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

I wait for the rain showers to pass before heading out. But, even so, I am forced to shelter from a cloudburst under a bowed old horse chestnut tree. The pavement remains dry even as sheets of water slide down the road I am riding to reach today’s grid square. My hopes were not high: I was anticipating quite a boring grid square today. There was no green marked on the map, barely any contour lines, certainly no rivers (just a rectangular covered reservoir) and a measly single footpath. (I had, however, also spotted the symbol for a pub, and I had little to do later today…)

It was a warm and humid day, in amongst the showers which seem to have ruined this particular English summer. It has been a memorable summer for weather – in just a few weeks we have seen floods, thunderstorms and extreme heat warnings. Conditions in the past few weeks have changed significantly, something the Met Office says is down to the jet stream. The shift in the jet stream means that as it moves further south it has steered low pressure centres directly towards us, bringing a more unsettled and changeable regime to the UK for the time being. The jet stream is always moving and it does every year but climate change has definitely helped to shift some of the weather patterns we have seen. Theres definitely been shifts n terms of the weather that have been driven by climate change.

Recent studies have shown that the UK’s climate has continued to warm, with 2020 being the first year to have temperature, rain and sunshine rankings all in the top 10. The Royal Meteorological Society’s “International Journal of Climatology“, has also shown all of the top ten hottest years for the UK have occurred since 2002, while the 21st century has been warmer so far than the previous three for central England.

Aside from my minor grumbles, it has not been too bad. Compare things to when clouds from a huge volcano plunged the world into endless winter in 1816. Crops failed, famine and disease spread – and great poets and composers of the day responded with works of gloomy genius. In April 1815, weeks before Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo, Mount Tambora, in what is now Indonesia, erupted. It was one of the largest volcanic incidents ever recorded and could be heard up to 1,600 miles off. Ash fell 800 miles away, and for two days following the explosion the 350 miles surrounding the mountain were in pitch darkness. By the following year, a huge and dense dust cloud had entered the atmosphere and was moving across much of the globe, disrupting the weather systems of the northern hemisphere, in particular, during 1816 and the three years that followed. The fallout was a thousand times greater than the recent Icelandic volcanic activity which, almost 200 years later, caused considerable disruptions to air traffic. The sun’s frequent disappearances will have caused countless people to suffer the psychological effects of darkness as well as the physical consequences of extremely low temperatures during the volcanic winter that replaced the summer of 1816. It was the second coldest year on record since the middle ages and the 1810s were the coldest decade ever recorded. The change in climate gave rise to exceptional rainstorms and crop failure across the world. Famine, disease, poverty, civil unrest and mass migration ensued.

In 1816 Ireland suffered one of the worst of its recurring potato famines: typhus fever broke out, infecting 80,000 and killing 44,000. In the Chinese province of Yunnan, where harvests were ruined for three years, they planted poppies as a more robust and profitable alternative to rice, which became one of China’s main sources of opium, with devastating and enduring human consequences at home and abroad. The repeated crop failures over the same period in North America caused its economy, driven by arable farming, to crash in 1819, again with far-reaching repercussions.

The impact of what is now known as seasonal affective disorder is seldom identified and never analysed in artistic activity, particularly in music which tends to be more abstract than other art forms. Nevertheless our ears can tell us something about the states of mind of the world’s two greatest composers of the day, Beethoven and the younger Schubert, who were living in Vienna and affected in different ways during the year without a summer.

Beethoven had been going through a relatively fallow creative period in 1815-16, but by late springtime he had managed to overcome his demons and create the first great song-cycle in western music, the perfectly formed and sublimely romantic An die ferne Geliebte. The gloomy atmospheric conditions that prevailed seem not to have influenced the great composer’s own moods.

Unlike the younger composer, the 19-year-old Schubert: in 1816, his prodigious output included two symphonies, choral music, chamber works and more than a hundred Lieder. Almost all of these songs reflected not only the wandering, wondering and passionate romanticism of the age but also the coldness and darkness of this mysterious period. In some of them we can clearly hear presentiments of what was to come much later in Winterreise, his great song cycle, in which Schubert captured the frosted landscapes that were a recurring feature during the year without a summer and the remainder of that uniquely cold decade. In contrast to Beethoven, on the evidence of his choice of texts and our hearing of his musical moods, we can argue that Schubert may have suffered from SAD exacerbated by the appalling weather.

Most sane people are now in agreement that human behaviour is contributing to the extreme swings of weather sweeping the globe. A stark demonstration of our profligacy and recklessness comes in the form of ‘Earth Overshoot Day’, which we have already passed for this year. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

To determine the date of Earth Overshoot Day for each year, Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days of that year that Earth’s biocapacity suffices to provide for humanity’s Ecological Footprint. The remainder of the year corresponds to global overshoot. Earth Overshoot Day is computed by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year), by humanity’s Ecological Footprint (humanity’s demand for that year), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:

(Earth’s Biocapacity / Humanity’s Ecological Footprint) x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day

Once the rain passed I pedalled on to my grid square, of which half was covered with quiet residential streets of neat homes, tidy gardens and trimmed hedges. And, bimbling around on my bike, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a whole heap of cul-de-sacs too. When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time they’re actually critiquing the suburbs more generally. The cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs– like if suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of a cul-de-sac on it. Cul-de-sacs by definition aren’t well connected to other streets and they are far away from town centers.

People can argue whether or not these are pros or cons, depending on what lifestyle choices they prioritize. For little kids, cul-de-sacs can be great, but they do have some real, quantifiable design flaws. Imagine being a garbage collector, or a street cleaner, instead of driving down one long street and collecting all the garbage from that street, then taking a right onto the next street and so on, you have to turn around in all of these cul-de-sacs over and over again. It takes more time and uses more gas. They’re expensive for governments to maintain, and now, governments are starting to enact regulations against them.

Dead end streets have been part of the world since 15th Century or even during earlier periods. It was a technique used to prevent civil wars and security against wars for passage of military vehicles during the early ancient periods. However, as a city planning legislation, Cul-De-Sacs were first legalised in England with the Hampstead Garden Suburb Act in 1906. This type of planning was thought to be ideal in suburbs with gardens as they provided more peaceful flow of traffic and low congestion rates. The 1906 Act did not allow vehicles to pass through the cul-de-sac as they had to drive around it, and had a maximum length of 500 feet. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Act was influential for all the Garden Cities of England including the famous Welwyn Garden City by Ebenezer Howard.

The dead end streets grew into popularity in the 19th and 20th Centuries, with many suburbs being constructed in the developed countries such as USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to name a few. People preferred to live in their own large sized houses away from the city center, in residential suburbs, as they wanted to have more space for a family-type living arrangement. This was a consequence of motor vehicles and the popularity of car-driven vehicles. Cul-De-Sacs were seen as a mark to suggest that unlike the central city, suburbs were not spaces where cars could easily pass through.

On these streets it was apparent how much pride people had taken in keeping their homes and gardens neat and their cars clean. The houses ranged a good deal in size, but even the most modest of them would not have been cheap. It got me thinking about the different aspirations people hold for their lives. For some it is a decent house and a shiny car on a quiet residential street. For others it may be almost the very opposite. One house had small Roman-style statues outside. Another flew the English flag. A third had an old American Airstream Caravan parked outside. Airstream is an American brand of caravan easily recognized by the distinctive shape of its rounded and polished aluminum coachwork. This body shape dates back to the 1930s and is based on the Bowlus Road Chief, an earlier all-aluminum travel trailer designed and built by Hawley Bowlus, the same designer and engineer who also oversaw the construction of the Spirit of St. Louis.

I began noticing the different house names I was pedalling past. Whilst some homes settled only for their number on the street, many houses bore a name sign: ‘The Laurels’, ‘The Oaks’, ‘Foxglove’, ‘Briar Cottage’, ‘Maple Lodge’, ‘The Glade’. Many of these names appeared to be yearning for nature and the countryside, nostalgically rural, despite being on very manicured suburban streets. Other names represented whimsy (‘Dewdropinn’), satisfaction (‘Finally’) or yearning (‘Min y Coed’, ‘Langdale’).

Naming habits have remained amazingly stable. The mead hall in “Beowulf,” the oldest known work of English literature, is called Heorot, which survives as the White Hart, a common pub name. House names from before 1200 often derived from the head of the household, like Ceolmund or Wærman, but by the fourteenth century, inspired by chivalric crests and religious imagery, they had titles like Le Griffon, La Worm, Le Dolfyn, and Le Harpe. During the Enlightenment, it became fashionable across Europe to name houses after a state of mind. In 1746, Frederick the Great, of Prussia, like some latter-day retiree to the English seaside, named his favorite palace Sans Souci—No Worries—which was written in gold letters above the door.

In 1762, London’s authorities began to number buildings, deleting centuries of coded symbols and allusive names. (For a long time, a perfumer in London would be identified by the civet cat on his sign.) Eighty years later, the spread of railways led to a construction free-for-all in the suburbs, as well as the florid era of Victorian house names. 

Struggling to find much to catch my eye on these tidy streets, I headed down the only footpath on my grid square, a narrow alleyway between the houses that led me to the limit of all the houses. I leaned on a five-bar gate and enjoyed looking over a scrubby neglected patch of waste ground blooming with wild flowers and grasses, the sound of a warm breeze in the trees, and busy with white butterflies. To my eye it looked nicer than any neat garden, but the variety of the ways people choose to live their lives has been one of the most interesting aspects of travelling around my map. How do butterflies manage to fly in the wind? Scientists have studied this by tethering individual insects in wind tunnels and training them to fly towards flowers, while filming them in slow motion. They have found that the lightweight insects use a range of flying styles to combat the challenges of staying airborne on windy days. They might clap their wings behind their backs to push themselves forward or ‘waggle’ by twisting their flapping wings, therefore creating miniature whirlwinds that roll off the wing and lift it up. Good posture is important, as is warming up the flight muscles before flight. But windy days can be useful. With help of tailwinds, migrating butterflies can travel at 100km/h at an altitude of several hundred metres!

I listen to the rhythmical rattle of a distant passing train then turn back to cycle through the quiet streets of this compact residential area once more. I notice an electric car charging unit on the front of one house. Many of the homes here have two, three or four cars parked outside them which is an indicator of the massive infrastructure changes needed if Britain is to successfully ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Electric vehicle chargepoints across the UK could become as recognisable as the red post box or black cab, following the appointment of the Royal College of Art (RCA) and PA Consulting to deliver an iconic British chargepoint design. 

The UK’s small land mass means that it’s far less work to implement a comprehensive nationwide public charging infrastructure – a key requirement for those who regularly cover distances longer than an EV’s range – than it would be in Russia, for example. When you add in the fact that the average length of each car journey is around 8.5 miles in the UK, plus consider ‘destination chargers’ are becoming increasingly common at supermarkets, hotels, gyms and elsewhere, it’s clear that frequent top-ups, rather than big weekly charges, are likely to be the norm for many, especially those without driveways and garages. One analogy many use, for example, is that charging an EV should be approached more like topping up a smartphone battery – something that’s much easier if you have multiple chargers dotted about your house.

Eager for something different now, I followed the footpath alleyway that cut through the parallel rows of residential streets. I reached the edge of the development and a few fields belonging to a riding stables (‘Do not feed horses no carrot or apple. Thank you’). A sign informed me they were specialised breeders of Welsh Pony and Driving Cobs. Google informed me that means a group of four closely-related horse breeds including both pony and cob types, which originated in Wales. Native ponies existed in Wales before 1600 BC, and a Welsh-type cob was known as early as the Middle Ages. They were influenced by the Arabian horse, and possibly also by the Thoroughbred and the Hackney horse. Interest in the breed declined during the Great Depression, but revived in the 1950s. Throughout their history, the Welsh breeds have had many uses, including as a cavalry horse, a pit pony, and as a working animal on farms.

The characteristics of the breed as known today are thought to have been established by the late 15th century, after the Crusaders returned to England, with Arab stallions from the Middle East. In the 16th century, King Henry VIII, thinking to improve the breeds of horses, particularly war horses, ordered the destruction of all stallions under 15 hands (60 inches, 152 cm) and all mares under 13 hands (52 inches, 132 cm) in the Breed of Horses Act 1535. The laws for swingeing culls of ‘under-height’ horses were partially repealed by a decree by Queen Elizabeth I in 1566 on the basis that the poor lands could not support the weight of the horses desired by Henry VIII.

I passed a playground, busy with kids enjoying their summer holiday, then was out into a wheat field. This is a nightmare summer for farmers, waiting for moisture levels to drop to the right percentage in their wheat, only for more thundery showers to set them back and make them look anxiously at their harvesting contracts. I looked for the boundary stone marked on my map but could not find it. Instead I found a small bench, obscured by a leaning sloe tree, and sat and looked over the fields for a while. This grid square was almost entirely taken up by either the streets I had just left behind, or large open fields of brown wheat. There was not much variety, surprise, or scope for me to follow my nose.

I was pleased, therefore, to stumble upon the community allotments over the road past the wheat fields. I don’t have either the patience or the time to be a gardener, but I at least find the concept of growing my own vegetables very satisfying. Allotments make me happy, particularly at this time of the year. It was nice to wander around, admiring the rows of fat onions, purple cabbage, swelling corn and pumpkins, and crops of sunflowers. I sampled a few blackberries from the hedgerow (not quite ripe) but left the allotments’ bounty alone.

An allotment is traditionally measured in rods (perches or poles), an old measurement dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. 10 poles is the accepted size of an allotment, the equivalent of 250 square metres or about the size of a doubles tennis court. These were all much smaller, sub-divided I presume to allow more people an allotment and to make them a more manageable size.

Allotments have been in existence for hundreds of years, with evidence pointing back to Anglo-Saxon times. But the system we recognise today has its roots in the Nineteenth Century, when land was given over to the labouring poor for the provision of food growing. This measure was desperately needed thanks to the rapid industrialisation of the country and the lack of a welfare state.

Allotment holders, and in turn the local allotment societies they form, are obliged to sign a tenancy agreement which outlines what is expected of them by the landlord. These agreements cover the rent due, the kind of activities which can take place on the land, the building of sheds, subletting issues, as well as the general behaviour of the plot holders. A Tenancy Agreement dating back to 1846 serving the Parish of Husbands Bosworth states “Every occupier is expected to attend divine service on Sundays; and any occupier who digs potatoes or otherwise works on his land on Sunday shall immediately forfeit the same.” Things have changed a little in the last 150 years, as Sunday’s are now the most popular gardening day of the week.