more interesting as we got closer to our final destination.

London really is a beautiful city. The old architecture and institutions, along with the street art, make it something truly special.

At Fenchurch Street, we found a working toilet. Things were getting better and better.

After a well-deserved toilet break, we approached the city. I walked past two of my old offices. The architecture became more beautiful and the monuments more numerous.

Just before we reached St Paul's Cathedral, my battery gave up. Fortunately, walking from St Paul's to Soho is easy. Towards the end of our journey, the sight of CentrePoint, the brutalist building just outside Tottenham Court Road station, made us both jump for joy.