An extract from 'Down and out in London and Essex 'Getting to 'The Woods'

Sandylay Wood, Great Leigh, Essex.

Around Great Leighs there were several places for a young boy to go get his kicks, and with the majority of the young generation being pre teen Great Leighs was a relatively untarnished place for a kid to grow up, it was certainly not an affluent place to live, its just the class difference was small, small enough for family’s not to have envy for each others property, everyones parents seemed to work hard and to just have enough, not enough as the family on the edge of the village with the swimming people but enough for the village not to harbour any need for more than one policeman.

One such place was 'The Woods'. The Woods so called for the area being densely populated with trees much like a small forest and could only be accessed one of two ways.

1. Over the barb wire and across the field next to the school that contained 'The Bull'
2. Across the ditch, through a different field then across 'The Stream'.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   At the age of 11 one isn’t so bothered with imaginative names for places rather what happens at those places. There was also an area we congregated to named 'The Tree' which was a huge fallen down Oak but the activities there were far more uninteresting than anything that went on in 'The Woods'.
   In regards to getting to 'The Woods', choice 1 was more or less out of the question because out running 'The Bull' was no goer. No one had ever been hurt by 'The Bull' and it was wise to keep that statistic a none fluctuating figure. So it was always choice 2 (unless 'The Bull' happened to not be around) that we would take. Going via 'The stream' was not a cop out by all means, the stream ran the length of the only accessible field from our side of the village to the woods, it was not a fast flowing brook and 90% of the year didn't even have much in the part of water running through it. It would have been more accurate of us to describe it as 'The Bog', it was really just a long stretch of really sinky mud. Many an intrepid traveller had lost a Reebok Classic in 'The Stream'. It takes a fair old jump to cross it and if you trip up, thats it your knee deep in muddy stream and coming home with crap caked tracky b's, a trip to Wimpy at the weekend with mum it does not make.