please empty your brain below |
I discovered another bit of the Thames Chase forest earlier this year at Cranham, when walking from Upminster to Bulphan Fen, London's eastern extremity - as you know DG - and on to Basildon. My OS Explorer map - only a few years old but now out-of-date - didn't have this detail at all. I managed to find a bridge under the M25 and thought I'd managed to cut a good mile or so off my walk, only to run up against a big perimeter fence that stopped me leaving the forest. So it was back to Cranham to find another way round, silently cursing the planners despite all their good work.
|
Re the swastika; the symbol was commonly used, in various parts of Europe, as a symbol of "modernity" and "progress" in the early 20th century, quite apart from the Indian "mystical" side (and I have some books of Kipling, published around 1910, in England, liberally decorated with swastikas, perhaps sort of combining the two): it was a symbol of the nascent (and decidedly non-nazi) air forces of several European countries in the 1920s and 30s (off the top of my head: Latvia and Finland, but surely others too)...
I must pick you up on saying the benches at Upminster Bridge are unique, though. They aren't (or, at least, were't): Elm Park, which opened at about the same time, has or had a set too. I've done a fair bit of that walk - underrated beauty it certainly is, for quite a way. |
TridentScan Privacy Policy | |