Wheatley Elm Wellbeing Walk, May 10th 2025 (2-3.30pm).
Wheatley Elm (detail)
A free community event beginning at Granton Crescent Park with some walking, art activities and gentle exercises. Part of the country-wide Urban Tree Festival, it focuses on our local trees, ones we go past everyday, and celebrates how brilliant they are.
Meet here: There is a bench just inside the gate at the top of the path which runs between Granton Crescent and the bottom of Granton View and we will gather there. What3Words: ///skips.bets.aspect
Meet at Granton Crescent Park
We will visit some of the resilient and versatile Wheatley Elms in Edinburgh, find out more about this unusual species which is only found in 2 places in Britain, Edinburgh being one of them, and identify how we can benefit our sense of wellbeing besides.
A Granton Wheatley Elm
Walking, well-being ‘exercises’, art, talking and learning about the Wheatley Elm trees in the city.
All welcome – adults, children and dogs, prams and wheelchairs. Bring water and wear sensible footwear. Chocolate provided.
Contact me if you have questions. tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com
This walk as taken in March 2025. It was the penultimate day of a 10-day hike from Chepstow, on the Welsh-English border, to Cheltenham. My artwork was in the Walking the Land’s Line(s) of Enquiry exhibition at the Hardwick Gallery, which opened on 7 March, and I was attending a Symposium at the University of Gloucestershire there on 21st.
You may be interested in this companion blog post: Walking with Ants
Detail, The Honeydew Line, by Tamsin Grainger (embroidery). I was walking for the small things, celebrating and honouring them as vital participants in our ecosystem
1 November 2024 a Walking the Land artist collective monthly event. This Friday’s brief was by Janette Kerr and me, Tamsin Grainger and part of the Lines of Enquiry, a collective walking art project which will culminate in a group exhibition in 2025.
Look for somewhere to sit, stand or crouch on your own. Pause. Close your eyes and concentrate on listening.
Try to separate out all the sounds you can hear.
Using a piece of paper and pencil, crayon or pen, and with your eyes still closed, make marks on your paper that you think might represent the sounds you are hearing (don’t try to make a picture of, or draw, the thing making the noise!)
Spend as long as you like doing this. You might stop and do it several times during the walk.
If you are walking with others, you might try this together on one piece of paper.
Here are the What3Words locations for the 6 stops we made along part of the Edinburgh Cycle Path network, connecting in spirit with others who were walking along the Honeybourne Line (Gloucestershire) and elsewhere.
///Causes.Host.Home
///Perky.Fetch.Useful
///Notice.Case.Bugs
///Linked.Tides.Eager
///Bounty.Belong.Only
///Maker.Exit.Corn
///Friday.Notice.Retail
Damp earth causes stains Tree hosts magpies and sparrows Home is far away.
Wet bottoms as we drew the sounds around us with our eyes closed Sometimes using two hands as the sound came from so many places. Photo Janette Kerr
Perky dog's tail wags 'Fetch' calls his human with joy Useful happinness.
Part of the No Birds Land sound walk installationUnder the Bridge. Edinburgh cycle paths. Photo Janette Kerr
Notice how cold stone Is, in case of chills and piles Bugs me every time.
I am an Edinburgh-based artist who exhibited in the Walking the Land collective Lines of Enquiry exhibition at the Hardwick Gallery University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham. The gallery is situated near the Honeybourne Line, a greenway which used to be a railway. After the opening on 7 March, I made an artwalk from the Welsh/English border to the Symposium which was also at Hardwick and held by Walking the Land.
The Honeybourne Line in Cheltenham and the Cycle Route Network in my home city of Edinburgh date from the Industrial Revolution, whereas industrious ants have been around since the Jurassic era. For much longer than we have been commuting along these paths, they have been making their way back and forth to work from ant hill or nest, gathering food, clearing up after us, and making critical relationships with other species (famously stroking aphids so they secrete honeydew).
I have walked, watched, sketched and embroidered ants in order to appreciate and understand more about them and their busy lives. So often unseen, they are a vital part of our ecosystem and I celebrate them.
The Honeydew Line (stitching) by Tamsin Grainger at the Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham. Ants walk each day to forage, and like commuters along the Honeybourne Line (Cheltenham), they pass in both directions often carrying heavy loads
I walked from Chepstow to Cheltenham through the Forest of Dean, the Severn Plain and the Cotswolds, looking out for the unseen small ones (eg ants who are part of our ecosystem and clear up our rubbish). For 10 days, I noticed, acknowledged, and paid attention to the vital role these not-insignificant members of our community play.
The mushroom says, fruitfulness comes from what is unseen or overlooked — hidden networks, decomposition.
Elizabeth Wainwright, Redlands
Orange crust fungusFrozen crocuses
At the end of each day, I visited the home of someone who had taken me up on my offer of a Shiatsu-hospitality exchange. Highlighting the walk in advance on social media, I invited others to accompany me and/or to meet in the evenings / overnight. I was delighted to make the acquaintance of many people I’d never previously met, and others whom I had known before but had not seen for a few or even for 40 years.
With Vicky at the end of day 1 @wyevalleyshiatsu
During the walking process, I witnessed the terrible devastation to our soil that we have caused through intensive forestry, extraction, and injurious industrial farming methods. The effects of the recent, more extreme, wind, storms and flooding, often attributed to climate change, were experienced every day.They prompted me to recognise our human failing to protect the insects, birds, plants and animals that we have a duty of care towards, and rely on.
Eroded paths – almost impassable with human feet
Over the next months, I’ll be reflecting on the injury to my leg from slipping on the mud while climbing May Hill at the end of a 10-hour-day’s trek carrying a heavy pack. The pain I walked with became an embodied manifestation of the state of the crisis we are in. There were times on the tops of hills when trudging and squelching through mud, that I wondered if I could continue to go on. I had to sit and rest, mindfully. I had to accept the situation, go right into the middle of the extreme discomfort in order to transform the pain that each step caused.
So many broken or fallen trees
I will be addressing the idea that this was more than a walk or a wander, perhaps a pilgrimage, and that the act of hope was inherent in the constant need to physically move forwards. I accepted help and occasionally I sewed a small panel instead of touching, embroidered something I had come across during that day’s walk – Melusine (found on the arch of Notgrove Manor) and a periwinkle flower (from the hedgerows). Though I had scheduled one rest day, I had to take a second, a break from the walking. Lucky me that I could do that, with the help of new and old friends.
Someone left a dog poo bag on the wall
This walk has been now been completed. Thanks to all those who walked with me, or who bartered hospitality for Shiatsu. What is Shiatsu?
Tamsin giving Shiatsu, Paris
My route: Chepstow, to Parkend, to May Hill, to Gloucester, and to Crickley. Salperton to Stow-on-the-Wold, to Winchcombe, to Tewkesbury, all along the Gloucestershire Way. Then, to Gloucester on a British Pilgrimage Trust route, and finally to the Walking the Land Symposium in Cheltenham along a Slow Ways route. Total: approximately 124 miles (around 200 kms).
Starting in Chepstow at dawn
The Walking the Land ‘Lines of Enquiry’ exhibition ran between 3rd and 27th March, and the Symposium was on 21 March 2025.
Arriving at the Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham, for the Symposium on 21st March 2025 at the end of the walk
This walkshop asks where and what is home. It acknowledges that we may have to walk a long way before we find somewhere to settle, and that although the building may be bombed-out, make-shift, unsafe, or insufficient, yet it can simply be where home is. It has to be enough for us, and enough to be shared with others who are visiting or do not have a home of their own.
The local community will be invited to join the walkshop alongside visitors to the Walking Encounters. In 2023, I was privileged to hear some local people’s life stories, about the town’s children having to leave for their own safety many years ago. They made long walks to find new homes, and it was a long time before they returned (some never did). It is hoped that we can continue this conversation about home. A translator will be sought for ease of communication.
Hospitality
Walkshop
‘Homewards’ consists of a walk in search of a home where there will be a welcoming hospitality ritual and a ‘meal’ laid out for those participating. It will be quite a long, circuitous and hot walk ‘home’ and walkers will be invited to discuss the themes of ‘walking home’, ‘what home means to us’, and ‘what we need from a home’.
Both talking time and silence will allow participants to debate how much space and how many resources are needed before somewhere can be called home, and to reflect on what is available.
PsaradesPsarades
It is likely that the walkshop will take place in the middle of the day or in the afternoon heat (participants to cover up / wear hats) and last 2 hours in duration.
This proposal was accepted, but sadly I was unable to travel to Greece in 2025. Conceiving of the walk allowed me to engage with these important topics. At this time of permanent, temporary, forced and voluntary migration taking place globally due to climate change and wars, it is a vital subject, particularly for those lucky ones like myself who have a safe roof over our heads. I thank WALC (Walking Arts and Local Communities) who are the organisers of the Walking Arts Encounters.
In the meantime, I continue to welcome / walk / meet with refugees and asylum seekers who are arriving in Edinburgh, Scotland, many of whom are rehoused in Granton where I live. You may be interested in Walking Like a Tortoise (here and a longer post here) which included such walks and workshops.
I met Amy Tinderbox, Australian Walking Artist, at the Walking Arts Encounters. Her latest post is The Magic Study of Objects here.
Walking without a donkey 