Walking the Granton boundary.
The Walking Like a Tortoise mixed media art exhibition was at Granton Hub, Madelvic House, Granton Park Avenue, Edinburgh EH5 1HS between 29th September and 1st October 2023. Link to the exhibition page with video walk-through and images of artworks.
The project started on the Festival of Terminalia 23 Feb 2023 (zine available for sale £4).
The Community Walk took place on Friday 29 September.
Before
Granton is changing a lot and very quickly. My plan was to make a series of walks using different maps of Granton to document the area. I was interested to see where this place begins and ends, and how it borders on its neighbours. Who or what is inside and out of the boundary?
For the first walk, I will set off in a clockwise direction, following the map I photographed at the National Galleries presentation of their new project, Art Works, at the Edinburgh College in June 2022.
- from Granton View via Lufra Bank
- up Granton Rd and right onto the cycle path
- off at Pilton Drive, and westwards along Ferry Road
- down Crewe Rd North back towards the sea
- turning at the ‘new’ gas building by Caroline Park
- along Waterfront Ave to the harbour (I will wait to see how I manage that because access to the boundary is cut off here and the Western and Eastern Breakwaters are not connected by land but by the Firth of Forth rushing between them)
- Wardie Bay beach
- up Wardie Steps
- to the post box
- completing the circle
I have been on these roads and byways many times, however, as a long-time Zen practitioner I will aim to walk without expectations of what I may find. I am ready to encounter and notice what arises. Though I am a psychogeographer, I will resist straying if my interest is piqued, sticking instead to the prescribed route, however I will take care to look into corners and pay as equal attention to the urban and the rural, both the so-called banal and the beautiful.
I often make secular pilgrimage in places previously unknown to me, and though this is familiar territory, it is nevertheless a pilgrimage of sorts. As with the St Magnus Way, I will leave home, visit venerated places, and return. There will be no triumphant arrival, just a home-coming. It will inevitably be some sort of transformation – for the landscape through which I will travel, for the other human and more-than-human (plants, birds, animals) I meet along the way, and for me. After all, any stepping will change a place and it’s inhabitants.
“Seekers of wisdom, seekers of life.”
Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind
Links to other boundaries and borders projects and the Sound Walk May (Edinburgh):
Leith’s Women and Walking Between Worlds
Sound Walk Map (Edinburgh) A link to a map which shows the locations of my three site-specific sound walks: The Wall, No Birds Land and Is There a Place for REVOLution or Peace and Biscuits
Walking without a donkey 
Your walks are so enticing. Curiosity, wonder, and sheer joy.
Thanks
Kx
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They are very pleasurable. Thank you for following my various antics!
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