We all know what it feels like to be in a city: tarmac and concrete beneath us; buildings, often tall and metallic, on either side; the constant hum of traffic. An unceasing human maelstrom which, after a while of living within it, starts to seem like your entire world or the entirety of human existence. Yet I also know what it feels like to. be in the countryside: quiet, mellow lanes with vast patchworks of fields either side; blue skies and birdsong overhead; the occasional farmhouse, tractor, or fellow explorer. These two terrains are vastly different: one is modern, vibrant and dynamic, but the other might not have changed in centuries. So where does one end and the other begin? Where, exactly, is the threshold between a city and the countryside?

This is a question which I currently find very interesting. After so long living in a vast, wealthy city, can I find my way out of it? Of course, if I wanted to, I know I could just hop onto a train and get out of London within minutes, but that isn’t really the point. After so many years trundling around the city, through it’s parks and along it’s great river, I now want to find the point where the city ends and the country begins: where the urban landscape I’m now so used to gives way to the rural landscape of my childhood. I think that is what I was looking for yesterday, and for a fleeting moment I think I found it. Some time into my trundle yesterday afternoon, after leaving Orpington and navigating my way through increasingly labyrinthine streets I found myself trundling along quite a main road. It still had a good, well maintained pavement, but the buildings and infrastructure on either side had given way to open fields. I could even smell horse or cattle poo! I could still hear traffic, but for a few minutes it reminded me of the Cheshire countryside I used to know as a child.

Of course, I didn’t go far before I began to fret about getting home, but I think it’s safe to say that I caught a glimpse of the interesting liminal space I was looking for. That fascinating spot where the built-up concrete sprawl gives way to green. If the countryside is a place of peace, calm and quiet, and the city is a place of vibrant unceasing chaos, then what is the space in between? A nether-world between industrial and rural, modern and archaic, which straddles them both.