OtherAberdeen: Aberdeen Green Lanes

Tuesday 7 December 2010

Aberdeen Green Lanes

With the last fortnight's snow in Aberdeen still lying on pavements and roofs, the town - while looking beautiful in this frosty cowl - isn't ideal for walking about much. Our lives are literally lacking color, and there's not many sunlight hours in the December day. We're feeling a bit stuck-in and pent-up, as it were.

As an antidote, I indulged in the following train of thought which was set in motion when writing the "Personalities" post, with the Aberdeen Adamant pavingstone. My wandering thoughts went here...

One place where the Aberdeen Adamant paving stones were notably used (pdf) is the borough of Haringey in London. A few years back, some friends of ours lived in Haringey and when we visited, we found that it's an exceedingly colourful place, a mix of diverse cultures, a place full of edges. We thought it fascinating.

The main drag through the borough is a street called "Green Lanes". We considered this name most evocative, bringing to mind as it does a time before the urban development of Greater London had subsumed the pre-existing villages which are now the hubs of its semi-suburban boroughs.

Today, there's a Green Lanes movement in England (eek! crappy code warning!) which lobbies to keep unsurfaced roads open for motor vehicles, while we in Scotland have a statutory right of responsible access which seems to work pretty well for all sensible users.

During our psychogeographical wanderings around Aberdeen, we've discovered that the town is full of our own surviving "Green Lanes" system, which extends from the suburbs to the very heart of the town centre, forming a network of urban refuges away from noise and pollution and everyday concern. These linear bucolic(ish) havens - penetrating the modern town like ancient unbypasses - form a web of wildlife corridors and allow a surprising level of relaxed access to many places in the town. These routes differ from the rest of the town, which they are at right angles to. Seek them out; let them take you over, under and through, Aberdeen.

Here are just a few: