Thank you for all your support this year!I hope you'll get out and explore your own map too...For more ideas and info: www.alastairhumphreys.com/localI am proud to know these familiar little spots, for they have helped me learn to appreciate where I live and feel more attached to it, despite Thoreau’s insistence that a landscape can ‘never become quite familiar to you’, no matter how long you live there. But can a single map really be enough exploration for a lifetime? Pootling around one map for a year rarely felt like an adventure, I’ll admit. But it did often feel like exploring. I enjoyed many tingles of surprise on my map of small wonders. I won’t push your credulity in claiming it was epic, but something about the experience resonated with the sliver of my soul that wants always to look beyond the hori- zon. My weekly meanderings did a decent job of keeping a lid on that restlessness. So much so, in fact, that I feel something akin to vertigo at contemplating the prospect of having the entire globe to explore. If you pick up a map of your local area, choose a grid square at ran- dom, and begin walking around it with your eyes open, you’ll soon be mesmerised by the possibilities for local exploration. After that, it is up to you. What will you look for? What will you care about and want to take a stand on? My map has changed my perception of home, made me less tempt- ed to fly, and more motivated to care for the environment. There is so much potential for a future full of positive stories, if only we demand change and take action. This local map could fuel my curiosity for ever, in a way I once thought only distant places could do. My map is a fractal of the world. Today is a fractal of my life. To know one place well and to make it better is the work of a lifetime. And so, yes, a single map can be enough.Â
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19:53
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19:53
Parakeets
I cycled to a small town that I knew as a motorway junction and a monstrous snarl of a roundabout. And yet I was riding towards it down pretty lanes fringed with red and yellow leaves that swirled and spun in the wind. It was disorientating not to have thought of this place in this way before. What would I discover on the last of my fifty-two grid squares? I had spent an entire year on a small map that I’d feared would be boring and meagre. But I saw now that I was nowhere near to know- ing it fully. I would need to continue at the same pace for another seven years before I even visited every square, let alone travelled around each one in each season, during rush hour or at dawn, by bike or on foot, alone or with a companion. You never pass through the same grid square twice. I can never know even one map, not in all its sea- sons and weather, nor all its harvests and wildlife. And I had barely begun on the countless human stories and history intertwined in my nondescript neighbourhood.Â
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12:59
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12:59
Mushrooms
I began today’s grid square outside the Duke of Wellington pub, which dated from 1516, two and a half centuries before Old Nosey was born. I thought about all the brawls and laughs it had seen, and the tall tales told by 500 years of drinkers. I pondered also when they’d installed a petanque court in the garden, a game surely more suited to Napoleon than Wellington. The Duke of Wellington was one of Britain’s greatest military heroes, as well as a Prime Minister. Although he was born way back in 1769, he lived long enough to have his photograph taken, which is impressive considering he was involved in sixty battles. And he is also a legend in the very diverse worlds of rubber boots and beef cooked in pastry.Â
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10:44
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10:44
Legacy
It was a morning of fresh sunshine and a chilly breeze, that day defined in The Meaning of Liff as ‘Brithdir – The first day of the winter on which your breath condenses in the air.’ There had been the first faint frost as I pedalled out this morning, pulling on thick gloves and feeling the pinch of cold on my nose. The year was drawing down. The season’s early fieldfares flew over the fields, a flight pattern of several wing beats, then a quick glide, eager to forage on the abundant haw- thorn berries. Fieldfares look like thrushes but stand taller, move in big hops, and spend the winter in flocks of hundreds. Reading about fieldfares led me down a Twitter rabbit hole via the #vismig hashtag, of which I’d never heard. Visible migration (which I’d never heard of either) is the ‘visible’ migration of birds and butterflies during daylight. Many other species migrate at night (#nocmig), which is harder to monitor unless flocks reach the coast at dawn, an event known as ‘falls’. We learnt a lot about nocturnal migrations when radar was invented in the First World War. All those birds could now be observed for the first time, showing up on radar screens as ‘phantoms’ or ‘angels’ flying through the dark skies in silent flocks. I climbed a steep hillside to enjoy a misty, pale view westwards over miles of woodland and villages. I rested on a bench, poured a cup of coffee from my flask, and gazed out over a landscape that felt far more like home than it had done twelve months ago.Â
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11:11
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Conkers
As autumn approached, I was particularly looking forward to find- ing conkers. Horse chestnut trees and their appealing, polished seeds are a surefire declaration of the season. The trees were introduced into Britain from the Balkans in the 16th century. They’re not common in wild woodland, but are staples of towns, parks and villages. Insects gorge on their flamboyant candelabra flowers, and caterpillars feast on the leaves. Blue tits enjoy the caterpillars, and deer eat the conkers. And me? I hoard them.Â
Do you yearn to connect with wildness and natural beauty more often?
Could your neighbourhood become a source of wonder and discovery and change the way you see the world?
Have you ever felt the call of adventure, only to realise that sometimes the most remarkable journeys unfold close to home?
After years of challenging expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year exploring the small map around his own home.
Can this unassuming landscape, marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads, hold any surprises for the world traveller or satisfy his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration?
Buy the book! www.alastairhumphreys.com/local
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