All the Grid Squares: Watts Wood and Sandy Lane

I'm continuing with my project to walk in/through all the OS grid squares in Thurrock. At the end of my last post, I was going to focus on six unvisited squares in the south-west of the borough.

I started with square TQ5678, the single square at the bottom-right of the map, and plotted a rectangular walk round the upper part of the square. 

I started with the footpath on the right of the square, which took me through Watts Wood and into a grassy field behind the wood. I followed a well-trodden path through the grass until it turned back into the wood and fizzled out, then made my way back to the main road. The second part was more urban, following a couple of alleyways and another road to complete the route.

I then relocated for a second walk, in the top two boxes of the map. 

You can see there's one orange B road running across the squares as far as the black line which is the Thurrock boundary. All the white space is landfill, which is securely fenced off, and the little green wooded part was inaccessible behind the same fencing. Thus my route for ticking off these squares was just an out and back along Sandy Lane/B1335 from nearby Aveley. This was the first time that I'd walked over the boundary on a road, so I took a photo of the 'Welcome to Thurrock' sign.

Now my map of Thurrock overall looks like this:

My three new squares are yellow, and I've previously visited all the green squares (since August 2022). The grey and blue are the land and water borders with Essex and the Thames. The I square at the bottom is within Tilbury Docks and inaccessible to the public.

My next outing will be to Rainham Marshes to tick off the two grey squares on the left (which are grey because the border runs through them), which are the left two of the middle row of the OS map segment at the top of this post.