Further progress on Green Walks. This week, I have added three more boundary walks, around Oxford (including Abingdon Lock, pictured), Cambridge and Milton Keynes.
In mapping them and checking for public transport access data, I noticed that the Cambridge Ring was created with an anti-clockwise circuit in mind, but the other two were for clockwise consumption. I looked at the circular boundary walks to find that clockwise outnumbers anti-clockwise by about three to one.
The question goes beyond boundary walks, of course, to encompass (ahem!) all circular walks, from the Glasgow subway to the coastal routes with their link-back additions. A few walks have “obvious” directions (the Coal Tax Circuit follows the numeration in the catalogue of markers, so is described anti-clockwise, but why are the others’ orbital directions chosen to be as they are? I’ve had it suggested that it ties an author’s favourite stopover at an optimal distance (for whom? oh, the author!) from the arbitrary (if conventional) start. To me, clockwise is logical (barring special cases such as the Coal Tax Circuit).
Lwalks.London 