This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City Audiobook (Free)

Sign up for John Rogers as he endeavors out into an uncharted London such as a redbrick Indiana Jones searching for the dropped meaning of our metropolitan lifetime. Nursing two hesitant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the times of year seeking adventure in our city’s remote control and forgotten gets to.

Foreword written and browse by Russell Brand.

When John Rogers packed apart his rucksack to start a family group in London he didn’t stop travelling. But rather than canoeing in the Rejang about This Other London: Ventures in the Overlooked Town River to discover retired headhunters in Sarawak, he caught the ferry to Woolwich in search of the edge of the city at Crayford Marshes.

This Other London recounts that trip and many others – all on foot and epic in their own cartilage-crunching way. Clutching a samosa and a small number of out-of-date A-Zs, he heads out in to the wilderness of isolated luxury house blocks in Brentford, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey near Thamesmead, as well as the ancient Lammas Lands in Leyton.

Denounced by his youthful sons like a ‘hippy wizard’, Rogers delves into a number of the overlooked stories rumbling under the tarmac of the town suburbs. Holy wells in Lewisham; wassailing in Clapton; a heretical fresco in West Ham. He encounters the Highwaymen of Hounslow Heath, Viet Cong vets still fighting Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Coat in Beckton, Dutch sailors marooned at Erith pier; and cyclists – without Bradley Wiggins’ sideburns – at Herne Hill Velodrome. He mind out to Uxendon Hill to see the end of the world, Horsenden Hill to understand its tale, and Tulse Hill towards the observatory from the Victorian Brian Cox.

This Other London will take you into the hinterland of the town. The London that is lived in; the London where workaday dormitory suburbs sit atop a rich history that could competitor Westminster and Tower Bridge. In an age when no part of the globe has been still left untrampled-upon by hordes of travelers, it’s time to discover the wonders on our doorstep.

This Other London is your gateway through the underexplored nooks of London. As Pathfinder composed in 1911, ‘Experience begins at home’.