Monday 29 August 2022

All the Grid Squares: Purfleet-on-Thames Riverside

Following on from my last post, I'm starting my exploration of Thurrock by ticking off the two blue riverside squares in the south-west of the borough. These are blue because they are boundary squares with the Thurrock/Kent boundary running down the middle of the River Thames.

I'd been close to them before, really close, but I don't think I'd ever stepped into these two grid squares. 

Let's take a detailed look at the map:



The squares in question are TQ5577 and TQ5676. I walked from Rainham to Purfleet on the London LOOP back in 2016 but stopped at the station, and in lockdown I walked from home along the roads to Purfleet and along the river to the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, both about three miles from home and both times stopping tantalisingly short of these squares. I've marked all three excursions in green above.

A lot of this area is industrial, with oil terminals, container terminals and aggregate works leading to the piers and wharves along the river, BUT there is a public footpath running all along this section of the Thames. 

I parked at RSPB Rainham Marshes for convenience and headed to the riverside, turning my back on views of Canary Wharf and heading east, past the Purfleet Heritage Centre (an old gunpowder store) and the new town sign, erected after Purfleet became Purfleet-on-Thames in 2020.

I'd been this way before, and shortly afterwards followed the path inland and then the road to the station where I would enter new territory. I had had a recce on Google Streetview and identified that the path started between two buildings opposite the station. However, on arrival, I found both buildings (or perhaps the space where they used to be) hidden by hoardings, but spotted a gap at one end which seemed to lead to the path. The way felt a bit trespass-y at first but soon opened out on to what was obviously a proper footpath, complete with waymarker a little further on.

After a while, this path climbed a bank and I popped up beside the river again. Sadly the views were brief and the path dropped down behind the river wall, past Purfleet Fuel Terminal, complete with notices about the court injunction which bans protesters from obstructing the site.


Further on, a couple of ships were moored at the jetties and I took a closer look by climbing some steps on the wall, but the majority of my walk was still along a narrow strip running between walls and fences.


At one point, I thought I might have reached a dead end but the path jinked left and ducked under the road leading to one of those jetties. I popped up another set of steps, to see the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge ahead and the second moored ship alongside.


A set of ramps finally took me over the river wall and onto a wide path under the conveyor belts of the Aggregate Industries depot. I headed onwards, toward the bridge, secure in the knowledge that walking that far would guarantee me the second grid square. I stood there for a bit, watching the Adeline go upstream.

My return journey was quicker, with knowledge of the route and less climbing of steps to check what could be seen. I did disturb a flock of what I think were starlings from a patch of rough ground, and they alighted on the steps ahead of me which I had to pass over and move them on again. Once I reached the point where my original path left the river, I kept going straight on to see what I would find. I was rewarded with a selection of street art, but nothing of any value. In contrast I've seen some excellent art on the river wall closer to home.



From here, I cut back towards Purfleet station and retraced my route back to Rainham Marshes. Here's the route map:



And an update for my Thurrock grid squares map: 

I've amended this compared to the version above; I've re-coloured previously visited squares in a lighter green, and switched to a darker green for squares that I've walked in since I started this project. These include not only this Purfleet walk but also my normal weekly activities. 

I'm undecided about whether to re-walk all the old squares or not, but by doing it this way I have the data on hand if I do make that my goal.



Friday 26 August 2022

All the Grid Squares

Outside of scrapbooking and other crafting, I follow the blog of Diamond Geezer, a London based daily blogger who manages to create interesting posts on the most mundane of subjects. He writes on a veritable miscellany of subjects, but the majority of his posts are on travel in London and what he finds at places that most of us just wouldn't bother with.

Back in June, he posted his musings on just how much of London he had visited, breaking down the capital by 1km grid squares as per the Ordnance Survey and only counting those squares which are wholly within the London boundary. At that time he'd visited 1386 out of 1463 squares on foot, passed through a further 54 by bus and 6 by train, leaving just 17 unvisited squares. And since then he's been visiting the unvisited with the aim of walking in every London grid square.

At the time, I marvelled at his record-keeping (20 years of walking and blogging) and his interest in visiting new areas, when most of us return to the same places over and over, and I reflected that there can't be many who would take on such a task, me included.

But, it got me thinking. I am never going to visit every grid square in London; I don't even live there (though I could walk to the boundary from home if I was so inclined). I live in Thurrock, a borough bounded by London to the west, Essex to the north and east and Kent across the River Thames to the south. 

(c) Google

I wondered how many grid squares there are in Thurrock, how many I have visited on foot and whether it would be possible to walk them all. A couple of evenings with a map and a spreadsheet gave me this outline. 



White squares are wholly within Thurrock. The purple H square contains my home. 
The Thurrock border runs through the grey squares (land border) and the blue squares (river border).
The black squares are either outside Thurrock or are river border squares with no  Thurrock land.

I've counted 204 squares, but I know that the Thurrock part of some of the Essex border squares is tiny and likely to be inaccessible. We also have  two sets of docks and some other industrial areas that will make certain other squares impossible to visit.

Of course, I've plotted where I've been too, and as of last weekend I had walked in or through 47 of my 204 squares, just over 23%. I did start to mark those I'd driven through too, but it all got a bit messy and I don't count driving through a square as visiting it properly so I'd need to go back anyway.


The black, grey, blue and purple squares are as before, but now I have green for squares that I have visited and walked in, including border squares. The majority are obviously surrounding my home square, as I tend to walk anywhere up to a couple of miles rather than driving. Further afield, I've been to country parks, river paths and even the scout campsite. But it's definitely skewed to the south-west and I have plenty more map to explore.

Of course, I've already started to turn some more squares green, and I'll be back soon to share my first excursion with you.


Monday 22 August 2022

Paul & Emily

It's my turn today to share a new page for Twilight Crafts using a Jenny Wren Cut-File. I chose the Heart Semicircle to use with a wedding photo, sized it to wrap round the picture and cut it from white cardstock. I chose a pretty floral background and picked out pink and green inks to match the paper; I then used the green inks to colour the heart outlines and pink for the inner hearts. 

I trimmed my photo a little so that I could mat it on a 4x6 cut-apart piece, and nestled it into my semicircle of green hearts before adding a few pink hearts popped up on foam squares. I ran the patterned part of a branding strip below the photo and tucked a label in to the side. I had  intended that label to form 'shelf' for my title to sit on but discovered that the alphabet I'd intended to use didn't have any ampersands. I switched to an alternative but it was too wide for the space so I turned it sideways, added a few dots from the sheet next to the hearts on the left of the photo, and finished off with some pearl swirls.


Supplies
Paper - Carta Bella Flower Garden
Letters - Basic Grey
Label - Cocoa Vanilla Studio Legendary
Pearls - Unkown
Ink - Ranger, Memento

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Thursday 18 August 2022

Messy Eater

Another day, another scraplift. I'm up to Day 6 now in Scrap Squad's 30 Days of Summer Scraplifts, and this time the team selected an original from Jenessa Franco for Paper Issues.

The main elements were four tags, a stencilled background and a single photo. I started with the background but chose a sheet from a Vicki Boutin pad rather than creating my own. I then coloured some tags with inks to match and layered them behind my photo. I started with four of them as per the original page, but they covered too much of the page so I cut back to three.


Supplies
Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, Shimelle Never Grow Up
Tags - American Crafts
Letters - Maggie Holmes
Stickers - Paige Evans
Label - Unknown
Puffy Stars - Pinkfresh Studio
Ink - Ranger

Sunday 14 August 2022

In the Park

I've reached Day 5 now in Scrap Squad's 12 Days of Summer Scraplifts. The original page by Ginny Hughes has a full page photo with an overlapping stack of ephemera. 

I didn't have such a large picture to hand so I lined up three photos in a column instead and picked out an ephemera pack from Amy Tangerine to go with them. I actually had another smaller photo which was the perfect size for a frame in the pack which I stacked up with an assortment of other pieces, puffy stickers and nuvo drops.

My page is wider than Ginny's so I had some empty space on the right of my photos. I kept it mostly clear but did add a few embellishments, my title and a journalling card.


Supplies
Paper - Paige Evans Whimsical
Letters - Maggies Holmes
Ephemera - Amy Tangerine Picnic in the Park
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup, Freckled Fawn, Elle's Studio
Dots - Nuvo Drops

Thursday 11 August 2022

In the Back Yard

Continuing with the 12 Days of Summer Scraplifts from Scrap Squad; this is the fourth in the series, lifting a page made by Lacey Robin for Paper Issues. 

I chose my photo first, an old one of my cousin's children, and then my papers, a mix of Shimelle and Amy Tangerine designs. In choosing my papers, I decided to make the back triangles all the same and overlaid them with white-based patterns, repeating one of the papers.

I double-matted my photo and moved it across to suit the direction that the children are facing, tucking a label and border strip in around the edges. There was already a lot of colour and pattern on the page so I used plain gold butterflies for embellishment and added puffy stickers and enamel dots. 


Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Shimelle Never Grow Up, Amy Tangerine Brave & Bold, Amy Tangerine Shine On
Letters - Maggie Holmes
Border - Bazzill
Butterfly Stickers - Jen Hadfield
Puffy Stickers - Amy Tangerine
Ladybird - Twilight Crafts
Enamel Dots - Pretty My Page
Ink - Ranger

Monday 8 August 2022

50th Parkrun

I'm going back to the third of the Twelve Days of Summer Scraplifts now, as hosted by Scrap Squad on Facebook.

Part of the beauty of a scraplift is its adaptability; you can take as much or as little of the original as you want in order to inspire a new page, and this one's at the more minimal end of the scale. I started with the white cardstock background and coloured it with a hexagon background mask but after that I went my own way.

I had a 4x6 photo of my husband doing his 50th parkrun, which I matted and then ran my title down the side. My embellishment is simple and scattered rather than clustered.


Supplies
Cardstock - UK Crafts, Craft Sensations
Paper - My Mind's Eye
Letters - American Crafts
Flair - Unknown
Word Sticker - Tim Holtz
Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio
Enamel Stars - Doodlebug
Ink - Hobbycraft, Ranger
Paint - Golden

Tools
Hexagon Mask
Big Shot & Little B Chevron Die

Friday 5 August 2022

Learning to Slide

I'm jumping forward now to Day 7 of Scrap Squad's 10 Days of Summer Scraplifts because Twilight Crafts have an excellent cut-file which works with that scraplift, and I used it for my latest DT page.

The original page by Julie Taylor for Hey Little Magpie has a fan of triangles behind a circular photo, and I used the Wonky Star cut-file for my triangles rather than trying to work out which sizes to cut for myself. I'd originally intended to layer them up in a similar manner to those on Julie's page but once I got going I stayed with the full circle of the cut-file but moved all the pieces closer together.

I used an assortment of Paige Evans papers, cutting the triangles from four patterns which suited the photo of my mum with my son in the park when he was small. That photo was originally 4"x6" but I cut it down to a 3.5" circle which I matted on pale blue cardstock.

With my triangles in place I ran my title around the edge of them following a circular template and went even further from Julie's original page, with just a few puffy stickers for embellishment rather than her much larger cluster.


Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Paige Evans Whimsical, Paige Evans Truly Grateful
Letters - Studio Calico?
Puffy Stickers - Paige Evans, Elle's Studio
Ink - Ranger
Paint - Golden

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Wednesday 3 August 2022

Welcome to Yorkshire

I'm taking on the second Summer Scraplift from Scrap Squad today, but not going so random with the photos as I did on the first. I looked at the page design, a lift from Hip Kit Club, and decided to make the first page (chronologically) for our Easter holiday in Yorkshire this year.

I've already pulled together a kit of papers based around Simple Stories Hello Today and Pebbles Seen & Noted, so that choice was made for me in advance. I made my triangles shallower than those in the original page and moved elements around to suit my single 4x6 photo.


Supplies
Paper - Pebbles Seen & Noted, Simple Stories Hello Today
Letters - Collage Press, Basic Grey
Stickers - Simple Stories, American Crafts/Shimelle, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield
Puffy Flowers - OneCanoeTwo
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories
Ink - Ranger
Paint - Golden

Tools
Big Shot & Dovecraft Tag Die