I grew up in North Kent, in a village called Swanscombe. This sits mid-way between Dartford and Gravesend. It was a heavily industrialized region, with the main industry being Cement. I grew up in the shadow of a tall cement factory chimney, which belched cement ash and smoke into the air. I think this was a contributing factor to my childhood athsma.

If you look at a map of SE England and look for the River Thames, you will see a distinct upward "kink" in the river about halfway between London and the estuary itself. This is Swanscombe Marsh and the village I grew up in sits on chalk cliffs to the south.

The cement factories were there because of the chalk. As a result, the countryside around Swanscombe was scarred by chalk quarries. Behind the house I grew up in was a large playing field which was originally a chalk pit, but was filled in with topsoil carried from a more recent quarry when I was about 2 years old.

Next to Swanscombe, heading out from London is another village called Northfleet. Between the two villages was a mile wide series of scars and wasteland, the remains of previous chalk pits from the preceding 100 years. Over time the chalk pits and become overgrown and were an exciting adventure playground for kids.

When I look at the way children are "bubble-wrapped" nowadays by safety precautions, I sometimes wonder how we ever survived as kids in what would now be classed as a deadly and hazardous environment! To us it just meant swinging on creepers over a 100ft vertical drop and other frankly (from an adult perspective) terrifying pastimes! Cuts and bruises and the occasional broken bone were all part of the rough and tumble of adventures.

As I grew a bit older, I grew a bit more solitary and when I was 13 we got a replacement dog for the original Snowy who had died 2 years before. This new Snowy and I used to spend hours at the weekends walking all over the region, from the marshes in the north to the countryside to the south beyond the A2 motorway. One of our most frequent locations however was the overgrown waste ground and disused quarries between Swanscombe and Northfleet.

The disused quarries were being partly filled in with waste gypsum from the cement factories and transported topsoil from newer quarries to the SW of Swanscombe which were gradually eating away at Swanscombe Woods. (I will write more about the Woods and the huge family picnics we used to have there another time.)

This region was a wonderland for a boy and his dog to explore and much about in. There were a series of allotments on one area of reclaimed soil an further down near the road tunnel under the main London-Gravesend railways line was a small river which had given its name to several local landmarks. Further south, near the A2 was a location called Springhead, which was the source of this river. Nearby was a village called Southfleet and of course here at the more northerly end was Northfleet. This river was called the Ebbsfleet.

Very few people used or knew of that name. In recent years, however, it has become more widely known as a major station on the brand new high-speed rail link from the Channel Tunnel to St Pancras!

This swathe of waste ground and derelict pits was a perfect route to allow the rail link to cross the heavily built up strip that borders North Kent along the Thames. The only things of value in this region was a sports ground and pavilion owned by the Blue Circle Cement Works and the allotments. It is the nature of allotments to be sacrificed whenever buildings are needed.

I left Swanscombe 28 years ago and have been back a few times. The village itself has hardly changed, although it seems to have shrunk!!!! The biggest changes have been the closing of the cement factory and the demolition of the smoking chimney, the total destruction of Swanscombe Woods and the Ebbsfleet development. Oh yes and I almost forgot the huge shopping mall called Bluewater.

Oh and you can see the tree grown from a sapling I planted in "Plant a tree in '73" year on Google Earth now!

See it here (its the one in the middle!)
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.448305,0.307684&spn=0.000547,0.001195&t=h&z=20&om=1

Here is Google Earth's view of Swanscombe and Ebbsfleet:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.444432,0.314569&spn=0.017493,0.038238&t=h&z=15&om=1