Travel report 2024

 

Urban foxes

Sometimes overnighting in London means you’re slap bang in the centre of this sprawling metropolis, other times you’re on the very edge of Greater London, just inside the M25 orbital motorway, and so it was on this occasion.
I arrived early in the afternoon in Croydon to check in and settle in before beginning the combined Britain and Ireland tour the next day. Croydon is on the outskirts of London, where London begins to peter out into open countryside interspersed with towns, villages, industrial complexes and farms. Being curious, I decided to forego the conveniently located KFC opposite the hotel and explore the locality for somewhere to eat and began walking along the four-lane road towards what I figured was the town centre. The evening rush hour was underway, with streams of cars and trucks heading into and out of London. I continued walking past the industrial sites to my left and, on the other side of the four-lane road, the rows of red-brick suburban houses, when I noticed an animal approaching at a 90-degree angle to my path, a fox no less. Well, that’s interesting, I thought, another creature on the look-out for its evening meal. Our paths continued to converge, and I started to wonder if the fox might find me appetising, imagining the headlines in the tabloids like “Irishman eaten alive by urban fox”, “Is anywhere safe from marauding man-eating fox?” so I quickened my pace and got ahead of the fox before we might meet. I made it ahead of him at a set of pedestrian traffic lights and continued on my way, the fox wouldn’t be having me for its supper, that was certain. Looking behind me, I saw the most amazing thing happening: the fox had stopped at the traffic lights, the lights turned red, the fox strolled over to the central island between the four lanes, waited, and yep, you’ve guessed it, it waited there until the lights turned red, the traffic stopped and it was safe to cross the remaining two lanes. Once on the other side of the road, it coolly strolled on until it found a gap between two houses and disappeared. What an encounter, and what an example of the cunningness and adaptability of foxes. And...both main protagonists in the story lived to fight another day!

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