I set out to mark Terminalia, Festival of Terminus, Roman god of borders and boundaries. I had missed the actual day of 23rd Feb due to not being able to get time off work. So was not able to participate in any of the events of the Terminalia Festival of Psychogeography, nor carry out any sort of significant perambulation on the actual date.
Last year I did a walk along and about the A14, in the zone between the Histon and Milton fly-overs and the northern extremity of Cambridge city boundary. I never got around to writing the blog, but did do a live twitter feed. I was glad to have been followed by a handful of real people as well as an A14 bot account. The latter appeared to function as a traffic update service. Any hashtagged mention of A14 in a tweet prompted an almost instant retweet. If the walk had served no other purpose, disrupting traffic updates with notes and pictures of my observations of the peripheral environment that surrounded the dual carriageway felt oddly satisfying.
One of those observations was a confluence of borders and boundaries. It was located at the very limits of the North Eastern part of County Parish Boundary at the point where it encompasses the meeting point of the 13th Public Drain, the 1st Public Drain (or at least an offshoot thereof) and the railway line. Here, the county boundary follows the course of the 13th Public Drain West to East for a short section until it intersects with the 1st and aligns with its route back South across the A14. The hum of the A14 could be heard or maybe the right word is felt from the spot as I stood at the confluence. On that day, the direction of the wind was such that another hum, emanating from the Cambridge Water Treatment Works the other side of the A14, permeated the air This added another important, if slightly unpleasant, dimension to the feel of the small zone around the conjunction.
This year I set off for a walk on Saturday 25th February, a couple of days late. I had no real thought as to where I might go and had allowed myself to drift. On passing the former Hopbine Pub, the building currently squatted by the Cambridge Community Food Hub, I saw the first 'Nigel' of the day. The tag, while not obviously anything connected to borders and boundaries, marked a point between aimlessness and a more decisive 'plan'. I decided to head back to the confluence of the 13th and 1st public drains.
Having crossed Midsummer Common and the River Cam, I walked the length of Milton Road, a key arterial road joining the city to the A14. The initial stage was uneventful. It was impossible to carry on past the shops that make up the parade opposite the Portland Arms. Roadworks blocked my path. This stretch is seemingly as yet untroubled by neither the creeping gentrification nor clone town uniformity that has taken hold in other parts of the City.
It wasn't long until I reached the second row of shops beyond the next roundabout. Here I was immediately confronted with a notice protesting about the proposed congestion charge. This scheme, devised by the Greater Cambridge Partnership, is currently at the post consultation analysis stage, the results may well be out by the time you read this. Unsurprisingly the idea has divided opinion among the population of 'Greater Cambridge', the area that combines both Cambridge City Council and South Cambs District Council territories. It feels like a repeat of the arguments and division caused by the proposed closure of Mill Road Bridge. The similarity between these two debates makes sense given that the congestion charge is part of a wider strategy that includes low traffic neighbourhoods, new cycle infrastructure, encouragement of active travel and less car use. Better public transport is also promised in the form of more buses.
The sign opposing the charge was placed outside Chesterton Carpets, a long established independent business of the sort rapidly disappearing. Following the Mill Road Bridge debacle, which was part of a move towards an ever more sanitised 'vision' of Mill Road catering to the luxury and artisan end of the market, I couldn't help wonder how long it would be before areas like Milton Road went the same way. Chesterton Carpets or the Viking Chip Shop no doubt are not right sort of independent shops to satisfy the requirements of the 'visionaries'.
The sign took on the meaning of a temporal boundary between the past and the future. This small stretch of shops, much of which is housed in a classic brown brick block, felt like it was in danger of disappearing in its current form. I had a disturbing vision of a beige and glass 'spreadsheet architecture' replacement in the near future.
The day after the walk, there was a protest march and rally against the congestion charge. Among those opposing the scheme, some 'arguments' soon crept in from the more outlandish and paranoid end of the spectrum. Among conspiracy theory types, the urban planning concept of the '15 minute city' is being presented as a government plan to prevent people travelling anywhere beyond a 15 minute walk of their homes. Local social media commentators reported that Piers Corbyn, who is associated with this sort of thing, had attended the rally in Cambridge. It is clear that among those arguing against the charge there are a minority who have crossed metaphorical border. One that sits between a set of coherent and rational objections about the charge and the sort of flat out paranoia brought on by misinformation via you tube videos viewed by people 'doing their own research'.
The 15 minute city concept is undoubtedly flawed, like all utopian ideas. It is hard to see how it can possibly be provided to equally benefit the whole population across such a varied area as 'Greater Cambridge' let alone nationally or internationally. If the Greater Cambridge Partnership could pull off enabling everyone in the area to be able to work, shop, go to the pub, dentist and doctor by with no significant travel involved then that would be great. But its hard to imagine that in reality the current plans will do anything but exacerbate marginalisation, with those living outside the zone having to endure just as painful commute as ever they have. The void between the privileged city residents and those marginalised on the periphery is certain to grow. Included in the the peripheral population are those physically living in the more remote zones of Greater Cambridge (and beyond) who will still have little choice but to drive to Cambridge, having been priced out of the City. Also included are those living in the city on low incomes, the elderly, disabled and other marginalised groups. Of the increasingly few long term residents at the more working class end of the social spectrum, many feel like they are being pushed out or feel they no longer belong. Those that remain are increasingly invisible as the spaces they occupy are replaced by more clone businesses, high end shops and eateries, life sciences campuses and utterly unaffordable housing.
Works were ongoing on Milton road itself, connected to the new 'vision' of the city. New cycle infrastructure was in the stages of being installed. Traffic cones and other paraphernalia were abundant along the approach to the next major intersection at the Golden Hind pub. Before I reached the Golden Hind, I passed the green topped tower of St.Georges Church in Chesterton, looming behind the houses. This reminded me that Milton Road sliced between Chesterton to the South East East and Arbury to the North West, forming a border itself. It had featured in a walk I did a couple of years ago which was another belated Terminalia excursion concerning boundaries, borders and barriers in and around Chesterton.
The Golden Hind pub marked another threshold, beyond which was a zone much more industrial. The pub, a 1930s tolly folly, is the sort of building that could not be imagined today if somebody decided to construct a new pub (an unlikely event in itself). The building belongs to a past age of ribbon development, roadhouses and no drink driving laws. The green top of the clock tower is a twin with the tower of St. Georges. The buildings both date from the 1930s and both stand as beacons projected from that time. Both being of significant stature, they seem to represent two opposite but interrelated sides of the same coin. Church or pub may be a polar opposite choice about where to seek refuge and commune. But at least in their physical forms, these two buildings seemed to compliment each other and represent major nodes firmly holding Miton Road's 1930s ribbon development identity in place. It is hard to imagine either building ever not being there. The Golden Hind also has a counterpart in Ipswich, another Tolly Folly of the same name. I passed it during my Ipswich Town Map walk a few years back. The Milton Road Golden Hind emanates an Ipswichian atmosphere, an avatar providing a portal back to the environs of the Suffolk County Town where most of the rest of the remaining tolly follies reside.
Just beyond the Golden Hind, across the street, the pathway submerges and goes under a turn off in the road. This underpass marks the transition into the more industrial zone that features various business parks and industrial sites and most notably, the Cambridge Waste Water Treatment Plant to the East and to the West the Science Park. The Eastern side features probably some of the most edgelandic, marginal space within the City boundary. Much of it is inaccessible. Most of the rest of it is rarely visited by people who don't work there.
Under the bridge, a green utilities box featured a painted hand with an eye in the centre of the palm. This I assumed might be a Hamsa, a symbol of divine protection against the evil eye. I thought what lay beyond the underpass was probably benign, but maybe this was a symbol of protection or even welcome when crossing the threshold into the next zone. Another meaning of this symbol relates to the Eye of Horus. Something to do with the eye of consciousness being inescapable. The zone beyond was certainly more festooned with more CCTV cameras than I'd seen up until now. But my own consciousness became enhanced around this point of the walk. I had been walking for a while and by now had reached the point where the pace was automatic, steady and metronomic.
I passed the Cambridge Business Park, notable for being inhabited by a building used by BBC local radio after it left Betjeman House off Hills Road. The move from a more central location, near the Station, botanic gardens and the Flying Pig Pub, was made well in advance of that site being redeveloped (it still hasn't been). Until recently, the new location was also used as a TV studio where the 'Look East (West) regional news programme used to be made. In December last year, the Western outpost was axed and instead of having two versions of Look East , there is now only one that is made in Norwich. The arbitrary boundary between the East and West of the region has been removed as far as BBC Regional TV news is concerned. Anglia TV did the same in 2009. The East-West division that meant Cambridge's Regional News items included reports from places like Corby, Milton Keynes and Northampton. Places that were to my mind more East Midlands than East Anglia. They felt far flung and had me wondering if something was wrong with the television signal. Cambridge had for years suffered a televisual cut off from Ipswich and Norwich. These two places are the county capitals of Suffolk and Norfolk respectively, the two counties that are the most East Anglian, some would say are East Anglia. Whether Cambridgeshire is part of East Anglia is subject to debate,which is maybe why it was pushed to the West of the region by those in charge of regional TV in Norwich. It occupies a place on the boundary, in a sort of no mans land as far as its Regional television identity is concerned. It is only due to cut backs that it has been brought back into the realm of the Anglia Knight.
At this spot, I realised I was not far away from the (former) studios of 'That's Cambridge TV', located adjacent to the Cambridge Water Treatment Works. The station used to broadcast local news actually from the confines of the City, not the Region, at least to begin with. The programme was peripheral in every sense, from the location of the studio it came from to the whole presentation, which was from just beyond the margins of what might be termed 'professional broadcasting'. The anchor man, Jeremy Wilson, was someone who during his short tenure of a year and two months, became a sort of iconic figure. His delivery and interview style was strangely robotic. I wondered if he might in fact be a prototype cyborg made at the science park across the road. The guests who appeared to be interviewed by Jeremy were usually of the most mundane variety: local councillors, school children or people undertaking some sort of good cause or charity activity . Other co-presenters came and went, sometimes reporting on location, let loose from base at Cowley Road to some of Cambridge's more peripheral areas. One woman, whose presenting style could only be described as 'sub-Wilsonian', was often banished to the streets to report on violent incidents in Chesterton and Arbury. She seemed unperturbed and was possibly convinced a glittering career in TV journalism awaited. I've seen nothing more of her nor Jeremy Wilson since he left the programme.
Soon after, That's TV Cambridge became amalgamated with other local 'That's TV' branches, notably Norwich. Now it has devolved further and we have West Anglia That's TV. This covers places as far flung as Yaxley and Whittlesey and like the BBCs move to pan Regionalism, is undoubtedly the result of cost cutting. This is evidenced by the programming sinking to such low levels that it seems to broadcast endless repeats of the Benny hill Show, a programme I had imagined would probably not be considered broadcastable in the 2020s. This newer version of That's TV may or may not still come from Cowley Road Studio. This information is as elusive as the current activities or whereabouts of its former presenter.The station may well now be run fully by computers.
The next notable point, not far along from the business park entrance was the appearance of the First Public Drain, emerging from a bifurcated concrete culvert having crossed Milton Road and Science Park beyond. The graffitied concrete impressively marks this conjunction, although I couldn't figure out why it was split in two. As far as I know (and according to my map) there is only one drain.
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The spot also marked the junction with Cowley Road, which runs parallel with the Drain and is the main route into the zone that contains the Cambridge Water Treatment Plant to the North and the business park and Cambridge North Station to the South. An impressive display adverts for businesses located on the Cowley Road industrial estate festooned the fence opposite from where I was standing. It was refreshing to see advertising with no reference to celebrities or any over the top attempt at 'brand identity'. This was straightforward honest stuff that could only exist at the periphery, where central notions of things like 'brand narrative' and other advertising industry pretentions carry little store.
The path ahead towards the A14 was straight and long, stretching alongside The Western extremity of the Water Treatment Works. Much of the side was hidden, fully or partially behind the blackthorn bushes that proliferated in front of the security fence.
I passed some dwellings that sat the other side of the barbed wire fence, a row of three or four houses that had all the signs of being occupied other than any evidence of actual people. I guess these were where workers or security people lived. Further along, as I walked up the bridge that crosses the A14, to my left was a single dwelling in what looked like its own grounds (I couldn't work out if these were still part of the Sewage Works site of separate).I sumised that this must be the most peripheral location for a house I had encountered within the City boundary, sandwiched between the Sewage Works, the A14 and the Jane Coston Cycle Bridge. Again there was little sign of anyone at home. I wondered who lived in the mysterious dwelling, partially hidden behind scraggy trees and bushes; the last house on the left.
On my descent into the edges of the village of Milton on the other side of the bridge, to my right was a some kind of aggregates works, while on the other, the all to familiar spire of a Tesco supermarket, located in an expansive shoppers car park with a petrol station. Both sites were typical of the sort of peripheral zone I was travelling through, although as I observed them they felt anything but mundane. The spire had a quality that I can only describe as sinister, mixed with a numbing futility. The sandy yard, with its tractors and cement mixers on the other hand brought to mind the sort of construction sites we used to play on as kids in the 1980s, in the interim period before a piece of land was turned into an unspectacular development of Barret houses. The wet weather added a sort of dull Sunday afternoon feel to the atmosphere that was emanating from the site.
I soon found myself entering the Cambridge Road industrial estate, where a sign featured a simple graphic map of the few roads contained within and a list of the various concerns that were located on the site.
I passed a concrete GPO post, which appeared to be wearing a toupee of moss. These posts are usually found marking the route of underground telecommunications lines, from the period when the General Post Office ran what become British Telecom. The post, while a curious object in its own right, was a significant border marker. It marked not just the route of a communications route, but also sat at on the City boundary.
The city boundary was also marked by the barrier of hawthorn, bramble and other peripheral flora that ran alongside the road and partially hid a strip of no-mans land that acted as a buffer with the A14 which was elevated above it. The vegetative barrier was festooned with plastic bottles and other litter. The volume of the detritus increased the further down the road as I walked. The most significant object among it was a dumped armchair, one of several objects too big to have come from car windows on the A14.
I looked back as I walked and could see the green hoppers from the aggregate site, beyond the air conditioning unit festooned industrial building I had just past. At the exact same spot on my return, something crossed my path. It resembled in my minds eye a black hound of some kind, but could just have been a muntjac. I had been walking for long enough now for some fanciful ideas to enter my head. That's what I told myself. The road was all but deserted, on a midweek lunchtime, and by the time I walked back from the dead end I found at the bottom it had developed a slightly menacing air.
I followed the drain towards the confluence. It was crossed by a series of wooden foot bridges, helpfully signposted. This was just as well since the drain was devoid of water at the early stages, and without these markers would have easily been missed. Information online about the drain itself mirrored the lack of water, there was little to be found. I am not certain if it is a man made drain, which is not unlikely given its location in land in what would have been a mixture of farmland and semi-industrial use. But it wasn't entirely straight along it's course, which was quite long for a man made drain. Maybe it was a natural phenomena, just not deemed significant enough to be given a proper name. Apart from this and the 1st public drain I haven't been able to find any others on the map, which begs the question what happened to the others? Was there ever a 12th public drain? The number 13 is of course considered unluck by some and may have special properties. The 13th public drain was a significant boundary marker, not just at the confluence ahead, but also in its route which mimicked the A14, City Boundary and A14, forming another boundary marker at the Northern extremity of the City. The city Boundary could be changed by the whims of Government, but the A14 and the drain are physical barriers, acting as a restraint on the City, keeping it separate from the land beyond. At least for now. Its not unlikely the physical city will extend its reach beyond these in time, as it encroaches its reach. It already has the surrounding area in its hostage like orbit, as the home counties (and Cambridge itself) are trapped in the gravitational field of London.
The walk felt almost complete. It was my offering to Terminus. I headed towards the A14, to see if I could follow it and the City Boundary from the park back to the industrial estate, to finalise the proceedings
