In response to the Map of the Forbidden City with its Gate of Divine Prowess and Hall of Imperial Peace, I will use Tsubook (it’s a Shiatsu app) and specifically the Lung meridian map.
Each acupressure point which is located along the channel has a name translated from the Chinese. It starts at Central Palace in the chest, passes through the Cloud Gate, Celestial Storehouse, Cubit Marsh, Collection Hole, Broken Sequence, Channel Ditch, Great Abyss, and Fish Border. I have chosen 9 of the 11 points (the points where I use my thumb or an acupuncturist would use a needle), because those relate to place and tell the story of a journey.
Illustration from Shiatsu by Carola Beresford-Cooke
Here are @ElspethPenfold prompts, rearranged and collaged from @BlakeMorris score:
A collective endeavour,
Do away with the outside,
Consider the relationship,
Function as a storytelling mechanism,
If walking is akin to a speech act, then it can also craft stories of space
The walking score devised by Elspeth Penfold and Blake Morris
@ThreadandWord #52more @blakewalks thisisnotaslog.com link to A Different Lens, award winning project by Elspeth Penfold and Thread and Word, which I made a small contribution to. This is my walk #16
‘Precarious’ is part of a collaborative film called Watermarks, which is Walking the Land’s contribution to The University of The Highland and Island’s (UHI) Edge Conference. In September 2022, it was developed into Precarious Edge and shown as part of the Murky Waters film programme as part of Art Walk Porty.
I filmed it on Portobello Beach in 2021 in response to the alarming number of deaths of young guillemots who unusually massed along this part of the coast of Edinburgh. This piece is part of a larger body of work looking at the effects that climate change is having on the bird population of the UK. See, No Birds Land installation
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said that while the exact cause remained unknown, the climate crisis was exacerbating the factors that lead to falls in seabird populations.
Guardian article about the investigation into the deaths of these guillemots
Guillemot wing, Portobello Beach, Edinburgh Summer 2021
Many thanks to Bea Parsons and my mum for watching and commenting on drafts, and to Richard and the team for compiling all the two-minutes into a great Watermarks film.
This film has since been expanded and reworked into Precarious Edge and was shown as part of the Murky Waters, Art Walk Porty short film evening in September 2022. MAP magazine reviewed it here
The prompt came from Mathilda and Blake as part of the on-going series 52More. Mathilda walked in Paris and Blake in New York, connecting up in time and through the score – a faded green British Library card with random phrases pasted on it.
Before leaving London I visited the British Library. I forgot my card, though I had my Edinburgh City and National Library of Scotland cards on me.
Library cards, but not the right one
I bought 3 presents, one for each of my hostesses in France’s capital city, put each in a scarlet paper bag with BL on them, and promptly left them all at St Pancras in my rush to board the Eurostar.
My moment of immediate excitement – the French flag flying above the Gare du Nord
I am here to teach Shiatsu, a form of Japanese / South East Asian bodywork. Shi means fingers, atsu, pressure. These hands spoke to me amongst the industrial units on my walk through Barbes.
Hands on the wall
On Linda’s table, were feathers in all shapes and sizes, not identical to the ones I have been collecting on my walks since the start of lockdown 1.
Feathers courtesy of Linda
I walked on the Petite Ceinture with my friend, Alain. It’s an ex-railway, now used by walkers.
La Petite Ceinture
It’s not exactly the subway, but it passes below street level and tunnels are dotted along it, not unlike my Trinity Tunnel on the Edinburgh cycle path.
Shiatsu practitioner and teacher, Alain Tauch
At the Musée Cernuschi, I found more Cranes (I was with them at the National Museum of Scotland a few days ago), symbols of longevity and immortality because they were believed to live for 1000 years. Their feathers were SMALL BITS of beautiful sculpture from the Japanese Edo Period, 1603-1868.
Crane incense holder, feather detailFeathers and birds everywhere in Paris, France
I enjoyed the smile on the face of the qin zither player, an entertainer from the Han period (25-220).
This is the lid (in the form of a mountain) of a funerary object.
Sitting on the highest point, closest to heaven, he has transformed metaphysically, as depicted by his extended head, signalling that the energy of his crown chakra is so developed that he has achieved something akin to enlightenment.
In the sound poem which is part of my No Birds Land installation, I mourn the death of increasing numbers of British birds and list some of the reasons we are causing their demise. In Clipp’d Wings, I celebrated the Carrier pigeon and pigeon feathers in general, giving them our wish-messages to keep safe during these Covid times. On the day of remembrance for lost species 2021, it therefore made sense for me to spend some time with the spirit of the Passenger pigeon.
Passenger pigeons, Ectopistes migratorius. Photographed at the National Museum of Scotland
Ewan Davidson and I met at the National Museum of Scotland to listen to Luke Jerram‘s Extintion Bell which sounds at random intervals, just once, approximately 170 times a day, indicating the number of species lost worldwide in every 24 hour period.
Luke Jerram’s Extinction Bell at the National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh
Occurring in huge numbers in North America in years gone by, Passenger pigeons were extinct in 1914. They had been hunted for meat and as pests, and their habitat was destroyed. Martha was the last of her species, and she died in captivity.
The Passenger part of the pigeon’s name derives from the French passager, to pass through, referring to its massive migrations. It connects to the Peregrine falcon, where ‘peregrine’ is said to come from pèlerin, the French for pilgrim, also on account of its migratory habits. It’s a description I sometimes give myself.
Common pigeons, Edinburgh
[the Peregrine falcon is] the world’s most widespread raptor, and one of the most widely found bird species. In fact, the only land-based bird species found over a larger geographic area is not always naturally occurring, but one widely introduced by humans, the rock pigeon, which in turn now supports many peregrine populations as a prey species
Before that, these birds lived en masse. They fed, swarmed, perched and roosted in large groups, and in their absence, I spent some time in Nicholson Square in Edinburgh. I sat and watched the antics of the Common pigeons / Rock doves and Wood Pigeons (Columbidae family). I observed them stepping fast, balancing on each others backs in what I might term excitement as they ‘fought’ each other for the seeds which the kids were feeding them. They flapped off at the slightest human gesture, though individuals were clasped and carried carefully by one child when he could manage it.
Their movements could mostly be described as ‘nervy’ and ‘agitated’. (It’s interesting how easily the vocabulary of human behaviour comes to mind when I attempt to describe them. It’s a symptom of our tendency to refer to others (other people, and other-than-humans) through our own eyes, using our own terms. In one way its inevitable, after all I only know me, and if I’m being generous, I could say that I am trying to identify with them, but if I caution myself to describe, rather than liken, then I get some distance, can see more clearly beyond my own realm.)
So, I will start again, to help you see what I saw more objectively. They make short, forward and backwards, staccato pecks, with their necks; sometimes they waddle, the fattest part moving side-to-side. They take fleet running steps, gently bump into each other, but don’t seem to mind, and they do sudden take-offs. They flutter a few feathers occasionally, change direction often, and have their heads, their eyes, down most of the time. Every now and then they make a quick exit.
Collective escapings happened several times when I was there: a great, almost but not quite simultaneous, lifting and clattering. (I keep returning to this word to describe the noise of a pigeon quickly leaving a copse or pavement. Though it’s not the metal saucepan kind of clatter, it is a more irregular, continuous noise and rhythm made by wings batting the air down. You can sense the effort and impetus behind the action.)
Then they are whirling above, and I’m less aware of individuals and more of the group shape, shifting and coordinating seamlessly. They sweep around and around, their elipse becoming a sphere, really like bees swarming, the spaces between them widening, closing. Sometimes their mass is raggedy and I fear they will come right apart, but somehow they gather back in before settling on the roofs of the tenements opposite. One, two, three, five, seven, eleven, hundreds. In a second they’re still, perhaps jostling, a little preening between vanes to put everything in order. And they wait until the coast is clear before reversing the whole process to resume their feeding frenzy on the ground.
These pigeons had to be constantly aware of human activity whilst feeding as much as possible
The Sixth Extinction… has accelerated massively since the start of the industrial era, when our ability to wreck havoc on the non-human lifeforms that share our planet has reached awesome proportions.
Roll call for the pigeons and doves which are now extinct
Mauritius Blue pigeon, Alectroenus Nitidissima
Tanna ground-dove 1800
Norfolk Island ground dove 1800
Lord Howe pigeon 1790
Spotted green pigeon 1820s
Norfolk Island pigeon 1839
Mauritius blue pigeon 1840
Réunion pigeon 1850
Rodrigues pigeon 1850
Choiseul pigeon 1904
Thick-billed ground dove 1927
Ryukyu pigeon 1936
Red-moustached fruit-dove 1950
What must it have been like for one, solitary Passenger pigeon to be singled out, captured and die in a small cage alone? The flocks of these wonderful birds were said to measure 4 miles by 1 as they flew, to take two hours to pass overhead there were so many. They were massacred and trapped for commercial reasons and to, apparently, protect crops. Ironically, shortly before there were none of these birds left, the Lacey, then the Weeks-McLean Acts were passed in Iowa to prohibit trade in wildlife. They marked the start of conservation as we know it today. In 1918 the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed which protected the eggs, nests and feathers, as well as the birds themselves. (source: Barry Yeoman audubon.org 2014).
As I left Nicholson Square on Lost Species Day, there was a dead pigeon in the gutter
Our English word ‘bell’ comes from the Saxon bellan, meaning to bawl or bellow. Spending quiet time with other members of the Columbidae family resulted in some bawling in grief, a fitting response I think to the whole-scale extermination of Passenger pigeons.
You might also like this article from the Smithsonian Institute
Getting ready to set off from Bo’ness on day 10 of Pilgrimage for COP26
Industrial landscapes and ecological regeneration
The theme is Industrial landscapes and ecological regeneration, though the latter was going to be hard to focus on in the face of the intense piping, cooling towers and wot-not of the space-age area. There is nothing fantastic about it, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Bo’ness local history
We leave Bo’ness (formerly known as Borrowstounness) around 9am as usual, going downhill one more time, crossing the old Bo’ness to Slamannan railway to Glasgow and rejoining the edge of the Firth of Forth. (The line was usurped in 1842 by the intercity one we now use, and is used for the Bo’ness and Kinneil Heritage Railway. There is also a large Museum of Scottish Railways, and the facilities here were used for the testing of a new hyrogen train. More about the UK eco-train plans here).
Bo’ness in the Autumn: Dymock’s Building, a restored Merchant’s House and signposts to the many sights of the town
Here we are met by the day walkers who included Ian from the Friends of Kinneil House, built by the Hamilton Family. The Friends help to promote and develop the Estate and the foreshore of Bo’ness where we will be walking this morning.
Back at the Bo’ness Buoy where we have our first encounter of the day with the police, and where Ian and Billy join Willie (in the high vis) and us with their wealth of knowledge of birds and local history respectively
The port was recognised from 16th century, ranked as the third most important in Scotland in the 18th century, and the area was a hub of industry. Harbour construction started in 1707, and was closed in 1959 due to silting and the demise of the coal mining industry. Later, the port was the site of shipbreaking, with the ships being sailed as far up on the shore as possible, the bows nearly reaching Bridgeness Road, which must have been a sight.
There were 96 pits, one of which was connected across in Fife by mining under the river, and we are told about the bell pit that was sited in nearby Kinneil woods, now a nature reserve. The pits were closed by 1983 and lots of the remains were put in the river, including medical waste, and chemicals such as arsenic. There is a James Watt (b.1736, of steam engine fame) Supper at Kinneil House on Burns Night to look out for!
Maria Ford, the chair of The Friends, said: “Probably very few of us have a copy of Rabbie Burns’ Complete Works in our homes – but nearly everyone will have lightbulbs measured in Watts.
Mussels were gathered and eaten by our mesolithic ancestors, as evidenced by archeological finds near here, middens of oyster shells, for example, which have been found along these shores. Salt panning, ironstone and clay mines, potteries, whaling and gas were all local industries.
We started walking the Forth river Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), stopping often to learn about the area, much of which is recently reclaimed industrial land, and we admired the lagoons and reed beds owned by the RSPB. Short-eared Owls, Kestrels and Buzzards have been sighted, reeling through the skies. We asked, what is needed to improve it for wildlife, and Billy replied, “Nothing, leave it alone. We hope that there is enough local interest to keep it like this.”
Looking across to Culross, Fife, the birthplace of St Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow, where we are headedStopping to appreciate, identify and learn about the birds of the Forth in light of climate change. With Billy and Gillian centre stageSoil Ceremony #1 with Cath as the Keeper of the Soils displaying the pockets which house the soil samples
There were two soil ceremonies today. This was the first and Liz read out a quote from Wendell Berry‘s The Unsettling of America:
the soil is the great connector of lives… Without proper care for it, we can have no life
Wendell Berry
The Spanish camino directs pilgrims with large yellow arrows like these. I have my eye in for them still! Where would we go if we followed them I wonder?
You had to have a pass to walk in this area during WW2 as they were making torpedos here.
Early sightings of Grangemouth dominating the landscape
We come to the site of the former 18th century Bo’ness Distillery (almost at Kinneil Halt (station)) and are reminded that it, too, produced effluent, discharges which seeped into the Forth. The Pottery was nearby (at one stage in its long history, Alexander Cuming gifted it to his 12 year old nephew, James, and at another it was inherited by a 3-year old boy). We are told that it burned down in 1963. We could clearly see old bricks on the shore, as you can also see in Granton a few miles further east where we had walked earlier in the week.
We see Godwits reaching for worms deep in the sand with their long, scimitar-like bills, and hear the plaintive piping of Curlew (their bills curve downwards). We move past delicate grasses, moody bulrushes, and stems of orange sea buckthorn berries highlighted against pale, sage-green leaves. The intense silver-white softness of the rosebay Willowherb contrasts with its rusty foliage, and the slim Salix stream in the wind above Hypericum, wild Stawberries, Brambles, and spiky Teasle. The Gorse sports both dry black pods and bright yellow flowers on the same bush.
A system of moving water between the Firth and the inland wetland area to account for the tide.
The landfill attracts Redshanks, Lapwings and Shelduck, and the absence of people during the early Covid period was advantageous for them. It is noted that the Shelducks (brown necks) moult here, a sign that they are feeling safe (they can’t fly when that is happening). The bigger issues, now, as at the reclaimed land we walked over in Musselburgh, are uncontrolled dogs off the lead.
Scop or Scaup ducks, Chiswick Park, London
By way of explaining the change in wildlife in the local nature reserve as a result of cleaning up the waters, Billy explained about the Scop or Scaup (ducks) who used to live here alongside the molluscs and mussels. The sewage actually helped and now there is less, they have disappeared. However, when the refinery flares at night and the tide is at the right stage, Redshank feed at night, so there are more of them.
Today’s group of pilgrims walking to Glasgow COP26
Grangemouth Oil Refinery
And then we turn away from the water and head inland towards the Grangemouth Refinery. Grangemouth port was founded as a result of the construction of the Forth and Clyde Canal (which we are scheduled to walk beside later today), in 1768. Grain and timber came in there, and coal went out. The first factory in the area was making soap and glycerine (1897 Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society), and paraffin started to be produced from shale or coal in 1919. Then, as the Polish oil wells opened up and the prices for Scottish products went down, treating and refining became the focus.
Grangemouth Refinery, a skyscape of sci-fi appearanceGetting close to the Grangemouth Refinery. There was a terrible smell and someone kindly lit a stick of incenseThe sloping metal and cooling towers of the Grangemouth Refinery, quite a contrast to the area of natural beauty we had just walked through
BP, former owners, sold up in 2004 when there were difficulties, and now the Plant is part-owned by a Chinese company and the greater part by Jim Ratcliffe, the richest man ‘in England’ (he lives in Monaco, “a move that it is estimated will save him £4 billion in tax”). Ratcliffe is the CEO of INEOS which includes Grangemouth as well as refineries in Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and Canada. Petro-chemical processing is a lucrative business, earning him an official Honour and wealth reputed to be worth £21.05 billion.
Leaving the estuary and heading inland
Wikipedia writes, “In February 2019 it was announced that Ineos would invest £1bn in the UK oil and chemical industries, to include an overhaul of the Forties pipeline system that is responsible for transporting a significant percentage of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas. On 1 May 2019, Ratcliffe criticised the current government rules which say fracking in Britain must be suspended every time a 0.5 magnitude tremor is detected, which has led to a de facto ban on fracking. He said: “I think the government has been pathetic on the subject.” In fact, although the Scottish government states “no support for unconventional oil and gas” (in a report which strongly resembles the spoofs in ‘Yes Minister‘), and has the reputation for banning, or at least not renewing or accepting new licences for shale (fracked) gas, it is important to note that it is still imported from the US (Pennsylvania) into INEOS right here.
One of several times that the police stopped their cars and questioned us
Before we entered Grangemouth, we were stopped twice more by police. One man told us, “I’ve been brought up from South of the border to join the COP26 security forces here. Are you the minister who’s going to bless the land?” Our reputation as a peaceful lot had proceeded us.
Road-walking in the mud and rainSite of a section of the Antonine Wall just as we are about to trun right and head through Grangemouth, West Lothian
We are reminded again of the Roman Antonine Wall which runs from Carriden, near Bo’ness, and which sports a 2nd century fort at the eastern end. It stood near this roundabout for 20 years, though it was supposed to be there for ever.
My last photo – we were asked not to take any after this
I am struck by the drear of the utilitarian and inanimate lengths of piping. Wide-diameter, above-ground conduits run the length of the road and the few desultory trees and mini-‘gardens’ don’t make up for the carbon that is produced in the petro-chemical works. These are not kilns for making beautiful pottery, not repurposed gas works recently used for art and music, but hydro-crackers involved in making products that most of us use in the form of health and pharmaceuticals, food and beverage packaging, and construction and utilities. Phasing them out means a change in what we expect to do and have, and we had plenty of silent walking time to ponder on that.
Blockade 23 October by Extinction Rebellion. From the Shropshirestar
In March 2019 INEOS said it would close its Middlesbrough manufacturing plant unless it was allowed to ‘defer compliance’ with EU rules designed to prevent air and water pollution. An analysis of data from the Environment Agency (EA) also reveals the plant clocked up 176 permit violations between 2014 and 2017. An EA spokesperson said: “air emissions are well over legal limits and this poses a risk to the environment”. INEOS director Tom Crotty said the firm “cannot justify” the investment required to comply with EU air and water pollution rules due to come into force in the coming years.
The World in Planisphere, from the Bo’ness Pottery circa 1800. The world is inscribed ‘From the Latest Discoveries’ and shows North and South America.
The engineering is, of course, state-of-the-art, but there is disparity between the shiny exteriors and the black-black oil which I knew was pumping inside, or the high-pressure gas contained within them. There were tin sheds and poles with what looked like guy-ropes stretched from their tips to the ground, and crows-nests at the top of them. I felt a sort of deadness in the air. The words of songs we had been singing sounded in my ears: We are a gentle, quiet people (1978, Holly Near), and our anthem for the Pilgrimage, Another world is not only possible (2021, Jane Lewis)
Granton Gas Works during the Hidden Doors Festival 2021
Tea, glorious tea
Wet and rather subdued, we were most grateful for a cup of tea and a sweet thing at St Mary’s Episcopalian Church in Grangemouth town. Thank you for those who made that for us, and in doing so, for counteracting the energy of the businesses that try to make even more money by changing pension rights for their workers.
Arriving for a very welcome and steaming cup of tea The bedraggled feather of the day. (I am collecting feathers and stories that connect walking and grief as I am on the pilgrimage)And we’re off again! Grangemouth
We put our wet clothes back on and set off for the 40 minutes’ hike to our next stop.
Crossing the South Bridge, Grangemouth Footpath beside the River Carron. The sky was crying.
The Lungs in Chinese Medicine are associated with grief and sadness, and it is said that our tears are like their melt water
Joyce Vlaarkamp
Heading towards the Helix and the Kelpies along the River Carron
They stressed that the way we manage our energy needs must change, but that it is vital that people are redeployed in equivalent level jobs once their current ones have gone.
Climate justice recognises that the industrialised countries of the ‘global North’ like Scotland have grown rich over the past few centuries through polluting the atmosphere while at the same time extracting resources from the ‘global South’ under colonialism. It recognises that those on the sharpest end of climate impacts in the global South have done least to cause the crisis, and are often without adequate resources and technologies to deal with its impacts. Therefore countries of the global North bear a far greater responsibility for addressing the climate crisis.
Along the Helix boardwalk (see Kelpies link above)Walking the glassy path. We had to do it over and over so the photographer could get a good shot for the local papers
Smiling despite the rain. Photo by Michael Gillen, courtesy of the Falkirk HeraldOlga dancing with Cath in the squelching. Photo by Michael Gillen, courtesy of the Falkirk HeraldThe Freedom of Mind community choir who waited for us and then sang so beautifully in the rain, Falkirk‘May Peace Prevail on Earth’ and the wonderful children who stood in the rain with the posters they had designed and made, at the HelixStitches for Survival banner at the Helix
It must be said that the final stretch in the dark, up and into Falkirk’s town centre, in the really, seriously pouring rain was a hard one.
Our doughty electric support vehicle which carried the bulk of the rucksacks and food to St Francis Xavier’s Catholic Church where we spent the night
Falkirk
We spent the night at St Francis Xavier’s Hall, arriving wetter than it is hard to imagine any group of pilgrims could be, and presenting quite a challenge to the very kind folk who welcomed us, provided hanging rails and upped the heating before preparing our evening meal.
Alisar made a contribution to our soil collection. She is a New Scot, Syrian by birth, and had gathered it from her mother’s garden in Falkirk. Our food was cooked and served to us by members of the Muslim and Interfaith community in Falkirk, and it was delicious.
Here are some of the replies to ‘What keeps me Walking?’ read out at the Pilgrim’s Ceilidh on 22 October 2021.
In 1972 I walked from Canterbury to Winchester, a kind of reverse Pilgrims Way,and we camped by the side of a wood. As we cooked our noodles, a wren sat in the bush and sang his heart out. I have remembered that wren for nearly 50 years.
What keeps me walking? Hope.
Freedom Come All Ye on the pipes with a lot of background noise. Footage of today’s walk
Later that night, there was a reflection circle and enjoyable, high-energy workshop about group dynamics.
Walking without a donkey 