Slow Routes
Movement is the expensive part of a trip and the arithmetic rewards staying put
A journey has two separate cost structures, one charged per move and one charged per day, and most…
The Next Postcard — Slow routes and the places at the end of them
Cities
A city only becomes legible somewhere around the fourth day
The opening days of a stay are spent building a mental map, and most of what a short visit concludes about a place is decided before that map exists.
The short list
- Grid cities and tangled cities ask different things of the person walking them
- A transport network is the clearest portrait of how a city grew
- Opening hours are a city timetable and they are not decoration
- Where you sleep decides which version of a city you are given
- Flying compresses distance and overland travel hands it back
- A border crossing is where an overland route is really decided
- A long-distance path is laid out around a day of walking, not a distance
- A working ship keeps its own timetable and the passengers fit around it
In depth
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Rail & Road
European rail fares are two different systems wearing one name
Some railways sell a right to travel and some sell a specific seat on a specific train, and nearly every…
Rail & Road
One ticket or two decides who is responsible when a connection fails
The number of contracts your journey is made of matters more than the number of trains, and it only becomes…
Rail & Road
A night train sells space rather than distance
What you are buying on an overnight service is a volume of the carriage for a number of hours, and every…
Coast
A resort coastline runs two economies and only one of them is visible in August
Somewhere built around a short season has to earn a year of costs in a few months, and almost every price…
Coast
An island is defined by its boat and by its winter timetable
Everything about visiting an island — cost, availability, risk and atmosphere — is downstream of how often…
Cities
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Cities
A city only becomes legible somewhere around the fourth day
The opening days of a stay are spent building a mental map, and most of what a short visit concludes about…
Cities
Grid cities and tangled cities ask different things of the person walking them
A street plan is a record of how a city was made, and it decides whether you navigate by coordinates or by…
Cities
A transport network is the clearest portrait of how a city grew
Lines, interchanges and fare boundaries record decisions about where a city thought it was going, and the…
Slow Routes
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Slow Routes
Flying compresses distance and overland travel hands it back
A flight removes the gradient between two places, and the gradient is the part that explains how they are…
Slow Routes
A border crossing is where an overland route is really decided
The line on the map is the easy part; whether you may cross it, on that day, by that means, is a separate…
Slow Routes
A long-distance path is laid out around a day of walking, not a distance
Waymarked routes are divided into stages by where a walker can sleep and eat, which explains almost every…