The Man Who Sold The World:Bowie In Beckenham, Bowie In Brixton.

I like David Bowie. Almost everyone does. It's practically illegal not to. Me and one of my friends, and this was before Bowie died, had the idea of writing a story about a man who is ostracised from his friendship group for not liking David Bowie.

I would not be that man because, as I said, I like David Bowie. I've got his records (not all of them - I'm not a completist), I've seen him live (Phoenix Festival, 1996), I've seen him acting in films (Labyrinth, Twin Peaks:Fire Walk With Me, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Christiane F.), I've seen films about him, and I've seen plays about him. I've even run down a list of my 100 favourite Bowie songs.

So why not, I thought, do a walk about him. He was born, and lived most his early life, in London and though he never seemed much of a Londoner or even a Brit (apart from his accent and, at one point, his teeth) as much as he was a European, a citizen of the world, or even an alien there'd surely be quite a bit of interest in a David Bowie themed walk. Even if it would mostly just be looking at old houses he lived in.

Turns out I was wrong but I don't care too much. I'll keep this London by Foot malarkey going as long as one other person turns up to do the walks and, indeed, in the run up to Saturday that appeared to be just what was happening. Pam had confirmed. Nobody else had. Although I received a message from Roxanne to say that her and Clive would be joining us on the morning itself.

By that point I was already on my way. I'd woken early (my knees were creaky and I feared gout but so far it's either not gout or it's not that bad) so I'd left home early too. Took the train from Honor Oak Park to Penge West, walked to Penge East, and took another train just two stops to Beckenham Junction. I was early so I had a nose around. Once I'd done the crossword and the suguru! Priorities.

Beckenham, especially in the sunshine, is a pleasant place. It feels more like a market town in Surrey or Kent than it does part of the London Borough of Bromley. People who live there, judging by yesterday, like to take their time over brunch. Several cafes had seats out by the road and the general air of a lazy Saturday morning made me feel very happy.

I took a walk around Beckenham Green, took a look at St George's Church, and then took a table in the Rendez-Vous cafe and waited for the others. Pam arrived first and, in keeping with the theme, she'd worn her Bowie ring and a star necklace. I think people who come on my walks should always make this level of effort and when I do the Leslie Green walk later this year I will expect everyone to come dressed as a Victorian architect.

The Rendez-Vous cafe was a good call even if one of the waitresses initially placed down a plate that included sausages, bacon, and tomatoes while announcing "veggie breakfast, no tomatoes". I had to point out that what was in front of me was neither veggie and that it very much included tomatoes.

The error was quickly, and convivially, corrected and soon I was tucking into a very good breakfast of baked beans, toast, mushrooms, halloumi, one hash brown (they could have given me another to make up for my forgoing of the tomato), and one veggie sausage. Sadly, the wrong sausage but it was actually pretty good. Best of all was the chocolate milk shake I washed it down with. I should have milk shakes more often. They're brilliant.

Pam and I finished up and soon enough Roxanne and Clive showed up and we headed into Beckenham's rather lovely Kelsey Park. The Beck (a tributary of the Ravensbourne) and the lake was full of geese, coots, and moorhens as well as a couple of solitary herons (there is a collective noun for herons, several in fact including flight and sedge, but when would it ever be used?). We also explored what appeared to be an abandoned kiln before coming out into an area of textbook suburbia.

We walked along Stone Park Avenue and Village Way and at Crease Park (a new one to me) we saw, what do you know?, a sign advertising a Ziggy Stardust Family Fun Day (complete with Ziggy Trail) that had taken place on Saturday 1st July on Beckenham Green. I mistook Crease Park for Croydon Road Recreation Ground so was vexed that I couldn't find the bandstand I was looking for.

I realised my mistake and we carried along Village Way (the Crystal Palace Tower, as it was for so much of the day, keeping vigil over us) and when we reached a poster for the Soultown Festival (mixed bag of a line up:- UB40, Sister Sledge, Peter Andre, Mica Paris, Lighthouse Family) we also reached the entrance to Croydon Road Recreation Ground.

It was here, on the 16th August 1969 (the day my friend Adam was born), that Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab he was involved with put on a now infamous free festival using the bandstand (made in 1905 with the McCallum and Hope Iron Foundry in Glasgow) as a stage. Sadly, setlist.fm doesn't list the songs that were performed that night and, even more disappointingly, Pam refused to deliver a rendition of Queen Bitch, citing the fact she'd forgotten to wear her bipperty bopperty hat.

We posed for a few photos, I wondered how many had been at that festival, and then I told the others that the festival has continued, annually, since. It's now called Beckenham's Bowie Odyssey and we really should get along one year.

From the park we could see the imposing, and architecturally impressive, tower of St Edmund's Catholic Church which looked equally fine, and surprisingly modern, when we arrived for a closer look.

This bought us back to Beckenham's High Street and the next Bowie related stop was a branch of Zizzi. Not because Bowie was a fan of pizza (we simply don't know though the Internet reliably, or not, informs us he was a big fan of a shepherd's pie) but because this branch of Zizzi (which doesn't, alas, serve shepherd's pie pizzas) used to be The Three Tuns pub and it's where Bowie, his then girlfriend Mary Finnigan (later to go on to become a Guardian journalist), and the Beckenham Arts Lab promoted folk nights.

Zizzi, and Beckenham, seem proud of the Bowie links and there are a couple of plaques nearby giving a very brief history and there's even, painted on the street, a red and blue lightning bolt to match Bowie's Aladdin Sane make-up or, indeed, Pam's ring.

There's also a very fancy barbers nearby and even though I need a haircut I didn't think it would be fair to make the others wait. We continued back through Beckenham town centre, along Southend Road, and - just near the entrance of the rather lovely (and enormous) Beckenham Place Park, we turned into Foxgrove Road where, in March 1969, Bowie and Finnigan moved to from Kensington.

At number 24. There are flats there now. We couldn't work out if the flats would have been there in 1969 or if they've replaced the houses that once stood there. There certainly wasn't any information available to us so we carried on, back down Foxgrove Road and back on to Southend Road where Bowie moved to after Foxgrove Road.

He lived in number 40 from October 1969 to May 1972 (before moving to Maida Vale) and while there he painted the ceilings silver. You can find photos online of Bowie stood outside the impressive old pile and there are still some big houses, including the elegantly dilapidated one below, along Southend Road but sadly not number 40, otherwise known as Haddon Hall. Modern flats stand there now. Shame.

Next we'd be on a long, testing, road heavy stretch. Think of it as representing Bowie's career from the middle of the eighties to the late nineties when his records weren't really very good. We would be earning our first pint that's for sure. There were some nice flowers to look at, and Crystal Palace FC's training ground, as we wandered down Braeside, Overbrae, Copers Cope Road, and through a subway under the train lines near New Beckenham station before following Lennard Road back to Penge East and turning into Newlands Park, Sydenham Road (the Greyhound pub looked inviting), Kirkdale, Westwood Hill, and a few other minor roads into Sydenham Wells Park.

People were starting to ask when the pub stop was and, luckily, I knew it was coming but it felt an age. The park looked nice on a sunny day, lots of flowers, kids playing on the swings, and one solitary aquatic bird in the small lake. We passed through the park, up Wells Park Road, and into the lovely beer garden of the Dulwich Wood House where, first Clive and them Pam, got a round in.

It went down well and we sat chatting about politics and how the Londonist website isn't what it used to be as well as a lot of other interesting nonsense regarding Skepticism and Forteanism. Though not David Bowie! Pam thought she was Paddy Considine in the pub garden but it wasn't him and a wasp flew into my pint. I forked the jasper out and he stumbled around drunk for a while before settling down for what you might call a very long sleep.

The Dulwich Wood House beer garden is the sort of place you could easily wile away an entire afternoon but we managed to drag ourselves down a super steep hill into Sydenham Hill Wood and Dulwich Wood. I love walking there. You can hardly believe you're in London. You can see no buildings (except a ruined old railway bridge and the remains of a folly) and you can hear no traffic. Although you can, in some places, see into a nearby golf course. How much of the British countryside is covered in golf courses?

You feel like you could easily get lost as the paths break into three, four, and five other paths repeatedly. Yet, somehow - and I've been there many times, you always find your way out. Normally on to Cox's Walk which brings us down into Dulwich, my friend Michelle's old house, and the long abandoned Grove pub. Once a Harvester, one I actually ate in once, but now just a place for people to put up posters for raves and festivals. Somebody had done the duck graffiti that you see everywhere in SE London) on the wall and the car park converted into a skate park. It's a long time since Pissarro, pictured below with a big white beard, used to live in the area and people would travel here to visit the Crystal Palace. Must have been quite a sight.

We carried on into the delightful Dulwich Park and I reminisced taking my eldest nephew to the playground here when he was a toddler (he's twenty-four now). We stopped on a wooden boardwalk in the lake to take in a cormorant and another heron and, of course, there were plenty of geese in the lake too.

We left the park near the Dulwich Picture Gallery and took Burbage Road down to Herne Hill (I normally go through Dulwich Village, down Village Way, and past Gusto Italiano (sometimes stopping for a panini or a toastie). Passing the entrance to the Herne Hill Velodrome and under a railway bridge where there is some rather good modern art on one side and a painting of Shakespearean actor Richard Burbage on the other side.

We came out on Half Moon Lane and found ourselves easily sucked into The Half Moon for another drink, a bit of phone charging, and another lovely chat. Pam even managed to befriend to some young, and very drunk, teachers on the next table. That was the end of the walk for Roxanne and Clive but Pam and I had a bit more to do and we were meeting Mo who'd been to a matinee performance of A Strange Loop at the Barbican and had walked from there to Brixton.

We were, predictably, running late so we jumped on a bus (I would once have cautioned against this non-walking form of transport but I've chilled out a bit) and arrived in Brixton just in time to find Mo sat in Trinity Gardens watching the Brixton Chamber Orchestra perform (for free). According to a flyer, they do everything from classical to Motown to drum and bass and Ibiza classics. What a lovely thing to be happening. It was all part of the Brixton x Harlem festival, exploring cultural links and common threads between those two places.

From there it was on to DF Tacos on Atlantic Road (venue for 2021's UXD). After I managed to work out how online ordering works I had ancho mushroom tacos and a bottle of Pacifico, Pam had plantain tacos (they looked good, even better than mine) with fries, and Mo had a rice bowl. Both Pam and Mo went for a frozen margarita. A drink I've avoided since some weird brain freeze inicdent in Desperados in Petts Wood in January 2018.

Unusually though, the walk wasn't quite over. We left DF Tacos, past Brixton Academy (still closed after two people died during a crush at an Asake gig in December 2022), past the skate park, and into Stansfield Road where, on 8th January 1947, David Robert Jones (later to become Bowie) was born. It's a very ordinary terraced house and I didn't take a photo because people actually live there. Which is the same reason we didn't carry further on to Bowie's school, Stockwell Infant School. Taking photos of people's homes at night is a bit off, hanging around outside infant schools worse.

Instead, we tried to go for another drink in The Duke of Edinburgh pub. But it was so packed they weren't letting people in. I could have easily been persuaded to try somewhere else but nobody suggested it so we all said goodbye and got various public transportation home. I took the P4 bus and was home in time to watch the BBC News at Ten. Which didn't seem in keeping with the rock star lifestyle of David Bowie in his pomp so I had a shepherd's pie to conjure up his spirit*

*I didn't really. Thanks to Pam, Roxanne, Clive, and Mo for joining me (and to Pam for some of the snaps used here) in this walk from station (Beckenham Junction) to station (Brixton). You may no longer be Absolute Beginners but you're all heroes. Even if it's just for one day.