It could be the weather, it could be work, it could be a combination of multiple things. Whatever the underlying causes, I’m more a homebody lately than the overly perky urban explorer that I could be. Luckily, F wouldn’t let me languish about at home for more than what’s healthy, and we’d end up taking some short walks somewhere around town. A couple of weekends ago, we explored a small portion of the old railway belt of Paris, called La Petite Ceinture, in the neighbourhood.

Parts of the disused railway line, which once encircled Paris in its entirety, are now officially open to public for walks and jogs, although a large part of it remains out of bound – not that it deters the most ardent urban adventurers from accessing and actually enjoying beautifully wild paths in Paris that tempts me to follow their footsteps at some point!

The section in the 15th arrondissement opened lat year and made available a nature walk of approximately 1.3km in length. This is but a small portion of the Petite Ceinture, which length ran at 32km in total. It roughly links the parks of Georges Brassens and André Citroën, away from the usual traffic at the peripheral roads, but fact it, there’s still a small distance on the streets between the track and these two parks from each of its end.

What’s lovely about the track is the availability of additional green space in the city, and there could never be too many of these. In addition, the stretch is largely overground, so we’re at a level that’s on the 3rd/4th floor of a building, giving us a slight vantage view of the city. This curious mix of nature and concrete somehow works. Clearly, it is quite a success too as a family space, for there were many others apart from us who took advantage of it on this relatively sunny Sunday afternoon.

We will be exploring other portions of the Petite Ceinture in the coming weeks, first the official ones, and then maybe we may venture into those officially forbidden stretches, if I could suss out where to go exactly to enter without having to resort to extreme slope climbing or something. I am not quite that adventurous despite all!