The Tree Climber’s Guide

Exploring uninhibited by surplus clothing and gear is an essential freedom. You need nothing more advanced than the skin you were born in, and there are plenty of handy nooks for depositing briefcases and handbags on the way up. To further blend with a new environment, shades of grey and green lend camouflage to the climber, distancing the city below.

There are many advantages to climbing trees in bare feet. We were all born with splayed toes, perfect for balancing on branches, but our parents’ insistence on stuffing infant feet into footwear undid this great gift, narrowing digits and flattening arches. A short stint of baring your soles to the elements and the old connection between skin and bark can be re-forged. Adopt a kind of ‘four-hands’ philosophy – our ape forebears retained opposable toes on their feet for good reason – and remember that the lighter you climb the further you’ll go.

Climbing bare-footed is an altogether more immersive experience. Where shoes divorce you from the tree, skin attunes you to the feel of different types of bark and is well worth the odd stubbed toe or splinter. In wet weather a rubber heel can send you sprawling to the ground, and bare feet do less damage to the trees themselves. Sap is a wonderful natural glue and before long your naked feet will stick to bark like a gecko to a wall. If you must wear shoes in order to feel your toes in the depths of winter, don’t try shimmying up a trunk in a pair of snakeskin brogues. The espadrilles once used by pioneering rock climbers are an ideal compromise. With these you can judge the camber of a branch and still avoid slipping off.

Remember to be wary of dogs. Have you ever seen the way a spaniel watches a squirrel? To the canine race, tree climbers are objects of rabid fascination, legs dangling appetisingly from on high like a line of sausages above a butcher’s counter. Often I’ve crouched, paralysed on the groundmost branch of a tree, with ferocious terriers circling below, baying for my blood.

Climbers can also become predatory themselves. Watching people from the vantage of a branch leads to a hunter’s disposition; a feeling of omniscience arising from seeing all and yet remaining unobserved. One summer’s evening in Victoria Park, I found myself descending a pine after sundown. Nearing the bottom, I spotted a glowing cherry through the branches – two teenage boys sharing a joint at the tree’s foot. I waited in silence for them to finish and leave. After ten minutes, when they showed no signs of moving on, my patience wore thin. In spite of the very real danger of sending them both into cardiac arrest I sprung from my branch and flew the remaining ten feet to the ground. Two priceless screams rent the silence of the park and the boys fled in opposite directions, so fast that I never saw their faces. In my vainer moments I hope they still talk of the devil that dropped from the sky.

Whiling away an hour or two in a tree top, other awkward confrontations can await the climber on descent. I have gate-crashed picnics, ball games and baby showers, arriving like an angel of ill omen from above. Epithets given me on such occasions have ranged from ‘It’s a fucking monkey’ to ‘Call the police.’ These encounters are a necessary hazard of exploring the high land above London.

The more we climb, the easier it is to envy those animals better suited to the trees. Watch a squirrel sprint across the bridge of a branch before leaping with gay abandon over a bottomless drop. Observe songbirds, alighting soundlessly on the upper reaches while you sweat through a maze of branches below. We can spend many wasted hours mourning the loss of our primate dexterity, those biaxial ball-and-socket wrist joints and elongated arms with which we might climb higher and farther. But consider the less fortunate members of the animal kingdom, those poor beasts with no prospect of ever attaining the emerald heights. The horse, the hippo, the humble cow; what hope have these of escaping their earthbound condition?

Above all, wear your scars with pride. Nothing commends a person like a jacket torn at the elbow or trousers greened at the knee. Bruises and cuts from the whip of high branches are badges of honour to parade among well-tailored ground dwellers. Turning in after a day exploring the city’s trees, I once found my entire buttocks covered in a constellation of savage bites. I was eager to know what poor invertebrate had been stirred into such a frenzy of retribution. On another occasion, sitting down to a meal in a Greenwich pub, a cedar cone dropped from my hair into my neighbour’s pint. This wonderful specimen had attached itself to my crop by means of some highly adhesive sap. Although forced to swap my untouched beer for his now somewhat resinous brew, I was immensely pleased that a token of the day’s adventures had followed me back to earth. Stepping into a beech, cedar or pine brings us closer to nature than a thousand safaris, and has as much to teach us as an entire zoo viewed through Perspex panels.

A Warning to the Curious

Bonae actionis uir, incautius in arborem ascendens deciderat deorsum, et, contrito corpore. (A worthy man, having incautiously mounted a tree, had fallen down, and died from the bruise.)

Life of Cuthbert, Bede

In many ways you are never safer than when up a tree. The moment you climb into one you remove yourself from many of the city’s everyday dangers. You are, for instance, unlikely to be mugged at altitude. Pickpockets operate far below and, generally speaking, haven’t hung out in trees since the highwayman’s heyday. You’d be equally unfortunate to be hit by the number 91 from Crouch End, the five o’clock from Waterloo or a lycra-clad cyclist with a death wish. Tourist scrums, crowded streets, screaming schoolchildren: many of a city’s most frightening phenomena are confined to ground level.

This is not to say that trees are without their inherent dangers. What follows is some friendly advice, most of which is common sense. I want to encourage people to climb, but to do so knowing their own limits and those of the tree. The joy of exploring canopy is too precious to throw under the health and safety steamroller; climbing trees involves a managed risk and, with due care, we need not fall to an early grave.

It is easy to forget that what goes up must come down. In a fit of cloud-chasing exuberance you might shoot up a tree paying little, if any, attention to your return journey. It is always harder to descend; instead of springing up off bended knee you are lowering yourself on tired arms, while blindly feeling for footholds. Sitting pretty in a tree top, you might be sky high with confidence. Look down between your knees and this momentary elation can swiftly change to crippling fear. However high you climb, always remember the way back.

On emerging at the top of a tree you might get the urge to jump and shout, wave frantically and generally draw attention to yourself in any manner possible. When confronted with a panoramic view of the city and a host of tiny people wandering far below, the human ego is prone to inflate to regal proportions. I call this ‘king-of-the-castle complex’ and strongly discourage it. Not only does such showboating distract from the important task of balancing on a branch, but you are disrespecting the noble practice of climbing trees. If you had lived in prehistory any large passing predator would have instantly devoured you. In medieval times bored archers might have used you for target practice. Today people will probably just think you’re a jerk. There’s a lot to be said for silent appreciation.

Remember to take a friend, at least to begin with. Exploring with a companion not only drastically expands your climbing remit, as outlined in the previous section, but also provides you with a handy insurance policy. In the unlikely event of falling from on high and injuring yourself, it’s vital to have someone on hand to be a hero and help out. Lying at the bottom of a tree alone and in pain is not advised; you will only attract the attention of passing vultures.

Climbing trees is sadly no longer a national pastime, and in the city it’s a rare sight. Because of this, park authorities and other powers-that-be might show surprise at finding you dangling from a branch. There is no natural law that prevents humans from climbing trees but there are a fair few man-made ones. Many of these lie open to interpretation but you may not have an inalienable right to be in your chosen tree. Be polite and find another if needs be.

When in the canopy try to resist taking endless reams of photographs. Confining the sum total of your experience to the eye hole of a camera creates memories more unreliable than your own. The camera becomes the moment itself and the joy of the climb is forgotten.

The trees themselves deserve due veneration; they’ve all lived here longer than you. Ancients that have survived many centuries of city life should be allowed to retire gracefully in old age without the strain of climbers on their world-weary branches.

The trees profiled in this book are mature specimens. All are sturdy plants and, if treated with respect, should not suffer from your passage from root to tip. When exploring other trees to climb, it’s best to avoid those that are not yet fully grown. Rather than damage a young sapling, chart its growth over the years and return to climb it when you are both older and wiser.

Trees are host to intricate ecosystems with thousands of dependants. One of the delights of perching in tree tops is meeting a cornucopia of wildlife in the heart of the city, and your attention to detail is sharpened by focusing on every branch you climb. Bark-coloured beetles, lime-green aphids and tree-dwelling spiders cross your path. My former arachnophobia was overcome by an encounter in a horse chestnut, a large spider crossing my arm as I clung to a high branch, giving me the choice of putting up with it or breaking a leg.

Many of these creatures are easily disturbed, however, and won’t take kindly to your trespassing. Squirrels give as good as they get, but other more fragile occupants should be avoided. Nesting birds are particularly vulnerable and, if you’re climbing in spring, try to give a newly built nest a wide berth. Imagine if you had flown a thousand miles, spent a week courting the love of your life and persuaded her to bear your children, only for your entire home and progeny to be crushed by a climber’s clumsy foot.

As you ascend, new shoots may try to blind you or impale your armpits, but avoid breaking off healthy limbs just because they stand in your way. Trees don’t always submit to your will; a sprung branch or a slippery foothold might suddenly cast you to the ground. By climbing close to the trunk you give instinct a chance to save you from a fall, your limbs latching onto this dependable mast.

Nearly all trees carry deadwood. The seasoned climber is like a doctor with a stethoscope or an old tracker tapping the branches one by one as they go. Look for the outward signs: an absence of leaves, peeling bark or a difference in shade. The necrosis of a tree limb is not always obvious, so test each rung of the ladder as you travel up the trunk. Casting deadwood onto an unsuspecting head far below is like throwing a spear at someone from the third floor of an office block; equally, being knocked cold by a phone falling from a pocket is grounds for litigation. Take care when descending a tree that you don’t arrive to find a corpse at its foot.

Keep an eye on the elements. Nothing ruffles the machine of the city like a strong south-westerly. Try to avoid climbing high branches on windy days as they come under strain when bending in a gale. Leaves scatter, branches snap, and whole trees are uprooted. A sudden gust might unseat you from a perch and, unless you catch a miraculous thermal, it will be a long tumble to earth. What appears sturdy from the ground might not cope with your added weight. Don’t risk damage to branch or bone; batten down the hatches and wait until there’s a lull.

Never climb beyond your comfort zone. If you find yourself twenty feet up a tree with your legs frozen, your confidence evaporating and your palms wet with sweat, climb down. Involuntary tree-hugging, through fear not devotion, has nothing to recommend it. Remember, you are taking your life in your own hands, so value it accordingly.

Climbing trees is the antithesis of cotton-wool conservation; it is wilful engagement with nature rather than careful avoidance. We must not develop into a generation stapling ‘Keep off’ signs to every trunk, no longer knowing the names of the trees we’re trying to protect. If we fail to connect with nature in a visceral way, a day will come when we are only capable of feeding squirrels store-bought nuts from our car window. The seminal step of reaching for that first branch turns scenery we take for granted into a living companion. The experience of climbing trees, and the curiosity it engenders, outweighs any damage done.

Canals & Rivers

London’s skin is deeply sewn with watercourses, though many now conduct silent passage underground. The once mighty River Fleet runs invisible beneath office blocks, and the noble Westbourne is piped under London, confined to the ignominy of an iron tube. Like the roots of the trees, rivers have hidden subterranean capillaries, channelled and culverted beneath the modern city. London buried its waterways when they became a hindrance, and long gone are the days when we might have paddled from our front door to the corner shop. The rivers have become mass sewers, and tributaries that once served as transport links now ferry human effluent and the floating fat of restaurant and home.

Trapped and ignored, it is easy to suppose that, like the tree falling unheard in the forest, if a river flows unseen it has ceased to really flow at all. Yet these waterways are older than the city – older than England even. While their springs still flow, a thousand years interred is a fleeting moment in the life of a river. They surface in secret, running in concrete channels or narrow ditches, and a line of trees is the surest way to trace their covert passage. Where there’s water there will grow life, even if that same water is choked with plastic bags, shopping trolleys and sunken glass.

There is a strong compulsion to climb trees over water. Drawn to long branches above rivers and canals, we are imbued with a misplaced confidence, something in the brain associating water with soft landings and summers past. Inner-city streams conceal submerged dangers and still pools stagnate, but these are superficial deterrents. A tree overhanging the current combines the two fundamentals of wood and water, an elemental landscape in the midst of the man-made. These mesmeric haunts tempt the climber like few other urban spaces.

Perched over water, whether in the arms of a weeping willow or a straight-backed alder, networks of branch and leaf reflect upwards, enshrining the climber in a double image of the tree. The play of shadows and light hypnotises the most care-worn commuter as the water wages an endless battle to lick the city clean.

All London’s streams flow into the wide blue artery of the Thames. Look at a satellite image of the city – snaking lines of trees hug the great river’s bends, clinging to the water’s edge as if trying to escape the metropolis altogether. Some of these are being toppled by riverside development, while others stand proud, like the uninterrupted march of London planes that edges the river from Blackfriars to Fulham. Climbing branches over the Thames we hang over the heart of the city and, if we listen closely, a rare natural sound can be heard – running water.

Canals, brooks and creeks offer an alternative environment, tight channels shaded by trees whose roots thread the water like long white eels. The Thames forms an abrupt gulf between north and south, while these smaller, circumscribed rivers are fissures in suburbia, boundaries crossed by irregular bridges but numberless branches. Many species of tree crowd the long, empty stretches of their straight-sided banks.

When storms lash the city the old waterways show their wrath, heavy rainfall swelling their channels and leaking into our streets, bubbling over manholes and seeping through brick and mortar. Sometimes I long for London’s waters to burst their artificial bonds, purging themselves of their sordid cargo and making islands of bank-side trees. J. G. Ballard imagines such a future in A Drowned World, where the city lies buried in silt beneath a deep lagoon and a primordial hierarchy has re-established itself, rampant plants colonising the stairwells of tower blocks. Floating over a street still visible sixty feet below the water’s surface, the narrator describes the sunken lines of London’s buildings, ‘like a reflection in a lake that had somehow lost its original’. Suspended on the long arm of a London plane or in the tresses of a willow, it would be easy to forget a city ever existed on these banks.

Waterside trees are prime lookouts, places to watch canal boats, Thames Clippers, and the tide of objects lost to London’s current. Whether clutching a high branch over the river or perching above a creek, we enact a two-fold escape, climbing off the ground and then leaving the land altogether. Traversing branches over water allows us to cast off in our imagination; the current takes us with it on a journey, floating past long rows of riverside houses, shipyards and factories, beside green fields and long sandbars and then out into the open ocean. The climber is like lost timber, fallen from the deck of a container ship and set adrift.

Brothers in Arms, Bishop’s Park

Platanus × acerifolia/London plane & Ilex aquifolium/Common holly

An avenue of London planes runs along the riverside at Bishop’s Park. With their branches curling over the path, you walk under the arms of a cheering crowd. In season, great curtains of leaves cascade over the embankment wall, seeming to stretch out towards the river. Where these branches join the trunks, perfect saddles are formed for the climber.

One of these planes shares its soil with a holly. Hollies are well adapted to thrive in shadow and this one has made a deep impression, stiff branches embedded in the side of its overlord. I use the holly as a mast to step up into the plane, taking a seat in the elbow where the two cross. Beneath me is the freckled wood of one; all around and above the leaves of the other.

At this height the holly’s leaves are smooth, not spined, safe from browsing animals, although the only passing threat is an overweight Labrador. Shuffling along towards the river, I find that a holly branch has crossed the plane, rubbing up against it. The branch shifts in the wind, its underside like a flat tyre from the friction.

Beyond the footpath I edge out over the wall and the long drop down to the river. The tide is out and the sand exposed, a beach littered with lumps of stone from the wall and a scattering of flotsam. What looks like an anchor lies half-buried in the mud. Other pieces of rusted metal could be forgotten treasure or scaffolding; near the waterline the clay pipes of Victorian London are a scattering of white shards, roll-ups from another era.

A crow pecks on the foreshore at a flash of silver – foil or a bottletop – while a black-headed gull dive-bombs it from above. Leaves drift down the river and I make a promise to return in autumn, when the plane will shed its burden to make an armada on the water.

Retreating to the landward side of the tree, I see the branches are covered in lichen and the wood has a curious pitted appearance, whole sections with fossil-like indentations where the bark has flaked away. I climb higher and lean my back against the trunk. On the opposite bank the London Rowing Club’s slipway is jostled with cars parked at steep angles to the water, only their hand brakes saving them from immersion. Out on the wind-ruffled river, four women pull hard against the waves in a yellow scull.

The Helping Hand, Regent’s Canal

Populus alba/White poplar

Standing in a narrow corridor of grass by the canal in Mile End Park are two poplars. Behind them the single chimney of a Victorian brick kiln rises above a wall of graffiti. The chimney is mirrored in the canal’s green water, and drifting clouds join it in the depths.

The dried grass beneath the southernmost poplar is thick with crickets, a raucous mating song in the July heat wave. There exists a city all of its own in the shade of the tree, replete with ring roads and intersections among the roots. As I step into the shade, the building site beyond the grass fades to a dull rumble under the canopy’s thrall.

I stand on a fairy ring of carved logs at its base, staring up at the cut-diamond patterns that decorate the bark. One great suckering root passes between my feet – I can almost feel the tree’s thirst.

The upsweep of branches above me ends in great clusters of leaves, their contrasting sides of green and white giving a sense of motion, even without a breath of wind. I try to flat-foot up the poplar’s slope and retreat dispirited, having moments before fallen from the first branches of another close to Limehouse Basin. Drenched in sweat, I begin to question the merits of climbing in thirty-degree heat.

Then an angel appears on the tow path, a man in a hi-vis jacket carrying a spade in one hand and a lunch bag in the other. He watches me repeatedly sliding down the trunk, then hops the railing and walks over. I turn, expecting some kind of mockery, but instead he drops the spade and asks, ‘Need a leg-up?’ This remains the sole occasion I’ve been helped into a tree by a total stranger.

Up in the bole, hoverflies molest my hair as I shuffle out along the length of a branch until I too am hovering, ten feet above the canal. Higher tiers of leaves protect my scalp from the sun, but I still have to fight the temptation to dive into the water. A solitary condom drifts past languidly, and the urge evaporates.

A black crow alights ahead of me on the branch. Perched unmoving on the poplar’s white skin, it looks like a chess piece. Beneath it, Water Rat – a canal boat – glides by and the woman at the helm waves up at me.

On my way down I defrock the poplar of a plastic bag. Returning to the tow path, I stagger to the Palm Tree pub, a precious oasis in a landscape levelled by the Blitz.

The Hideout, Beverley Brook

Fraxinus excelsior/Common ash

Wandering away from the riverbank in Putney, I follow a small stream that strikes out across Barnes Common, wrapped around by a protective hedge of sycamore, oak, willow and ash.

Birds call everywhere along the brook and broken tree limbs twist in the wind, creaking loudly. The stream is surprisingly clear and, aside from a couple of beer cans, no rubbish floats along its course. The path I follow is bordered by blackberry bushes and great stands of nettles; in among these a St George’s Cross has been spray-painted onto the flank of a young sycamore, an unwilling patriot.

Further on, past a bridge that leads onto Putney Heath, a magnificent oak rises, stag-headed, with huge white coils of dead ivy wrapped around its trunk. The tree seems half-suffocated and bent out of shape by this creeping garrotte. The ivy’s dead hair is deeply cobwebbed and I wonder what kind of arachnids haunt the maze. At its base an orange ring has been daubed. Perhaps this is a mark of death and the oak has been condemned to be felled. It seems an unnecessary fate; away from the dead branch tips, leaves are sprouting from the tree’s thick limbs.