Friday, 1 May 2026

All the Grid Squares: Project Resurrected

Back in August 2022, I embarked on a project to walk in or through all the (accessible) OS grid squares in Thurrock (and blogged about it here). However, by January 2023 a combination of rising workload and poor weather saw it quietly stop. It wasn't a conscious decision to abandon it, and I've thought about the project many times since then, and now I'm going back to it. I've recently retired, I want to stay active and I'm bored of walking routes from home.

Last time I blogged, my map of Thurrock looked like this, with each box being a 1km OS grid square:


The dark green squares were ones that I had walked in since August 2022, while the light green squares were ones that I had walked in prior to that date. When I started, I wasn't sure whether the light green ones would count, but now I have decided that they don't and that I will revisit them. The land border with London/Essex runs through the grey squares and the river border with the Thames runs through the blue squares (and some of the green/visited squares). I am aiming to visit all these border squares, though there are a few where the Thurrock part is tiny and might be inaccessible.

Moving forward to 2026, I've visited a good many more squares even while I wasn't actively exploring. I joined a running club in October 2024 and they are based in the black-outlined square so I've now run all around there. Furthermore, last summer some members organised 'away nights' in different areas which filled in a few more squares. I've coloured all the running squares bright blue below (as that's our running club colour). I've also visited the orange squares - the one on its own contains our nearest library, and the three at the bottom were covered by us walking from Tilbury Cruise Terminal to Tilbury Town railway station after a cruise in December 2023. Finally, I've blanked out the light green squares following my decision to re-visit them. 


I've been out twice in the last couple of weeks to collect a few new squares so I'll blog them soon.