Walk the planks in Chelmsford, 2018

When you travel to the Essex Record Office for the first time, you have to make sense of all those rivers when coming from the city centre on foot.

I ended up on King’s Head Walk with a bridge ahead to get you across to the Record Office. What you notice is that when bicycles cross they make quite a racket as it’s planked and the planks seem to be quite loose. Of course when I got to the bridge there wasn’t a bike in sight or they were peeling off through a car park so, just had to wait.

You hear aircraft, first of all, loud, these are 2 single engine planes exactly the same in tandem followed by a third exactly the same, someone crosses on foot, building work goes on and finally 2 bikes cross close together.

Not a great recording, it’s not as “wide” as it actually sounded, I used my bag as a support and to try and make a wind shield, I also put it down on the floor to get it nearer to the sound but the planks are so mobile the bag jumps up and down and you get a bit of rustle.

The Record Office people are only a little way away, I don’t know if any of them travel by foot, bike or cross that bridge (which I don’t know the name of) but they might be able to find 10 minutes or so to pop out one lunchtime to do it properly.