DURING MY CHILDHOOD in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I used to walk on London’s Hampstead Heath with my parents. Usually, we left our home in Hampstead Garden Suburb and walked south across the manicured, grassy fields of Hampstead Heath Extension. Sometimes, we went further, crossing Wildwood Road and entering the wilder, hillier, wooded part of the Heath until we reached the Spaniards Road.

The part of the heath that extends between Wildwood and Spaniards Roads contains a few hollows in which there are bogs. Back in my childhood, there used to be signs posted within these boggy hollows. They read:

“DANGER SWAMPY GROUND”

My mother, who was always a little too anxious about her children’s safety, drilled it into my sibling and me that we should never stray close to these swampy depression. She warned us that should we enter them, we would be sucked down below the surface, and lost forever, and fatally. Whenever I saw these signs, I used to want to hurry away from them.

Today, 10 June 2026, almost 60 years later, a friend of ours took us to see the swamps, which are exactly where I remember seeing them so many decades earlier. I believe that I had not seen them since the 1960s. To my great disappointment, the warning signs were no longer there. However, the bogs or swamps have become beautiful with leafy plants and trees growing in them. Seeing them after such a long interval reminded me of my childhood, but my fear of them seems to have evaporated.