03/28
The long-standing guidance to the urban allotment seeker -- "Walk the streets and use your eyes" -- cannot be taken seriously by today's busy folk. Of course, one is watchful and peers over hedges and down bosky tracks as an incidental part of the daily round. One does survey the general scene from each of the sides of handy road bridges across railway lines. One gleans names, addresses and telephone numbers from the notice boards found at the entrances of the open spaces that are seen to be divided up into cultivated rectangles. One pursues these leads as far as is possible.
The key to successful allotment finding within the built environment lies not in this haphazard process, however. It lies in system, method, organisation, the exercise of much patience and the application of much persistence -- as follows