Welcome to my home town: How Croydon’s worst bits inspired my lifelong love affair with nature

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email Get Simon Calder’s Travel email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Part guide, part love letter, “Home towns” is a new series in which we celebrate where we’re from. South London’s concrete haemorrhoid, with its humongous flyover slouching towards Mitcham’s crematorium, offers such gifts to the world as BNP skinheads and the Croydon pony-tail “facelift”, a miracle of non-surgical plastic surgery. The UK’s first, sparkling-white Art Deco airport was in Croydon, with the world’s first air traffic control tower. Flights of imagination Croydon’s Art Deco airport building and Grade II control tower are preserved in the visitor centre and micro-museum.