Thirty minutes’ walk from me is the earliest part of my town that I know of. Prittlewell Camp, sometimes known as The Look Out, is a hill fort dating back to around the 8th Century BCE. I walk for thirty minutes every day, but in the other direction. The weight of the town has moved, over 2800 years. In the 7th Century CE, Prittlewell proper was a Saxon settlement and the seat of kings - a recently-discovered Saxon burial ground has become known as the last resting place of “The King Of Bling,” for all his glittering grave goods. Prittlewell, today, is basically a bunch of supermarkets and a terrible little train station.

The Prittle Brook, which has had people living by it since the Stone Age, rises in Thundersley, the village and one-time Viking settlement where I grew up. It follows me through the West Wood into Southend, where I now live, before striking out for Sutton and Stambridge and finally the river Roach and all its creeks and nesses.

For thirty minutes a day, I run with the river, away from deep time into whatever future tides are waiting.

On the shelf: SAM DUNN IS DEAD, Bruno Corra (UK) (US)