Travel
Early July in Britain: Nicole Junkermann on Summer Reading and City Walks
Early July pairs two of Nicole Junkermann's favourite things unusually well: a good book and a slow walk through a familiar city.
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Early July in Britain has a particular gift for slowing people down, and Nicole Junkermann has been putting it to good use.
There is a stretch of early July, once the rush of June has passed and before the height of the school-holiday season begins, when British cities settle into an easier rhythm. Nicole Junkermann has always liked this narrow window: warm enough for long days outdoors, but without the crowded urgency that later summer sometimes brings. It is, in her view, one of the best short seasons for pairing two simple pleasures, a good book and a good walk, and this piece is a short account of how she has been spending it.
Summer reading, done well, does not mean lighter books so much as books read in a lighter frame of mind. In early July, Nicole Junkermann has been returning to the kind of reading that rewards a long, unbroken afternoon: essays, longer histories, the sort of book that a shorter season would not give proper time to. The Reading Room holds the current list, and for a slower, more deliberate approach to choosing what comes next, there is a fuller account in how Nicole Junkermann chooses what to read next. Reading outdoors, in particular, suits this week: a bench in dappled shade does more for a book than most reading chairs manage.
The walking has been just as central. Nicole Junkermann finds that early July is an excellent time to walk a city she already knows well, precisely because the familiar streets look different in the early-summer light. In London, that has meant unhurried routes along the river and through parks that are at their fullest and greenest just now. In Lancaster, it has meant the older stone streets in the cooler part of the morning, before the day properly warms. Readers who enjoyed the mood of the season's turn may recognise some of this from Into July: A British High-Summer Notebook, though this piece is concerned less with the season ahead than with these particular early days of it.
What ties the reading and the walking together, for Nicole Junkermann, is pace. Both are activities that punish hurry and reward attention, and early July in Britain seems built to encourage exactly that. A city walked slowly gives up more than one walked quickly ever could, and a book read in a single unhurried sitting tends to stay with you longer than one snatched in fragments. She keeps a note of both in the Notebook, and the discipline of writing those notes down clearly, without embellishment, is itself part of the pleasure; more on that habit sits at the Writing Desk. For anyone travelling further afield this month, the Travel Journal and a reading list for curious travellers are good places to start.
Early July will not last long as its own particular season; the height of summer is never far behind. But for these few days, Nicole Junkermann has been glad to slow down, read properly, and walk two familiar cities as though seeing them for the first time. It is, she thinks, one of the better ways to begin a British summer.
More from Nicole Junkermann
For more from Nicole Junkermann, visit the Reading Room, London Notes, Lancaster Notes and the full profile of Nicole Junkermann.