It's a gloomy wet February day and we've come to one of North London's most famous thoroughfares.

The Holloway Road carries the A1 through the borough of Islington, often packed with cars, buses and lorries as you can hear, and bustling with shoppers.

Mind you today, the wipers are on full and the passers-by are rushing for shelter hunched against

the wind. But this road has played a significant role in the life and music of today's

folk on foot guest. Frank Turner has a very different pedigree from many of our previous guests on Focon foot.

For one thing, he started out as a punk musician. For another, he was at Eton College at the same time as Prince William.

He also has a first class degree in modern history from the London School of Economics.

But he is unmistakably an English singer and songwriter, and his confessional, often brutally honest songs,

observe the turbulence of human relationships as well as wider societal issues.

And he's just as much at home playing solo gigs in small venues as he is on arena stages with his band The Sleeping Souls.

Today, he's going to tell us why the Holloway Road means so much to him.

Frank, what a lovely day.

Isn't it a glorious British spring day? Is it spring yet? I don't know, it nearly is, but it's throwing it down. It must be clear about that. I mean, we've agreed to walk in North London in February, so it's our own fault. Slightly fond, because we're just outside Archway Station at the top of Holloway Road. Why have you brought us to Holloway Road? My whole life lays on this road in a funny way.

Looking up the hill past Archway Station, my grandmother lived up there and my dad and his brothers and sisters were raised up there. I was always just outside Winchester, but as a kid, in the weekends we'd come up here and my mum always says that even from about the age of two or three, I'd get out of the car in Archway and kind of go, yeah, this is me. You've got home here? Yeah, it just immediately sort of grabbed me and I think that was London more than this area specifically at the time. But it just, you know, my first ever tube journey was from Archway Station when I was about 10 I I reckon. My cousin took me into the West End

and that kind of thing. So, you know, there's an awful lot of stuff around here and we're going to get into lots more of it as we walk down the hill. There's some musical landmarks down the hill on there. Many, both personal and indeed historical. All right, let's get going then. Let's start going. Let's start off. Yes, first mentioned in 1318 in the annals of the Bishop of London

there's a cattle driving path from the Midlands down to Smithfield's Market, but it's a Holloway. A Holloway technically speaking is a path worn below the surface of the land by human or animal footfall covered by trees. So this would all have been covered by trees. Yeah, it doesn't look like it now, does it? No, it's...

I mean, there's...

There's lamp posts that look like stunted trees, perhaps.

There is a park halfway down, isn't there?

Isn't the Whittington part near here?

There are little bits and bobs.

It's funny you should mention Whittington, though,

...