[EDIT: you can read the stories from my progress across my map here.]

I began the day amongst Victorian terraces and a working man’s club, streets of post-war pebbledash homes and cul de sacs of 1980s semis. Placards saying ‘Thank you NHS’ and a fluttering Union Jack. A stripy brick clocktower built with the largesse of the local paper mill 150 years ago. The paper mill’s chimneys still smoked away in the distance. A row of shops, as noted often before across my map: kebab house, Chinese, Indian, a garage door shop [that’s a first], bookmaker, and a fried chicken joint. It is a traditional, tired one street town of independent though struggling shops, pubs, kebab joints and a big new Domino’s pizza place. The town has seen better days and is sliding steadily into decline. An old man labours across the street with his shopping trolley. A car slows and waits an age for him to cross. That will be me one day, I think to myself.

All this was more or less what I expected from looking at my map before cycling here. What I had not anticipated was that behind all this was a new area of clapboard houses and commuter apartments. Gentrification and an M&S store in the local garage. Clapboard buildings painted pastel shades, drainage culverts landscaped into trickling streams, wooden balconies and pots of geraniums. The quiet, clean, new uniformity of these new residential streets reminded me so much of suburban America. They hardly matched the traditional building conventions of the region. I wondered whether this new town will merge with the old, whether its vibe will overtake the traditional terraces down the road, if cappuccino to go will trump a cup of tea in the cafe.

A flyer stapled to a noticeboard urged residents to take care of local hedgehogs in Hedgehog Awareness Week. They say, ‘We want to make sure the hedgehog, the UK’s only spiny mammal, remains a common and familiar part of British life. We know hedgehogs are in trouble. We’ve lost a third of all our hedgehogs since the millennium. In an increasingly urbanised Britain, we choose to lose all that is complex and beautiful if we do not stand up for our wild animals and plants. We hope you can help us fight for the hedgehog. Create hedgehog highways by making holes in your fence and connecting your garden to your neighbours’.

Behind the town is a cluster of lakes in old chalk pits. Lime from this area was used in building Waterloo Bridge along with other London bridges and landmarks. My nose picked up the lovely scent of warm summer lakes before I reach them. My hopes rose in anticipation of a refreshing swim, but I was thwarted –yet again– by all the lakes being sealed off behind high spiked fences. Signs warned of the insidious hazards of ‘Deep Water’ as I dreamed of the delights of deep water and the pleasures of wild swimming. Fencing off nature to protect us from it is ridiculous and counter-productive. Far better, surely, to teach people how to be safe, how to swim, how to make sensible judgement calls, and then open up nature to be enjoyed. If I lived in this town but was unable to swim or kayak or SUP on this most local of water I would be incredibly frustrated. I suspect, however, that the notion of fencing off lakes, of decreeing that this or that area of nature is ‘Private’ and off limits, is so ingrained in most people’s minds that it is rarely questioned.

I was pleased to discover that two fenceposts had been forced apart, allowing me to squeeze through and slip into the water for an illicit but lovely swim. Earlier, cycling around the new development of new homes, I had envied those apartments with private lake views. Although there were plenty of signs warning that swimming was forbidden, I was pleased to see a woman ignoring the world and swimming leisurely across the lake, her orange tow float bobbing along in her wake.

I leave the lakes and the town and cross a busy main road towards the river and marshes. Beside the road are a row of enormous, faceless warehouses. Thousands and thousands of plastic crates stacked outside were the only clue of what they may be used for. Sellotaped to a fence was a dramatic missing cat notice. ‘On the night she went missing, at around 2.20 am, our neighbours CCTV caught someone acting suspiciously outside our home. Our worst fears are that this person may have had something to do with her disappearance.’

Unable to shed light on the mystery I carried on my way, heading through a low underpass beneath the railway into an area of riverside reed beds and streams, home to reed buntings and reed and sedge warblers. Damselflies flitted in the sunshine. Pink and white marsh mallows grew along the verge. Marsh mallows grow in marshes and other damp areas. The plant has a fleshy stem, leaves, and pale, five-petaled flowers. The first marshmallows were made by boiling pieces of the marsh mallow root pulp with sugar until it thickened. After it had thickened, the mixture was strained and cooled. As far back as 2000 B.C. , Egyptians combined the marsh mallow root with honey. The candy was reserved for gods and royalty.

The marsh mallow root also has medicinal qualities. Marsh mallow roots and leaves can work as a laxative. It also was used by early Arab doctors as a poultice to retard inflammations. Marsh mallow roots were also used in treating chest pains, to soothe coughs and sore throats, and as an ointment. Whether used as a candy or for medicinal purposes, the manufacturing process of marsh mallows was limited to a small, almost individual, scale. Access to marsh mallow confections was limited to the wealthy until the mid-nineteenth century. Common people only tasted marsh mallows when they took pills; doctors sometimes hid the medicine inside the candy to cover the pill’s undesirable taste.

Modern marshmallow confections were first made in France around 1850. This first method of manufacture was expensive and slow because it involved the casting and molding of each marshmallow. French candy makers used the mallow root sap as a binding agent for the egg whites, corn syrup, and water. The fluffy mixture was heated and poured onto the corn starch in small moulds, forming the marshmallows.

I sampled a few blackberries – they are getting sweeter, but not quite ready yet. The hawthorn berries are also ripening quickly now. The footpath ran along the route of an old railway line and hunks of concrete from the old demolished factories were dotted around. A bird hide had been erected, a simple wooden wall of planks with two horizontal gaps sliced through it, one at adult eye height and one for children. I saw nothing more exciting than a few pigeons, despite a sign suggesting I may spy kingfishers, teal, egrets, water rail and gadwalls here at various times.

I carried on through areas of high reeds until I reached the river, broad and slow in the summer sunshine. The tide was out and the banks were wide banks of mud, dotted with discarded tyres and an upturned car seat. A new housing development lined the far side of the river, apparently ‘an exclusive and invigorating new village community, bursting with life on the banks of the river. It is a unique and ambitious development, offering all of its residents a wealth of inspiring lifestyle opportunities.’

I liked it out here on the marsh tucked into a tight curve of the river, the sky big blue and empty, the paper factory’s five chimneys smoking away in the distance, and only the sound of the breeze rustling the reeds. The river is the boundary of my map, more or less. The other side, unknown ground, looks so tempting to me as always. I ambled around peacefully for a while, seeing nobody else except for a father and son doing a bad job of hiding catapults behind their backs as they walked past me. I wasn’t quite sure what they were taking potshots at out here, but they evidently didn’t want me to ask so I let them be and headed back towards the main road. Once again this was a grid square that had surprised me, that offered more than I had imagined, and made me look a little differently at the map that I live on.