IN WHICH I
  • ... Write
  • ... Explain

Set a microadventure challenge

31/12/2014

8 Comments

 
Inspired by Alastair Humphreys, my partner and I are aiming to make 2015 a year of microadventure. We challenge you to join us!
Landscape and blue sky

What is a microadventure?

While many people think of “adventure” as a big-budget, multi-week trek across an icy desert, up enormous mountains, over continents or through dense jungles (to me it seems rooted in an unsavoury history of empire expansion and colonialism), a “microadventure” is an out-of-the-ordinary activity that happens in a sliver of the time, on a much smaller budget, much closer to home. Like this!

The cynic in me says that “microadventure” is simply a clever rebranding of what used to be called “outdoor activities” and “overnight trips”. The idealist in me is totally won over by the idea that adventure is a state of mind, and you can have one even when you don’t have much time, money or experience. What a great idea!

Meet On A Hill: An Evening Out With Friends from Alastair Humphreys on Vimeo.

How long is a microadventure?

The most widely marketed microadventure, pitched to city dwellers and workers as a “5 to 9” break between office hours, runs as shown in the video above:
  1. Get on a train/cycle to the countryside after work
  2. Climb a hill and sleep under the stars
  3. Return in time for work the next morning
It’s a beguiling thought, isn’t it? But in my research I have seen everything from getting up two hours earlier than usual to undertaking a week-long cycle tour branded as microadventures, so the timescale is definitely flexible.

We are going to attempt Alastair Humphreys' "My Year of Microadventure" challenge of camping out once a month, but we’re also aiming to have a microadventure every week - and the length of those adventures will vary quite a bit. It might include having a picnic, spending an evening of wildlife spotting, performing in public, doing a multi-day walk, making something or going on an overnight break somewhere new.

How much does a microadventure cost?

The cheapest microadventures are free because they use only what you have to hand. Head out your door and walk (or scoot, ride, jog, cycle) somewhere new: done. However, most microadventures have a cost attached to them, mainly in the form of transport, food and kit. Over the year, I’ll be documenting how much everything costs, to see whether it is actually as cheap and cheerful as the microadventure proselytisers say.

A Journey on the Tube from Alastair Humphreys on Vimeo.

I challenge YOU to a year of microadventure

Yes, you! Here are three options.
  1. Do Alastair Humphreys' "My Year of Microadventure" challenge. That page has an outline of each month's challenge, a printable calendar, a Google calendar and a whole list of ideas for making your microadventures more fun, challenging and/or sociable. The basic microadventure boils down to: "Sleep outdoors. Don’t use a tent. Pack light. Plan simple. Seek wildness. Challenge yourself." Alastair outlines some common reasons/excuses for going on not going on microadventures and suggests examining those reasons/excuses by replacing "I can't" with "I choose not to" (e.g. "I choose not to climb a hill" instead of "I can't climb a hill", "I choose not to afford the time" instead of "I can't afford the time"). Now, while that can be a great motivation strategy for some people, I know that for many of us "I can't" really does mean "I can't", which is why . . .
  2. We’ve hooked up with a few friends from around the world for an informal monthly microadventure challenge. We'll try to make these adventures more accessible (physically, financially, geographically) and varied than the “sleep in a bivvy bag” style microadventures. You can choose to make them more or less challenging for yourself. It’ll work something like this: I’ll post the challenge here (or link to it), and you have until the end of the month to complete it. If you want, you can document it on your own web space (e.g. blog, gallery, website, social media) and pop a link in the comments of the challenge post. If this gains some momentum, I'll post a round-up linkspam at the end of the month. January's challenge is: spend time on top of a hill.
  3. Create your own microadventure challenge.  Lots of microadventure ideas are outdoorsy, but they don’t have to be. Some of the ideas my partner and I have come up with focus on food, creativity, sightseeing and learning. Just think of something you’ve been wanting to try, or try again. Check out the links below for some inspiration.

Microadventure inspiration

Need some ideas to kick start your year of microadventure? I am here to help!
  • Alastair Humphreys’ microadventures (subscribe to his blog, too)
  • These microadventure videos
  • National Trust’s 50 Things to do Before You’re 11 ¾
  • Tim Moss’ 100 Club
  • The Family Adventure Project
  • Popular Bucket List items (some of these are pretty iffy, you’ve been warned)
  • 100 family challenges video 
  • The #microadventure hashtag on Twitter
I would love to hear your ideas for microadventures! What are you planning?

Microadventure 3: Sleep on a Hill from Alastair Humphreys on Vimeo.

January challenge: spend time on top of a hill

I hope you've got this far and you're excited to do stuff! If you'd like to join us for a year of (more accessible) microadventure, this is your first challenge: spend time on top of a hill. You can hike or cycle for miles into the bush, highlands or backcountry to get there. Or you can take public transport. Or you can drive. You can sleep overnight and cook on a camp stove; or you can take some chips, feed the seagulls and enjoy the sunset. You can go alone; or you can take friends or family. You can fly a kite. You can swim in a tarn. You can meditate. The point is: it doesn't matter how you get there, how long you spend, or what you do at the top (as long as you're not damaging the environment/yourself/others) - just get out there! Remember to share your pics, links, experiences in the comments.

So, are you in?! Why? Why not? Leave a comment and we'll get started. Here's to a year of microadventure!

8 Comments

Report: Hastings Youth Awards

27/12/2014

0 Comments

 
The annual Hastings Youth Awards celebrates and showcases the achievements of young people in Hastings and St Leonards. This year’s ceremony, held in November, was attended by over 400 people.
Organised by Hastings Youth Council, the event recognised many inspirational, talented and hard working individuals and organisations in the area.

The Mayor of Hastings, Cllr. Bruce Dowling, gave a short introduction and presented awards to the winners. Leader of Hastings Borough Council, Cllr. Jeremy Birch, also gave words of encouragement.
Students with certificates
Students from Pestalozzi received awards.
Youth groups, schools, charities and community organisations were nominated for awards by members of the public, and winners included Respond Academy, aGender and Pestalozzi. Individual award recipients included two members of South East Movement, for victory in the Hastings Got Talent contest.

Tenzin Dophen, a Tibetan student who attends Sussex Coast College Hastings and is sponsored by Pestalozzi, was recognised for his work with the Students for a Free Tibet campaign. "It is very encouraging and motivational to be recognised in Hastings for our work to spread awareness about the plight of Tibetans living in Tibet,” he said. “I was really glad to see the support from the Hastings locals and also lots of cultures and talents represented. Together, we strive to create a better world through mutual understanding and respect amongst people from different backgrounds and cultures.” 

Exciting performances kept the audience entertained, with cheerleaders from South East Stars and poets from the Bangladeshi Association both enjoying the spotlight. Local band Watertight played during the intermission and closing acts.

Lauren Fry from HYA partner Sussex Coast College Hastings, said, “The Hastings Youth Awards is a great opportunity to celebrate the success, bravery and determination of the young people in our county and we are proud to be linked to such a prestigious awards evening.” Other partners for this year’s awards included Hastings and District Interfaith Forum, SPARK and Many Voices One Hastings.

This article first appeared as "Awards celebrate youth achievements" in in Hastings Independent, Issue 20, 5 December 2014, p4.

0 Comments

Sleep on a beach in winter

22/12/2014

12 Comments

 
On Saturday, we met a stranger from the internet and spent the night . . . sleeping on the beach for the winter solstice! Here's the story.
Microadventure

Before

It’s been two weeks since I fell headfirst in love with the idea of microadventures.

A story I was writing (for this course) prompted me to Google “bivvy bags”. This article was the first hit, and it linked to a fantastic run-down of bivvy bags available in the UK. That in turn took me to the Alpkit Hunka product listing, which says “If Mr Microadventure himself, Alastair Humphreys, hasn’t yet persuaded you of the wonders of the bivvy bag lifestyle…” - so I found myself back on the first website I visited, looking at microadventures.

Within a couple of days, I was completely immersed in the online world of microadventure, watching every video I could find, digging deeper and deeper into the search results, and reading my way through numerous microadventure (and adventure) blogs. I ordered the bivvy bags.

While I was waiting for my parcel to arrive, Alastair issued a microadventure challenge. Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I’d committed myself and my partner to sleeping outside on one of the longest nights of the year in the company of a stranger from Twitter.

Me in a bivvy bag
Testing out the bivvy bag during an afternoon nap.

A Winter Microadventure: Cycle to the Sea from Alastair Humphreys on Vimeo.

During

We met our microadventure buddy (I’ll call her Q) at an Italian restaurant and pored over an OS map of the area. We looked at hills, woods, trig points and fields, but ended up settling on our original idea: a trip to the seaside. After prosecco, pizza and hot chocolate, we drove off into the night.

Far across the water, houses shimmered with Christmas lights. Patches of yellow glow marked the location of towns over the horizon. We parked nearby and plunged into the dunes, finding a likely spot in a shallow dip of sand between the grass and shrubs. We unrolled our sleeping gear and rested on top of it for a while, staring up at the stars. I already knew Orion, rising to the east, but Q pointed out a few more constellations. We decided against pitching a tarp, brushed our teeth, stuffed our things into bin bags and jumped into bed.

I was prepared to lie awake for ages. The sand was not at all soft and my new inflatable foam pillow needed a fair bit of adjustment. But I was warm and full and the sound of the sea soon washed me to sleep.

I woke and slept and woke. The night was clear. Orion the Hunter strode across the heavens. Sea and sky bled into each other, stars becoming the lights of distant ships, blinking buoys becoming aeroplanes.

I slept and woke. My feet were cold despite two pairs of thick socks, my legs were cold despite thermal leggings and trousers, my fingers were cold. I battled with the drawcords on my sleeping bag and bivvy bag and pulled out my emergency supplies - a second jumper, gloves and a scarf (which I wrapped around my legs). I rubbed my feet against each other, got sand in my mouth trying to inflate my pillow a bit more, tossed and turned and counted my breath.

What was that? Something nudged my leg. It was only my partner’s feet. Before we’d set out, I’d read that people often feel more vulnerable in a bivvy bag than in a tent, but this wasn’t my experience. If there was a rustle, I could easily peep out of the bag to make sure it was just the wind.

From a strange dream, I woke to a light mist and the stars blinking between the clouds. I rolled onto my back and fine drizzle landed on my face. I decided I would get a better sleeping bag when money permitted. I’d bought mine for hostelling around Europe in the summer of 2005, and it was not up to the task of keeping someone warm in a bivvy bag in winter.

I dozed and woke and dozed. The first flock of seagulls flew over, squawking out their morning alarm. My partner and I left Q sleeping and went out onto the long, flat expanse of beach. In the distance, a dog walker with a head torch made a tiny pool of light on the dark sand. My stomach rumbled. We set up our camp stove, made instant porridge and hot drinks and watched the sky became lighter than the clouds.

It didn’t take long for the three of us to pack up, chatting about the night, about the pros and cons of our gear, about the sand that had inevitably managed to get into everything. We went into town for (second) breakfast and hot chocolate, then dropped Q off at the train station. When we got home, our bed had never looked so luxurious, warm and soft. We had a two hour nap.


Prosecco
Cheers!
Pizza
No camp cooking for us...
Wild camp in sand dunes
Our spot by the sea
Instant porridge
First breakfast
Pink clouds
Pink clouds at sunrise

After

I thought, “I’ve made it sound like I’m the kind of person who’d just go and do something like this.” Which is funny, because a few days ago I had a long list of worries about the outing. I wasn’t sure if these were normal worries. I mean, everyone is a bit concerned about the weather, being cold and not sleeping, but do they anticipate being ridiculed for bringing the wrong kind of stove? Do they worry that they’ll wee on their feet when they go to the toilet in the night or that the person they’re meeting will judge them for being pathetic and underprepared and soft? (Note my lack of concern about meeting a total stranger and going somewhere remote and out of sight to spend the night with them!)

But I addressed my worries: It’s likely you will be uncomfortable and you won’t sleep well. Is that really your biggest concern? Yes? And would that be a truly terrible disaster? No. You have permission to not be the toughest cookie in the microadventure jar - you can go home if it all gets too much. If you don’t get along with Q, you never have to see her again. And if you’re underprepared, well, you have to start somewhere. Yes, you’re inexperienced - that’s the point. You want to “step outside your comfort zone” and try something new! If you really, truly hate it, you can sell the bivvy bags: you might be poorer in money but you’ll be richer in experience.

But from the moment we walked into the restaurant and said hello to Q, I wasn’t worried at all. I just did it. And now, having done it, I am the kind of person that would sleep in a bivvy bag on the beach on the longest night of the year.

I guess that’s the thing about “comfort zones”. In most cases, we don’t step outside them - they simply expand with our experiences. And the thing about being “the kind of person who does that stuff” is that you usually don’t have to look, sound or dress in a particular way to become that kind of person - you just need to do the stuff.

A big thank you to Q and to Alastair for helping us make this happen. The winter solstice microadventure challenge is running until bedtime on Sunday 4 January. Are you up for it?

This microadventure cost £120 for two. It sounds expensive, but that includes two bivvy bags (£60), an inflatable pillow (£6.50) and a head torch (£10), which are obviously once-only purchases. It also includes dinner, snacks, breakfast, second breakfast, hot chocolates and petrol use.

12 Comments

Walk from Camber to Rye

16/12/2014

2 Comments

 
Deck chairs for hire (painted wall)
A walk from Camber to Rye along a beach, over sand dunes, up a tidal river and along an old tramway.
Camber Sands evokes visions of sunny days, bright beach towels, fluorescent buckets and spades, children’s faces smeared the colour of ice lollies and adults’ shoulders stained lurid pink with sunburn. Tucked into the elbow-crook of the coastline before it reaches out to Dungeness, Camber offers the only decent stretch of sandy beach for miles, and summer crowds flock here accordingly.

But on this bleak November morning, it is almost deserted. A handpainted advertisement for deck chair hire recalls summers past; a grey wind whips in off the sea. We rug up and wander to the water over the rippled sand, weaving a pattern with our footprints. Here, at low tide, the sea recedes for hundreds of metres. As the sand dries out it’s blown inland by the prevailing wind to join the Camber dune system.

We dawdle west along the beach, looking at shells, seaweed and tidewrack from across the Channel, then clamber up into the dunes. We follow rabbit trails through microclimates of sound: here, the hiss of the sea and the wind; there, the chatter of birds on the golf course; now, a bowl of silence and deep-rooted marram grass pointing to a quiet sky. These dunes are gradually accreting, getting bigger. We make the heroic five-metre climb to the highest point and survey the landscape. 

A light mist smudges out the bulks of Dungeness nuclear power station and the cliffs at Fairlight, but Rye is clearly visible, and the harbour arm at the mouth of the River Rother juts out into the sea, black against the silvery water. These dunes were used for military training in the Second World War, and a number of fortifications are still visible on golf-course, some gazing resolutely out at the small platoon of wind turbines across the marsh, others subsiding drunkenly into the shrubs, perhaps still celebrating armistice.

This is a simple walk: turn right on the beach at Camber, then right again at the river, and it’s almost impossible to lose your way to Rye. 

A little egret - dazzling white against the tidal mud on the riverbank - picks a fight with a herring gull and wins. A line of birders gazes at a murmuration swooping and bending above Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. Undistracted by avian life, a closely-supervised toddler heaves stones into the river and cackles.

Near the Harbour Master’s office, the path joins a sealed road running on a dismantled narrow-gauge railway through the golf course. The Rye & Camber Tramway opened in 1895 to carry golfers to their sport and closed to the public in 1939. The rails are still visible at some points, and the brightly painted shack behind the Harbour Master’s office is the old station. 

At high tide, the wharf at Rye Harbour across the river has the capacity to take ships up to 90 metres long and sees imports and exports ranging from stone to talc to wheat. Today, it is quiet. We pass a pillbox stuffed to the ceiling with rubbish bags. A robin chases a chaffinch. We join National Cycle Network Route 2 for the final stretch into town.

At Rye, we linger over a delicious and well-deserved hot chocolate at Knoops (mine is infused with lavender), then find a viewpoint to look back over the walk. It’s hard to imagine, but several hundred years ago our entire route would have been underwater. Medieval maps show that Rye was originally located on a bay called the Rye Camber - from which Camber takes its name. Knowing what I do about global warming and rising sea levels, I wonder how long it will be until it is covered in water once again.
Picture
On top of the dunes
Harbour Master's office
The old station
Old rail tracks
Pillbox and track

A shorter version of this article first appeared as "Walking the railroad from Camber to Rye" in the Battle Observer, Friday 28 November 2014, p34.

2 Comments

Review: Speaking Volumes

9/12/2014

0 Comments

 
A couple of months ago, I posted a report about the Speaking Volumes exhibition at Hastings Library. That long article was intended for the 'community' section of Hastings Independent, but did not make it into the paper. I re-wrote the piece as a shorter, more personal review for the 'arts' section, where it appeared in the following edition.

I'm always interested to see how people craft the same content into different formats (yeah, I'm a comms geek). Hopefully you're interested, too, or else this is an exercise in serious vanity posting! I wonder which version you prefer?
Article in Hastings Independent
I’m sitting in the window at the front of Hastings Library, staring at the rain, headphones on, deep in a good book. I’m not reading, but listening to a young man who, in 2012, got a call at work.

“I said, ‘No, it’s fine, you can tell me over the phone’ . . . I just wanted to crack on with my day . . . There was a pause and they said, ‘You are positive, you do have HIV.’ And I’m sat there at my desk thinking, You need to control this, there are people all around you, they’re your colleagues . . . For a split second you almost don’t think it’s actually happening, this phone call isn’t quite real.”

I am there with him on the precipice, imagining myself at my own desk, in my own workplace. How would I react? His narration makes me feel it in my gut, in my heart. This is not the strange word I vaguely misunderstood when I was a child in the 1980s, it’s not the academic papers I read at university, it’s not a poster in my doctor’s waiting room. This is someone just a few years younger than me, living and working somewhere in Sussex. His HIV+ diagnosis feels urgent, immediate.

Speaking Volumes is a project that aims to combat misconceptions and ignorance about living with HIV. Project participants attended creative art and storytelling workshops, then recorded their stories. These fifteen recordings are inserted into hollowed-out books and illustrated with participants’ artworks, each book displayed on the Speaking Volumes shelf. The volumes are broken into chapters, or audio tracks, based on themes such as diagnosis, treatments and side effects, sex and relationships, work, spirituality, isolation and support.

Visitors to Hastings Library in October could take a book from the shelf, a set of headphones from the box beside it, and listen to diverse life stories of Sussex-based men and women living with HIV - aged from their 20s to their 80s, parents, people with disabilities, hailing from the UK and around the world. “The project was particularly relevant to Sussex,” says Speaking Volumes Project Manager and Director Alice Booth. “It's an area where there is higher prevalence of HIV than the national average - especially in Brighton and Hove, but also in Hastings.”

The project was inspired by human libraries, where people who have encountered stigma or oppression can be “borrowed” to talk to a member of the public about their experience. “I thought this was a great idea and would be a brilliant thing for HIV positive people to do,” says Alice Booth. “But I was aware that the stigma associated with the condition meant that lots of people who would like to share their story would be reluctant to appear in public.”

Sitting in the library under a sign saying “HIV stories”, amidst posters encouraging me to get tested for HIV and booklets with numbers to call for HIV support, I get a tiny hint of what that stigma could be like. There’s nowhere private to turn and wipe my eyes when I hear from people who saw almost all their friends dying around them in the 1980s, about people disowned by family members, from someone who was deported from Taiwan for being HIV+ and has been living apart from his partner ever since. I feel exposed.

However, for every negative experience in Speaking Volumes, there seems to be a positive. While the deeply personal stories resist neat narratives about progress, one of the overarching themes to emerge is the extraordinary change in attitudes towards and treatments of HIV in the UK over the last three decades.  “The general public, I feel, still do not realise that HIV is no longer a death sentence,” says a participant named Scott. “They need to be educated . . . people need to know.”

The installation at Hastings Library marked the project’s first East Sussex exhibition location. Abigail Luthmann, Equal Access Manager for ESCC libraries, says, “For libraries, stories are what we are about - factual or fictional. Listening directly to someone’s own story is a very powerful way to understand a different perspective and experience of life. As some of the participants are East Sussex residents we are particularly pleased to be able to host it.”

This article first appeared as "Speaking Volumes at the library" in Hastings Independent, Issue 18, 7 November 2014, p18.

0 Comments

Share the love: Five good books about walking

2/12/2014

6 Comments

 
A couple of months ago on Book Riot, Jeremy Anderberg published “7 Books (and One to Avoid) for the Avid Hiker”. They all sound interesting, and I've ordered some from the libary, but they’re USA-centric (6 of the 8 set in the USA), all by men (except the “one to avoid” - awkward) and mainly focused on specific journeys. So, here I am supplementing Anderberg’s list - which isn't meant to be definitive - with five more good books about walking.

1. Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Wanderlust - cover
Rebecca Solnit (2000)

What’s it about? 
It does what it says on the tin. It starts with the physiology of walking, an investigation of why humans started walking, then wanders through time over diverse fields including philosophy, shopping, poetry, religion and spirituality, landscaping and gardens, tourism, geography, politics, novels, pop culture, law, feminism, public space and urban design. It moves between continents, too, though there’s a definite bias towards the northern hemisphere.

Why is it so good?
Solnit highlights that is a history, not the history: she tries to acknowledge the book's limitations, omissions and biases. Rather than being a straight-up chronological history, it's more a series of lyrical essays. Academic analysis is interspersed with personal accounts of walks (taken solo or with friends) and occasional flights of imagination are thrown in. I like it because, like a good walk, it takes you to new places, and asks you to look at familiar things in a different light.

Any cons?
I would like to hear more non-Western perspectives, and some of the chapters are a little thinner on ideas and research than others. Even those chapters, though, seem to open up the potential of walking and thinking about walking, rather than shutting it down with a definitive “this is how it is, because I am an expert and I say it is so”. Another con, which you can take as read in almost any contemporary writing about walking, are the instances of casual fatphobia and hand-wringing about “the obesity epidemic” - boring.

2. Map Addict: A Tale of Obsession, Fudge and the Ordnance Survey

Map Addict - cover
Mike Parker (2010)

What’s it about?
Strictly speaking, as the title suggests, this is a book about maps rather than walking. But since this is my list, I have decided there is enough walking in there to qualify. This is a humorous non-fiction book - slightly in the vein of Bill Bryson, to give you an idea of tone. It is a bit of a whirlwind of subjects, but it pulls together to give a fun, biased and incomplete investigation of cartography, borders, land use and land access (including walking), politics and language. It’s set mainly, but not exclusively, in the British Isles - but it doesn’t claim to be anything other than very British.

Why is it so good?
How can you not like someone who used to shoplift maps in their misspent youth? Parker is so obsessed with Ordnance Survey maps that I’m sure even the most map-phobic person couldn’t help but feel a spark of enthusiasm! He’s got a good eye for the off-beat (like visiting the most boring OS gridsquare), though many of the mainstays of mapping and walking are in there too (Wainwright, Phyllis Pearsall of the London A-Z fame, the Ramblers). Maps are a huge part of my experience of moving through and understanding the world, so it’s great to read something light-hearted while also learning a bit more about why the world of mapping (and, by extension, walking) is the way it is.

Any cons?
Sometimes Parker’s exceptionally bouncy approach does make things pass in a bit of a whirl - you will find a more balanced, exceptionally researched but infinitely drier account of the OS in Rachel Hewitt’s Map of a Nation.  Also a con in a list of books about walking is that there isn’t more walking it - though to be fair, Parker has written a book about walking and footpaths (The Wild Rover), it’s just that this one’s more fun.

3. The Ways of the Bushwalker: On Foot in Australia

The ways of the bushwalker - cover
Dr Melissa Harper (2007)

What’s it about?
  A history of bushwalking, which Harper defines as walking in the bush for pleasure. This is an interesting companion book to Wanderlust, as it covers a few similar areas but with an Australian focus. There are discussions of politics, fashion, gender, four-wheel driving, ecology, aesthetics, literature and colonisation. Because it has a much narrower scope than Wanderlust, it is able to zoom in on more details and quirky bits of Australian history. It's something of a cultural history through the lens of walking.

Why is it so good?
  There are lots of histories and philosophical examinations of walking, but there’s hardly anything specific to Australia. This book opened my eyes to pieces of Australian history I’d known nothing about, and it prompted me to start thinking more deeply about the problematic concept of “wilderness” - specifically, how the kinds of ideas and ideals embedded in the National Park movement can be inherently, unconsciously racist and also used for explicitly anti-Indigenous Australian means (watch Noel Pearson’s speech for more on that). I also loved the chapter on people who aimed to experience the bush physically, almost erotically, especially through naked walking.

Any cons?
  While there are discussions of land rights, Harper argues her “walking in the bush for pleasure” definition means that bushwalking (a term coined in the 1920s) excludes the long history of Indigenous Australians walking in the bush. I think there could have been another chapter dedicated to Aboriginal history, e.g. walking Songlines (though research in that area has also been problematic).

4. Two Degrees West: A Walk Along England’s Meridian

Two Degrees West - cover
Nicholas Crane (1997)

What’s it about?
  Nick Crane (of BBC’s Coast fame) walks a straight line through England from Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland to the south coast near Swanage in Dorset. Of course, it’s not completely straight, but his aim is to veer no more than 1km each side of the prime meridian - not even for food and shelter. His other aim is to do it all on foot. (Spoilers: he achieves the former, and from memory there are only two exceptions to the latter - he crosses a reservoir by boat and some MOD land in military transport).

Why is it so good?
This book is sometimes subtitled “An English journey”. I prefer the subtitle I’ve cited, but I can see why this one exists: in walking a straight line, rather than following established paths, natural landmarks, roads and so on, Crane is able to observe an almost randomly selected cross-section of English culture, people, landscapes, towns, agriculture and industry. It’s a cultural examination masquerading as travel writing. I like the inclusion of urban landscape and the bit where he sleeps in a culvert under a motorway.

Any cons?
Crane documents his nervousness about trespassing, practicing his super-fast “pitch” in case anyone stops him. Nobody does. I wonder how anyone who wasn’t a moderately respectable-looking middle aged white man would have fared? I wonder if it would still be possible to do this walk almost 20 years later? I love the idea of this kind of walk (there are shades of Richard Long's art), but I wish there were more done by people who haven’t traditionally been allowed such freedom of movement.

5. Enchanted Glass

Enchanted Glass - cover
Diana Wynne Jones (2010)

What’s it about?
This is a children’s fantasy book, about magic and family and many of the things you might expect from Diana Wynne Jones (she wrote Howl’s Moving Castle, which is one of my favourites of hers alongside The Homeward Bounders and The Spellcoats (from the Dalemark Quartet)). Enchanted Glass is about a young, orphaned boy (Aidan) and a featherbrained male academic who wind up living together in Melston House, a fictional house near the fictional town of Melston in England. The house comes with a “field of care” - like a parish surrounding a church, only one which must be magically maintained by the inheritor of the house.  Oh, and Aidan is being pursued by a mysterious, hostile force...

Why is it so good?
The field of care is tied very strongly to physical boundaries, which must be physically seen to, with obstacles removed. The magic here draws on the tradition of beating the bounds. I love this concept because it ties into a way of seeing and being in the world that I want to explore through reading and writing - the dual ideas that the landscape is a living entity that has a kind of ownership on the people living there and the idea of magic being done through physical movement. Plus, it’s a fun tale!

Any cons?
If you’re after books that are only about walking, this isn’t one. Also, in terms of fiction, it would have been nice to have some more female characters. Oh, and, here’s a spoiler: I was disappointed when the main characters ended up being related by blood - it wasn’t necessary and gave off a "chosen families aren’t real families" vibe.


If you can suggest some excellent books about walking - histories, fictions or travel accounts, especially by non-white people and/or set in Asia, Africa, South America or Eastern Europe - I’d be delighted to read them!

6 Comments

    In which I

    In which I do things and write about them

    RSS Feed

    In which I tag

    All
    #30DaysWild
    Art And Architecture
    Audio And Music
    Australia
    Battle Observer
    Birmingham
    Books And Stories
    Bristol
    Buckinghamshire
    Cambridgeshire
    Cooking
    Cycling
    Devon
    East Sussex
    Eating And Drinking
    Film And Video
    Foraging
    Gardening
    Gippsland GunaiKurnai Country
    Grand Union Canal
    Hastings Independent
    Hertfordshire
    Heysen Trail Prep
    Housekeeping
    Imagining
    Interviewing
    Kent
    Lake Field
    London
    Manchester
    Marketing
    Melbourne Wurundjeri Country
    Microadventure
    National Trust
    Netherlands
    Norfolk
    Northumberland
    Paddling
    Q&A
    Reporting
    Review
    Share The Love
    Sheffield
    Snowy River
    Somerset
    South Gippsland Bunurong Country
    Suffolk
    Swimming
    Tea
    Victorian High Country Jaitmathang Country
    Victorian High Country Taungurung Country
    Wadawurrung Country
    Wales
    Walking
    West Sussex
    Wiltshire
    Year Of Sleeping Variously
    Yorkshire

    In which I archive

    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.