A return walk from Retreat Place E9 to visit James Ensor at The Royal Academy via Arnold Circus E2, Finsbury Circus EC2M, Ludgate Circus EC4M, Holborn Circus EC1N, Cambridge Circus WC2H, Piccadilly Circus  W1J and Oxford Circus W1B. Returning by way of Aveda High Holborn WC2H and Arzu Brick Lane E1 at a total distance of 15.16 miles.

Circus Smile                                                                              23.01.17

“… as the clock of St. Leonard’s rang the hour I chanced upon a group of people huddled from the cold and mizzle beneath a shop awning, the light from which at even this ungodly hour blazed forth and remember a distinct unease because they parted from one another like two arms as I approached and surrounding me drew me in as I walked toward them. Wrapped from the chill air, their voices muffled, a steam rose from them like smoke and in the light I found their faces to be most lurid, verging on the macabre, with several painted in such way for me to think they’d exited from a big top recent to the area. But their whole had an air of the unearthly and on asking how they fared they stared and when pressed, melted into the night like ghosts and I was left alone without a word. ‘Twas a most disturbing encounter but I continued my walk toward Whitechapel and believed it a work of the lord to test me in my endeavour at meeting the night inhabitants of this lonely borough.”

Diary of The Reverend Henry Turnbull    January 15th 1866

attrib: Thomas Bell’s ‘The Turnbull’s of Suffolk’ pub 1949 by David Bell