No really, it's a street. Honestly.

I think the best advice I can give to anyone who is planning to visit the the towns and urban areas of the UK or even the rest of Europe in general is, "Go ahead. Be brave. Try walking through that hidden passage or tiny street that you run across. You know you want to. There's probably something fairly interesting back there."

In the last few months, I have been to London, Manchester, Munich, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, and, Maastricht. Each of these cities has its own unique qualities and personalities, true. But they share a similar time-scale and historical footprint in the world. Basically, they're old. I have found old cities just tend to build on top of themselves creating a layered record of architecture and structures the deeper you go into them. We all know that these places existed before there were cars,buses or trains. This means the streets and layout of these cities were once scaled only to horse- or foot-traffic.

The cool part is: many of these old narrow streets, lanes, and passageways have remained in place and the city grew around them. Plus--because they were essentially forgotten by the planners and barons of the world, they have also tended to remain pretty much as they were for hundreds of years. However, the local residents and those-in-the-know still use them. You can simply pass though some as a short cut, or find yourself standing in front of a tiny pub or almost forgotten book-seller or rare collectibles dealer. I myself found a shop at the end of a 6-foot wide passageway near the east end of London that sells only shoes for dolls. Nothing else. Weird. (And it was open. I did not go in. I did not need doll's shoes.)

But, you have to be willing to give it a try. There is a tendency for many of us not to go down dark alleys. There's strong precedent for this, to be sure. Use your head, and you will be fine. Duh--a dark alley is NOT a quaint or historically significant passageway. Skip it. The ones to look for have small light sources of their own, or have some access to the daylight from above. Many have an inviting sign posted (just not too obviously) or show some indication of local foot traffic. Look for it.

You will not get lost. There is another thing I have learned about these old cities: If it's not a dead-end, then the path invariably leads to a main street, public gathering place, or source of transport. Period. End of story. Why? Because people tend to create roads that lead to somewhere eventually. Usually this is a convenient place that we want to go to often, which is why the path is there in the first place.

You won't suddenly find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

But you may suddenly find yourself looking at something rarely seen by the casual visitor: Like a pub built around a cherry tree stump that Queen Elizabeth danced around in the 1500's that is guarded by a 200-year-old stuffed cat, which is only accessible by entering a 32inch wide gate that blocks an alley-way that is too narrow for anything but single file walkers.

This place really does exist. I leave it to you to find it. The beer was good.
--tomb