The world as a text adventure.

What’s new

2 November 2026

• feedback now asks, after your words, for an email address if you would like a reply. You can skip it, and the address is shown with everything else before anything is sent.
• Type draw my walk to see the line you have walked, drawn plainly, north up, and save it as a picture. Your walks are kept in your browser, so draw all my walks draws every one together.
• About now says where you can support the walk, on Ko-fi, if you would like to. The walk stays free.
• Type feedback to tell us what you found: a bug, an idea or a comment, in your own words. You see everything that would be sent before you say yes, and nothing is sent unless you do.
• Parks, woods, lakes and large buildings mapped as areas are now passed and named on the walk, and Guide tells more of what the map says of things: the words on them, their other names, a post box's cypher, a tree's species, a public footpath, the counties either side of a boundary stone. Over a thousand places are told afresh.

1 November 2026

• The whole of Croydon is open: Selsdon, Sanderstead, New Addington, Purley, Kenley and Coulsdon join the walk, every one of the borough’s twenty areas, some 14,400 places.
• A circle you are walking is kept when you save, so a page closed halfway round goes on round the same circle.
• Quiet streets whose only record was an old postcode are told plainly, rather than at length over one line of hearsay.
• The front page can offer a mailing list: its sign-up form opens only when you press for it, and nothing is sent before.
• look beyond tells of the Roman roads, settlements and forts near Croydon: the road from London towards Brighton, the settlement at Croydon itself, Noviomagus at West Wickham.

31 October 2026

• Croydon opened area by area: Shirley, Fairfield (from East Croydon), Woodside, Selhurst, South Norwood, Park Hill & Whitgift, Broad Green, Bensham Manor, Thornton Heath, South Croydon, Waddon, Crystal Palace & Upper Norwood and Norbury.
• Begin a walk wherever you like: in any open area, at a place or street by its name, at a postcode, at a latitude and longitude, or anywhere by chance.
• place a glass sets a circle down where you stand: walk it, and it keeps a record of what you met.
• Works and closures on the roads are told as you reach them, and news gives the day’s headlines that name the place.
• With more than two areas open, the start offers them behind one choice rather than a wall of buttons.
• A food hygiene rating still awaiting inspection is said in words, and no longer given the inspectors’ placeholder date of 1901.
• About carries a word of warning: the data may be out of date or wrong, and is not for directions or safety.
• A privacy page says what stays in your browser and what is sent, and to whom.

That is the latest; all the changes are in the changelog.

Hear what’s new

Now and then, a letter when the walk grows. The form opens here when you press; nothing is sent to the list before you do.

Sign up

How it works

The places are built from OpenStreetMap and public records: food hygiene ratings, planning applications, house sales, listed buildings, bus stops.

Nothing is made up. Where the data is wrong or missing, the game says so as it stands. A bank whose sign was recorded as “est Bank” is called “est Bank”.

Some of it is live: the buses due at a stop, today’s weather, the nearest traffic camera.

Commands

• n se back
• drift
• start anywhere
• place a glass
• draw my walk
• look examine explore
• route to a street or a place
• gps on
• look up use the camera
• news
• colour green
• save restore help
• feedback

Start in Addiscombe