There is that same, dizzying flow of stories – rich, baffling and mysterious – that I experienced walking the marshes. It takes the form of sequential diary entries over a span of eight years. My experience in London sprung to mind when I read Kevin Boniface’s Round About Town, a portrait of Huddersfield as seen by a postman doing his daily rounds. And as with studying the physical world, the closer you look at objects, the weirder they tend to become. When you are out and about, moving through a landscape every day, you notice things which others might ignore in their haste, or because they’re too deep in conversation. Daily, consistent walking for five years allowed me to harvest enough experiences that, when condensed into my book, Marshland, brought out the richness and intricacies of the marshes that a few occasional visits wouldn’t achieve. To see patterns in those things left scattered – the drug paraphernalia, the remnants of fox kills, abandoned sleeping bags, lost shoes and fly-tipped office equipment.

I saw the marshes in every season, in multiple shades of light, in variances in temperature and texture, under every kind of sky, affected by every kind of weather.įive years of walking the same place allowed me enough time to gather images, stories and impressions. This permitted me a deeply layered, nuanced view of the place. It meant that I got to experience the same patch of landscape almost every day on my dog walks.

When I lived beside Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes, I was privileged to be a freelance writer who could work from home. IMAGES: Kevin Boniface from Round About Town Rees reviewing Round About Town, by Kevin Boniface, Uniformbooks 2018

Marshland by Gareth E. Rees