Two bucks before breakfast

A journey from old South London to rural Hertfordshire to stalk muntjac suggests that the two aren't as far detached as they might seem

- PATRICK GALBRAITH

When the alarm went off at 3:30am, it felt as though my head had just hit the pillow. There was rain falling across the window, there was no light in the sky, and in the hall my spaniel pup was beating her tail against the side of her crate. I guess she’d noted me piling coats, binoculars and boots up the previous evening and reckoned we were going somewhere exciting. She is just starting her sporting life, but even now she knows the signs — the gun cabinet keys, cartridge bags, bottles of beer and the packet of Marlboros that always mean fishing.

By 4am, Jessie and I were on Walworth Road heading towards Elephant and Castle. We were on our way Hertfordshire to meet my friend Paul Childerley, deer manager and former British kickboxing champion.

The streets were quiet, save for a few students heading to falafel shops after having been out partying, and men shuffling wide-eyed down the damp pavement, going nowhere in particular. A young gamekeeper recently asked me why the editor of ST lives ‘in town’. “You’d like it round my way,” I replied. The market on the road where Charlie Chaplin was born still runs on Saturdays, the shop is full of old boys buying Racing Post, and if you go into the local pub, The Nag’s Head, you’ll always find somebody who wants to talk about pigeon racing or long dogs. The city and the countryside once weren’t so far apart, and what London once was lives on in Walworth.