Category: Walking without a donkey – travels in Edinburgh

Community Walking Projects, Walking without a donkey - travels in Edinburgh

Terminalia ’24

‘Go Slow … Time After Time’

A community walk from the Granton:hub, Madelvic House w3w: wished.visit.silver

Captions for the images above: Left – The group, some from inside, some outside the Granton Boundary; Right – The group, checking out the wrapped-up Granton Gasholder, building site for new housing

At the edges of pavements, the walls of dilapidated buildings, the join between the land and the sea, and between homed and homeless, we wandered to mark the Festival of Terminalia on 23 February 2024.

Maps annotated by group members

We walked a route familiar to some and unfamiliar to others, according to a path previously visited 4 months earlier in order to make comparisons. Mapping as we went, we strayed off that path occasionally, moved across the boundary several times when the sea or a plant drew us, and noted changes wrought in the natural and urban landscape over such a short time.

Captions for above photos: Left – Electric Car Factory. Planning permission has been gained for housing. Middle – Where Granton Harbour meets the Brick (Granton or Royston) Beach at the Western Breakwater. Right – Sheila and Margaret.

Leaving the Granton:hub / Madelvic House, we started off through the wasteland area behind, past the old Electric Car Factory which was, unusually, open. We passed the travellers’ community who were building a big fire of tyres and other rubbish; the caravans housing the community which has found its way here in 1s and 2s over the last 5 years (maybe), surrounded by dismembered trees; a couple of renegade trailers where men were working – one a local barber who was known to one of our party so we stopped for a chat – between fences newly erected and ground scraped clear of its soil.

Nat pointed out the copse of silver birch which have been cordoned off for keeping, the result of our extensive lobbying of the developers. Here, an art repository is planned by the National Galleries of Scotland, way down the line. It was also the site of our community orchard (at the Tor), once upon a time.

Captions for above photos: Wasteland area behind Madelvic House where people and more-than-humans live, soon to be developed into an Arts Centre

We skirted ‘The Rabbit Run’ closely bordered by towering new blocks and also threatened to be raised to the ground, and turned down towards the sea along Waterfront Avenue – created, named and planned to be this wide, so we are told, to accommodate the trams, though there is, thankfully, no sign of them as yet.

Waterfront Avenue
Rabbit Run

Stories were told as we hovered at the corner: of the swift boxes often erected on lamp posts next to the Swift business sign (coincidence); of Jenny’s tenacity – spending an officially homeless year visiting the housing association and getting to know them until she was allocated an apartment in the community ahead of us; and of the day we planted the orchard (from up the road) on the grassy bank by more newbies to the area, The Pianodrome.

“With the dog, we went to the rabbit run, behind that Beech Hedge; I know it will all dramatically change very soon.”

Nat

Captions for above photos: Left – Swift poster, Middle – Where Jenny lives now (before the block was built). Right – The new orchard at The Pianodrome

Now we were on the far northern boundary of both Edinburgh as a whole and Granton, whose territory we were beating the bounds of. Many of us bemoaned the lack of access to the Brick Beach, but then a desire path was spotted which turned out to be a thoroughfare. Jubilation!

“for a while I’ve not been able to get through (the wasteland between West Shore Rd and the sea / brick beach) That’s been irritating, having that little cut through blocked off. That used to be on my route so I could get a seat and watch the sea for a while, undisturbed. Tonight we were able to walk through for the first time in ages.”

Kev

The day was at its evening cusp and it was darkling, so we continued along West Harbour Road which becomes West Shore Road, past the new-to-the-area Edinburgh Palette (what we hope will be new artist studios and home for a weekend Street festival), and turned left onto the Speirs Bruce Way (more stories of Antarctic adventures and explorers are linked to this place). We went hard by what’s left of Granton Castle where the Walled Garden is hidden (a citizen success story as it was saved from developers and now houses countless allotments, natural dye- and community soup-makers), with the Social Bite village opposite.

Captions for photos above: Two A-Z maps of Granton – 2004 on the left showing one gas holder, and 1999 on the right showing three as there used to be

I’m new to the area and walking is a way of feeling the local, recent history

Jenny

Uphill we traipsed, viewing the space for the new Granton Mural (end March 2024) and regaining the Gasholder. We stood in the rain to wonder why Caroline Park Avenue has become Waterfront Broadway, and returned to our starting point just as the fire engine arrived to douse the fire, now emitting acrid black smoke.

We’re from slightly outside the area. I’ve been down here a LOT walking the dogs so it’s very familiar, but it’s interesting to do it in a group because different people see different things. [Did you notice the changes?] Oh definitely.

Sheila

Toasting with a libation (warm apple juice), as is customary at this Festival, we swapped experiences, hopes and fears. Our discussion focused on the place where the inner landscape met the outer.

I used to like going there because of the nature around the gasworks. Because there was such a high fence and nobody could get in, it was undisturbed and there were wild orchids. To see it all demolished and a building site … it’s sad.

Maria

Along the bread line, the coast line, and the invisible lines between here and there, and us and other, we walked. It’s a time of great change in this area: trees taken down, blocks of flats going up, buildings repurposed and roads renamed (no-one knows why, though we suspect so-called ‘gentrification’).

The fire engine arrives just as we return to Madelvic House

You May also like (links)

Festival of Terminalia Community Walk 2024

Walking the Line Terminalia 2023

Granton Boundary Walk 2023 started on the Festival of Terminalia

Absent Trees of Granton

Festival of Terminalia 2021

© All photos my own

Walking without a dog - travels in Scotland, Walking without a donkey - travels in Edinburgh, Walking without a donkey - travels in Scotland

St Margaret’s Way

I walked this route in 2022 and it is a varied one –  urban and rural, located both inland and along the coast. I did so as part of a bigger project, Separation and Unity, in which I walked the landscapes of Scotland and Catalonia finding similarity and difference in their volcanic history and oak woods. I am interested in the human need for both togetherness and sharing, and, at the same time, recognition of individuality.

** Please do walk the first day of the St Margaret’s Way with us on 20th August 2022, from Palmerston Place to South Queensferry (or some of the way as you like). We will be starting at 10am – please tell us you are coming Facebook event.

The only Scottish pilgrimage named after a woman, the St Margaret’s Way, is representative of so many women’s stories – there are no waymarkers on the ground and apparently no detailed information online about it.

[These women were] “strong, creative, independent-minded

women who achieved a visibility in their society that led to recognition of sanctity.

Forgetful of their sex: female sanctity and society, ca. 500-1100
JT Schulenburg – 1998

And yet Margaret (c1045-1093) was a Queen. More, she was a highly influential, practical, intelligent and determined woman, who was later sainted, and is almost always described as pious. Someone who was dedicated to serving others, and mother to a queen and three kings (she birthed eight children in total), she was also a Hungarian refugee who must have understood what it was like to arrive on foreign shores after a long boat journey. Devoutly religious (Catholic), she was a pilgrim who launched a ferry service to take walkers across the Firth of Forth, before there were bridges, so they could continue to St Andrews.

St Margaret, Brabourne, Kent, from A Clerk of Oxford blogspot

She was not in charge of her life, you might say [because she was a queen and because of the age in which she lived]…. but she rose above that to become her own woman who would establish monasteries, infrastructure and so on. She would journey from being a potential pawn in power games to becoming a power in her own right, a power for good, a power for the poor…..

Tom Shields, St Fillan’s RC Parish Church Crail

Reading the backstories of female saints, you will find a common theme; how they were wanted by men and often had to go to great lengths to make it clear that they had other feelings and plans for themselves. Margaret was no exception (we are told in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles): “Then King Malcolm began to desire Edgar’s sister Margaret for his wife, but he and his men all argued against it for a long time, and she herself also refused, and said that she would not have him or anyone, if the divine mercy would grant that she should please the mighty Lord in virginity, with a bodily heart in pure continence in this brief life. The king urged her brother pressingly until he said yes – and indeed he dared not do otherwise, because they had come into the king’s power….though it was against her will” (translation A Clerk of Oxford blogspot ) [It goes on to say that God wanted it this way as she was to go on to “lay aside the sinful customs which that nation previously followed” including influencing the king himself, so it is clear that this was not an altogether unbiased account.]

Margaret and Malcolm Canmore, Scottish National Portrait Gallery mural

I am not a religious person, so my interest in Margaret is in her standing as a woman in Medieval society; the kindness she is said to have shown to everyone, including prisoners of war; what is recorded about her relationship with her husband (we are told that he was illiterate and that she read to him); and the role she plays in the history of walking pilgrimage.

a pathway of meditation and devotion

Margaret was exceptionally well read and raised in an environment of enlightened devotion and charity…throughout her life she balanced her charitable and family work with a desire for seclusion and contemplation. Margaret strongly supported devotion to the Celtic saints while also connecting Scotland with the Europe wide development of monasticism.

The St Margaret Pilgrim Journey
Scottish National Portrait Gallery mural

Maps and routes

The version of the St Margaret’s Way which I walked is 100kms / 62 miles in length. Here are the stages:

  1. Centre of Edinburgh to South Queensferry between 17km/10.5m-22/13.5 6 hrs
  2. South Queensferry across the old road bridge to Burntisland 20km/12.5-22/13.5 7hrs
  3. Burntisland to East Wemyss
  4. East Wemyss to Earlsferry
  5. Earlsferry to Cameron Reservoir
  6. Cameron Reservoir to St Andrews
The British Pilgrimage Trust St Margaret’s Way map. I walked the blue line

There are a number of maps available and I had difficulty downloading The Way of St Andrews one, so I used the Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA) which is out of date just now, though soon to be updated.

Before you leave Edinburgh, you may like to visit St Margaret’s Chapel at the Castle, the city’s oldest building (early 12th c), built by her youngest son, David. It is looked after by a Guild, all run by women called Margaret.

St Margaret

The Way of St Andrews website calls this path “a modern restoration of a medieval pilgrimage walk”. The British Pilgrimage Trust offers to email you a version if you fill in their online form, which I recommend. The path is also listed in their hefty and valuable tome Britain’s Pilgrim Places (Nick Mayhew-Smith and Guy Hayward) with a little, basic information.

Strangely, Follow the Camino describes walking the St Margaret’s Way as being in “the footsteps of Scotland’s patron saint, St. Andrew”, and Fiona Diack, too, in Spotted by Locals, notes that it “dates back to the 10th century as a way to honour St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland”.

Ian Bradley, in Fife’s Pilgrim Way, cites High Lockhart as devising the route in 2011 (p26), and Donald Smith (author, scholar and instigator of the Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh) as having devised the St Margaret’s Journey, offering “two routes from North Queensferry to St Andrew’s one using the Fife Coastal Path [the one I took] and the other broadly taking the same course as Cameron Black’s St Andrew’s Way.” (p27/28) which I am unfamiliar with.

The St Margaret Pilgrim Journey (link above) – a quite different tour from route I took

Note: The link on this page (Ways and Trails.co.uk) is out of date.

Pittencrieff Park, Dunfermline, Fife

Cameron Black’s St Andrew’s Way moves through Dunfermline where you can visit St Margaret’s cave; the Roman Catholic Memorial church which bears her name and to where a relic of the saint was returned in 1998, 900 years after her death; and the Benedictine Abbey founded by Margaret. Dunfermline Abbey and the ruins around it are all that remain of that Benedictine Abbey founded by her in the eleventh century. The foundations are under the present nave (or `Old Church`). Outside the east gable is where you can see her shrine, itself a place of pilgrimage since medieval times.

 ‘that âme d’élite’, the ‘exquisite St Margaret’,

Baker, Derek. “‘A Nursery of Saints’: St Margaret of Scotland Reconsidered.” Studies in Church History Subsidia 1 (1978): 119-141. citing Knowles, MO p 242.
Earlsferry, Fife

St Andrews was a very popular place to visit. From the south the pilgrims would have came via South Queensferry (where I walked), and then got the boat to Fife. From the south east, pilgrims arrived mainly from the continent at North Berwick, where they took the ferry to the opposite coast arriving at Earlsferry (the end of my fourth day). From there they continued northwards, cutting off the East Neuk (the site of the continuation of the Fife Coastal Path) and heading directly to the final city.

Looking at St Andrews, Fife

They travelled the last 15 miles on foot to St Andrews along a track the width of “a donkey with two panniers

Scotland’s Finest
Fife Coastal Path, Kinghorn

This web page has some fun information about St Margaret. Uncover Travel

More information about St Margaret

Early primary texts about St Margaret: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle‘s account of her marriage. Extracts from the Life of Margaret written for her daughter, by a monk, Turgot, Prior of Durham, between 1100-1107 who knew Margaret and her family well. He wrote that she, “showed herself to be a pearl”, and indeed she is known as The Pearl of Scotland.

Gerda Stevenson reminds us, however, that it was she who was credited with persuading the king, her husband, to ban the use of Scots in favour of English.

I yearned / for the old tongue my mother learned me on her lap, / words that once rose up from deep inside me; / but they’re lost, the well is dry – it’s like a fatal thirst / that can’t be quenched; and I know now why / my mother called her Margaret the Accursed.

from Quines by Gerda Stevenson (2018:34)

Whether you like to walk for the pleasure of the activity the beauty of the landscape or for religious reasons, please do walk the first day of the St Margaret’s Way with us on 20th August 2022, from Palmerston Place to South Queensferry (or some of the way as you prefer). We will be starting at 10am – please tell us you are coming Facebook event or you can email me on tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com

Have you already walked the St Margaret’s Way? Please do leave a comment below if you have; I’d love to hear from you.

Community Walking Projects, Walking without a donkey - travels in Edinburgh

Walking in Solidarity

1 April 2022 First Friday Walk

This month was my idea for the Walking the Land artists collective First Friday Walk. I had been reading about ‘dynamic stillness’, a term used by geographers and complementary therapists. Also, of course, I was following the war in Ukraine. 

I wrote, ‘Let us walk in solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are walking away from their homes and home country, searching, looking for another place where they can be still, to re-find themselves and safe emplacements. We will set out from a still-point (perhaps the place where we live, where we feel secure), and search for “the embeddedness of the sensing subject”.

‘We will ask, ‘Where do we feel embedded?’ ‘Where can we find a moving or still emplacement in the walk, or in the place through, or to which, we are walking?’

Some of us walked alone and others in a group, and we were spread all over the UK.

Emplacement 1

At home

I sit in the sun and listen to the quiet, then a bee sounds by my ear and some birds chorus. When I stay myself some more, I hear the distant waves, and the odd car – one rattles, needs something doing to it. The tree has got my back. Do I feel safe here? Yes, mostly. This place is known, I’m within the boundaries of my garden, inside the gate. Gulls screech. I am grounded with my feet flat on the stones. Below them is the earth – I know that because there is a solitary primrose which has grown up through them. My sitting bones still hurt though.

On the wooden bench beside the Wheatley Elm tree

Sketching, I have a metallic taste in my mouth and frustration in my wrist as I try a third time to get the angles right. I am attempting to draw the smell of the dead brown Xmas tree which I keep meaning to take to the dump.

Dandelion heads like a bicycle wheels still spinning

1.05pm I begin my walk and am immediately struck by the fact that I am choosing to leave my home and the people of Ukraine have no choice. Yet, the dandelions are so cheery

Ominous skies and a horizontal rainbow – portents

As I walked, I thought about a story I watched last night on the Channel 4 news. A Ukrainian woman was knocked unconscious and trapped. When she came round, she dug out her husband and friend and they escaped from the bombed theatre in Mariupol. Hundreds were not so lucky. She said she felt no emotions, had no feelings. This, I know from my work, is a sign of trauma.

Doomed

In Edinburgh, I heard a woman speak on her phone as she passed me: “No time to think about such frivolous things”, she said. A child’s swing in a nearby garden squeaked as it swung.

There are no queues at the bus stop

Fallen blossom petals are strewn on the pavement. I hear a dog walker saying, “All present and correct. Have a nice day” as she leaves the park.

As I passed someone else walking her dogs, and this man repairing his boundary, I wondered if the people I am walking with in spirit had to leave their pets behind, and how long it would take them to repair their broken walls if they ever get home again

Gated for security. Will it keep out the invading forces? Protect the inhabitants from bombs?

Text 1 comes in from Richard Keating, my counterpart in Gloucestershire: “I’ve just walked a few miles from home, crossing the Nailsworth Valley and am now looking west towards May Hill. I have lived on this side of the valley for 25 years so feel very much at home here. … However the wind is cold and I’ll be glad when the pub opens its doors. Imagine how a refugee would feel as a door is opened for them. As a home is shared.”

Abandoned tank . Devastation . Clearing up the rubble

The mother said, “Grandma gave her toys to me” and her little son replied, “Do you ever see her?” And then I am aware of the importance of familial relationships, of the personal artefacts passed down, of interrupted generations and houses and possessions all lost.

Impaled

On the pavement, I am treated with courtesy and kindness as a man, wordlessly, stands aside so I can pass, and smiles. 

I heard that some Ukranian people who were only able to go to Russia, have been interned. It’s beyond my comprehension

I hear the father say “Oh you want to touch that” and he lifts the back wheels of the buggy up so that the little one can stroke the leaves of the hedge.

Emplacement 2

I am wedged between two upright logs, one on either side, and there is a solid one underneath me. I teeter – I am not as safe as I might be. I can’t see behind and would therefore only know if someone was coming if I heard them. There’s a lot of noise coming from all over the place, from different directions so I can’t distinguish if one of them is someone approaching me or not. I can reassure myself, though, because there’s not a war raging here in Scotland.

I hold on and stretch back, the sun is warm. I hear a foot meeting a ball and it clatters against the goal posts. Her heeled footsteps pace beyond the hedge. A dog barks. Distant voices, nearby cars. Smooth wood under my palms, a taste of…of…cucumber… and cedar. Is that a taste or a smell? There is a breeze. Cold at my nostrils, of air, perhaps exhaust fumes, a hint of the warm wood. I have been worried that I’m losing my sense of smell, but maybe it’s OK.

Emplacement 3

I receive a second message from Richard: “We’ve made our first stillness and are moving on. Your script has been well used.”

Warmer, wider and flatter under my bottom, I have lots of space on this tree stump. My lower back tilts which relieves the pain. I am facing north now, but I have the same awareness of people perhaps coming from behind. Cars wheel beyond the hedge which doesn’t seem dangerous because, to my knowledge, one has never driven through it into the park. Then I realise danger can come from above and see that the tree top obviously fell down, though presumably in the recent storm and not on a day like this…

Blasted tree

I can smell the sun on my skin and when I touch it, it is warm. I put my warm hand to my cold nose. The wind is coming towards me here bringing…. what? Ice from the Arctic? Again, my feet are off the ground and it strikes me that this is less safe as it would take me longer to put them down and run away. Footsteps behind me; I know they are male. They come up, go past, without stopping. The taste (yawn) is of old apple. Mhmm. And some metal.

Moving on, I thank the man who has painted the pavilion a gleaming privet-green. He’s busy clearing a thin layer of turf from around the perimeter. We chat about the public toilets they installed late in lockdown and then took away again because someone had to watch them all the time due to the vandalism. He said that there is already “a Ladies and Gentleman’s Cloakroom” in the building, so all they needed to do was to make it accessible for people with disabilities and then there would be a permanent facility. I said, no-one ever asks the people on the ground who know.

A spent shell?

Emplacement 4

I am amongst insistent birds, beside the ever-running Water of Leith, on a hard log. The brambles are intrusive. Or maybe I am. I smell humus and rotting plants, someone smoking weed. I taste coffee (a mid walk treat), and there’s the touch of cool, smooth, dry bark on this knarled trunk.

People walk right past but don’t see me – I’m by the Rocheid Path but off the beaten track. The car sound pollution is distant. The rambling couples always come back in the other direction after a few minutes because it’s a dead end.

I try to sketch the detail of the log

I wonder, will Putin withdraw, or are they just regrouping for a heavier bombardment? It sounds like he’s out of rubles but… . I am obviously carrying the story with me as I walk, snippets of it anyway. 

Tickling leaves at my neck, ants (maybe) under my thigh.

I see drops of ‘blood’ everywhere 

My scarf is getting ruined, snagging on the thorns – as if that’s a big deal, in the circumstances. When I try to wind it around my neck again later, I am scratched because portions of blackberry branches are still stuck in it. Invisibly.

I ask myself, how can I maintain awareness of these horrifying occurrences and still live comfortably here, and Richard suggests that we could focus on better understanding “this connectivity between us all”, and I know that this is what these walks are about. I’ll share the walk, invite a response, and celebrate others’.

At 15.35 I am tired and I wonder if the Gloucester lot are having tea. I try to imagine where they are and what they are doing, without the aid of a newsflash or twitter feed.

I start on my return home with the scent of wild garlic in my nostrils.

Shattered
Double graves
Trapped
Impaled
Clinging on

I pick off an individual leaf of lavender and squeeze it between thumb and finger tip. I inhale for the pleasure and calm.

Sending our best wishes to the people of Ukraine, that they might find safe and still places to become embedded once more
Finding Refuge, Looking for Shelter by Lucy Guenot

In Walking the Land, we connect with each other via computers and phones. You can imagine these ‘meetings’ as emplacements, still places in which we innovate, stabilise and share our ideas. Then, see how we move out into the landscape on our walks, dynamically. If we stay in touch with each other as we walk, using What’sApp maybe, or even tweeting with a hashtag #, we remain in contact via a collective still-point while we move at the same time. If we post on social media after the walk, representing the body movement in ‘stills’ and fixed words, there is a further version of this ‘dynamic stillness’.

If you have work to share in response to this walking prompt, please send it to tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com 

#walkingtheland @walkingartists1

Community Walking Projects, Walking without a donkey - travels in Edinburgh

Winter Solstice Walk 2

22.12.21 Please refer to the previous blog before reading this one as it explains the premise of the walk and my plan. Phrases in bold refer to the walking score prompts.

As we move towards a repeat of last winter’s restrictions on movement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I took my Solstice Walk #52More No.16 as a collective endeavour – remotely with Elspeth Penfold and Blake Morris who devised it, and with my friend T. We had planned to lunch at a café with our daughters (6 between us), but the Scottish guidelines changed on Monday to a maximum of 3 households at any one meeting, and B and A both wanted to limit the possibility of picking it up in case Xmas and New Year plans are jeopardised. So, T and I could not do away with the outside; instead, we had to do away with the inside – and brave the cold.

The walk, Silverknowes, Edinburgh

We met at Gypsy Brae and walk towards Cramond, through Silverknowes, a notoriously windy and exposed stretch of Scottish coastline.

I was invited to walk through a book and I stretched that a little by using an app called Tsubook which I contributed to a few years ago. It shows the Shiatsu channels on clever body maps which can be tilted and turned so that you can see all aspects and angles. There are views with bones, muscles and the internal organs to enable the practitioner to identify the location and relationship of the acupressure points in as much detail as they want.

Taken from https://www.hantrainerpro.com/tcm/chinese-english/translation-zhongfu_lu1.htm with thanks

I chose the Lung meridian story. The points all have Chinese pinyin names which have been translated into English, and they sound surprsingly similar to the names on Elspeth Penfold’s Map of the Forbidden City which she used for her walk. In addition, we were walking and asking, ‘how does walking function as a storytelling mechanism?’ and these channels have a sequence about them. The Yin meridians often begin close to the central core of the body, and as they flow along, carrying or containing the chi of the Organs which give them their name, the points or access places along the way reflect the journey that the chi takes. From large spaces (in this case, a Palace) through rivers and ever smaller tributaries, they move outwards along the limbs to the small bones of the fingertips and the border between us and the outside world, the people whose skin we touch with ours.

Chi

We struggle to adequately translate this amazing word because it contains so much. It can be thought of as energetic vibration. In earlier times, people were better tuned into this aspect of themselves than most of us are today.

Many centuries ago, the Chinese believed the body was sacred and should not be cut up. Even if it was damaged through an accident or illness, the aim was always that it should be repaired sufficiently so it could eventually go on to meet the Ancestors in as complete and whole state as possible. They didn’t dissect each other, nor examine their insides, but instead relied on how they felt, using metaphors and comparing the sensations to what they knew well, which was the natural environment in which they farmed, fished and lived.

The names of the acupoints are poetic and descriptive, encapsulating their individual and collective function (including that of the Organs) and the location. Thus, the sensation of the radial side of the arms, the internal sensation of the flow of chi which emanates from the lungs, which changes through our lives and at different times of the day according to our activities and the weather and external pathogens, is alive, it’s an on-going story.

From Elaine Liechti’s book, Shiatsu

I have known T for many years, since before the children were born, and we keep in regular contact. I consider the relationship with her to be one of the important ones in my life, and so it was good to share this time with her. When any of us walk, we don’t walk in isolation, not from each other, not from the landscape we walk through, and not from the world-situation in which we are situated.

Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar ‘Palace’, Zaragoza, Spain

Central Palace

The Central Palace is the translated name of the first point on the Lung channel, and it relates to the importance of the lungs. Their domed ceilings, interconnected corridors and meeting chambers play a the vital role in keeping us alive. It is in the lungs that we exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide and maintain a balance of gases. From an emotional and spiritual point of view, their function can be extrapolated to encompass the quality of our communication with each other, the literal noise we make enabled by the air passing through the throat, and by extension the gestures and movements we use for the same purpose, whether speakers or not. They are associated with our corporeal existence, represented by the breath which situates us right here in the present, and consequently the loss of the ability to exchange, and the absence of the breath which characterises death. Covid challenges all of that, affecting the respiratory system (coughs, sore throat, runny nose, the struggle for breath), and our exchange with the environment (smell and taste) in addition to our need or instinct to withdraw from each other and feelings of alienation.

Lung 1 – 4

Our walk-story begins from our central location, home, and the travelling homes which are our metal cars, in other words our Central Palace. (I would usually walk there but I was going on to make a large Xmas food shop). Shiatsu practitioners and acupuncturists touch or needle this point to sedate the Lungs, to calm and smooth the Lung chi in cases of coughing. T and I are saying ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ and catching up with each other. We walk on stone, beside low walls where small dogs trot, and Cramond island, separate and stately, stands out in the sea mist. The air is fresh in my nostrils and I take a series of deep breaths.

Cormorant and Cramond Island, Edinburgh

Cloud Gate

Above our heads is cloud, a lid of unform grey which has been low down for days. Cloud Gate is an acupoint which descends and disperses the Lung chi, giving the body the chance to redistribute excess phlegm away from where it clogs and stops us breathing and communicating. T and I are swapping work stories now, the busyness of the end of term, and the urgency of the festive deadline. A solitary cormorant stands on a single rock.

The distinctive shape of a cormorant (from a distance)

Celestial Storehouse

Other brave walkers stroll and cycle past us in the opposite direction, and ahead is a café, a Storehouse for sure, but Celestial? Its musak is only just audible from a distance, and we hadn’t yet got close enough to see the Buddhas which decorate it. The surround-sound, high-pitched voices of gulls intersperse our family chat – who is doing what and going out with whom. It has been noted that Lung 3, as we prosaically call it, assists with depression, characterised by isolation and lack of communication, as well as the familiar respiratory disorders. The towering and distinctive Scots Pines which we walk under have a dark, olive canopy drawing our gaze heavenwards.

Silverknowes Scots Pine On another day when the sky was blue!

Cubit Marsh

By the 5th stage of the walk, we are onto the topic which sadly still dominates, and T told me that her G is ill with it in Glasgow, meaning she can’t join them for the holiday. We use Cubit Marsh, found in a small indentation at the elbow (cubitum), when someone is suffering certain types of pulmonary disorders. It is useful to think about the body having an internal weather system – prone to Heat and Cold for example – and, in this case, the acupoint is said to deal with Damp, something which is injurious to the Lungs, hence the name of Marsh, a wet and boggy place. It isn’t hard to understand why it is beneficial for infections, then, where there is discharge and snot. The water we are walking beside is very still, it barely circulates, and the Oyster Catchers simply sit, floating very slightly. Brine hangs in the air and the cold stings our cheeks.

Lung 3 – 11

Collection Hole

Reaching the café, we choose hot chocolate and wait at the hatch for our steaming drinks. The man who attends to us wears his neckerchief over his mouth and nose and serves at arm’s length, pushing the card machine across the surfboard which doubles as a counter. I tap without touching and try to make eye contact to say ‘Thanks’.

Down to the water’s edge

Broken Sequence

The Lung meridian now diverts to converge with the Zen Bladder channel (from the water element) and unblocks any stuck chi. At Silverknowes there is access to the foreshore where railings and steps break up the homogenous slate sea, leading down to the rocks and sand. Wind surfers like this spot and in the past I’ve watched them grasping the tow-line attached to a speed boat which zips and angles giving them the impetus to sail suddenly up into the sky, spray flying. It’s an exhilarating spectacle. We stop walking and choose a wooden bench, hoping it will be warmer to sit on than the metal ones. I had Covid recently and got off lightly with only a cold and a scratchy, irritable throat and tightness at the occiput (back of the top of the neck), which Lung 7, Broken Sequence, was very useful for.

Looking eastwards

Channel Ditch

Missing out no.4, we continue with the sense of depth that the Marsh at no.5 brought and the story continues with the second of four wrist points. With the prosaic chat now out of the way, T and I talk about matters close to our hearts and we turn tail under the spitting rain. We see the same landscape from the west now, the bay curving round to a finger of land that seems to reach out to the Kingdom of Fife. We are flagging a little as daylight thins and the haar descends, moisture palpable on jeans and bobble hats.

Lung 7 – 11

Great Abyss

The 9th point on the Lung Meridian goes even deeper, hence the name. It connects with the Po, often called the Corporeal Soul, the Lung spirit in Chinese Medicine. It connects with the spiritual aspect of ourselves.

the Po [also] allows for a tricky balancing act of living life as a human being, namely that of being a creature of spirit inhabiting the body of an animal.

Acupressure.com

T and I are nearing the end of our walk and we start to reminisce, remembering walks we took 30 years ago and relatives who have since died. It is satisfying to be able to connect with someone who knows my background so intimately. It stabilises me and gives a sense of shape to my life.

John Kirkwood continues,

Lung 9 is able to go down into the abyss, to the depth of the soul. It can retrieve a person who has lost their way, calm one who is manic, stabilise someone who feels like they are cracking up or losing control. In short, it can reach down into the very depth of a person.

Crossing the bar and, metaphorically, the wrist crease, we amble eastwards, an easy, flat trajectory which allows the focus to be on what’s said and on the feelings expressed, rather on the terrain. The short day (it being just after the solstice) closes in around us.

Walking west

Fish Border

We leave the edge of the Firth of Forth, home to cod and pollock where the tide is now receding, and head towards a gift exchange. We hug and make plans for the week between Xmas and New Year; T suggests we come to sit around their fire pit and drink mulled wine which sounds delightful. The Lung channel is nearing its end and the fresh air has renewed us. Our walk-story has merged interior and exterior, past and present, day and evening, sea and land: Yin and Yang. Two friends met in place, and in spirit I was with Elspeth, Blake and the other Solstice walkers, telling a tale.

Cramond Island
Community Walking Projects, Walking without a donkey - travels in Edinburgh

No Birds Land

A site-specific sound-art installation in the Trinity Tunnel on route 13 (Trinity to Granton) of the Edinburgh cycle path network where it goes under East Trinity Road #nobirdsland

August – November 2021

The installation team. Thanks to Andrew and the team who were taking a walk and kindly stopped to offer their assistance. It was much appreciated

Location

Find it here: ///hands.calculating.wiping (South end)
wins.trial.preoccupied (North end) 55.976045, -3.203276

Sound poem

This is the link for the sound poem which you can listen to as you walk through the tunnel. You will need headphones to hear it. It is hosted by soundcloud and this link will take you there:

No Birds Land soundpoem on Soundcloud

You can also access the sound poem from the QR code on the signs at either end of the tunnel if you have a smart phone.

Our wildlife is key to our environment, and, with so many of our iconic bird populations in decline, it’s vital that we invest in supporting and protecting them. It’s a unique piece of art and I’m looking forward to visiting it. I’m always excited in art that explores wildlife and our environment. I will be heading to the unlikely location of Trinity Tunnel where I will stop, relax and listen to the birds.

Scottish Greens MSP for Lothian, Lorna Slater
Downloading the sound poem onto his phone from the QR code at the entrances

In the poem, I am not pretending to be a bird, nor reproducing or emulating realistic bird sounds and song. I am acknowledging how easily we attempt to wield power over other species and appropriate others’ languages without their permission.

text-no-birds-land-tamsin-grainger-2Download

Sometimes it’s only when you don’t see them that you notice they’re not there.

Amanda Thompson

The Trinity Tunnel

The Trinity Tunnel is a disused railway tunnel that is now part of the extensive Edinburgh cycle path network. Before and after entering the tunnel, the air is full of birdsong; inside there is little or none. This sound-art installation recognises that no birds land or alight there (although occasionally one flies through), that it is a sort of ‘No Man’s Land’ for birds, though humans built the sandstone structure to transport goods and each other between Granton Harbour and the rest of the city.

No Man’s Land originally denoted contested territory between fiefdoms, even a place of execution. It is now often remembered as a WW1 area of land between two trench systems which neither side wished to cross due to fear of attack and death. Except, that is, on Christmas Eve of 1914 when it is known that British, French and German soldiers came together to smoke a cigarette, carry out joint burial ceremonies, and have a chat – somehow communicating in their different languages.

In this place of cold stone where moisture trickles and calcite forms weird shapes, no birds land and no birds sing.

Hooks on the west wall of the Trinity Tunnel before the bunting was hung
Bird bunting hanging over a metal hook on the inside of the Trinity Tunnel, No Birds Land Edinburgh. Lift the flaps -do they really say….tweet, tweet, caw, chirp, cluck?

You will find signs saying ‘Stop! Listen to the Birds! at the two entrances to the Trinity Tunnel which is 183 of my paces long (146 yards, 390 foot). A double track railway ran through here from 1842. Above your head is an elliptical or horse-shoe shaped roof with new, brighter lighting (thanks to the council).

In the tunnel itself there are a series of hooks on the west wall (as you are walking towards Granton), which were for cables and wires when the tunnel was used by the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton Railway before it ceased operations in 1986. Festooned along them is a length of bunting made of found materials with illustrations of birds. On the reverse of each pennant is a word which aims to recreate a bird sound, an explicit appropriation of an other-than-human ‘language’. A pennant is a commemorative flag, used historically, but I prefer to call it Bunting, a word that has been used since the 14th century for a lark-like bird which we know as yellow-hammers. Yellow hammers are said to sound as if they are saying ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’. Try saying it fast!

All about the birds

RSPB Yellow Hammer info and song

The birds you see are sketches and impressions, they’re not real. The sounds you can read on the reverse of the pennants are rough translations of what are actually rich varieties of tone and timbre. They have been translated into the less melodious, simplistic human words. The only bird sounds you will hear in the tunnel are these approximations: tic tic tic tic – the Robin’s warning call, chiff chaff chiff chaff chiff chaff, tweet tweet tweet, you know how it goes – chirpy chirpy cheep cheep chirp. I cannot play you their songs in this place, even if, as in the Japanese shopping centres, they might calm you, bring a smile to your face.

This is no place for the birds; this land, like so much of the British Isles and elsewhere, is inhospitable and uninviting to them.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

Rachel Carson from Silent Spring
The Trinity Tunnel runs under East Trinity Road on route 13, and is easily reached on foot (approx. 10 mins) or by bicycle (approx. 5 mins) from the Granton end where it can be accessed from where trinity Road meets Lower Granton Road near the sea front

In the Trinity Tunnel there are no ledges nor perches, no nooks and crannies to nest in. There is nowhere here to stand and preen feathers or sing from. We are replacing old barns and houses which had eaves and rafters, with edifices of vast glass windows and metal corners, but birds cannot live or raise their young in and on them. We are clearing hedges, spraying pesticides and extending fields so far to the edges that birds natural habitats are destroyed and poisoned. In the UK, we have created places where birds used to, but cannot now thrive. This has resulted in drastic changes in avian behaviour and deaths. There is more info on the RSPB site here.

In the 2 minutes it takes me to walk through the tunnel, it is believed that 2 pairs of breeding birds will disappear. (See below for source).

If we listen, tune in to birds, we can learn. Mozambican people can whistle to honey birds (or honeyguide birds) and understand their calls. The birds tell them where the bees are, the people harvest the honey and this lets the birds get the wax and grubs afterwards. It benefits both – it really happens.

scientists have now discovered that the birds can be attracted out of the trees by a distinctive trilling sound that local hunter-gatherers use while looking for honey. According to the researchers, hunters are taught this special trilling noise by their fathers.

Jules Howard in The Guardian

In other parts of the world, women and men have learned to flute and trill like their native birds, so that their voices carry across dense forests. They are amplified, making sounds that are far bigger than we are (like wrens do closer to home).

There are some who recognise the difference between a warning call and a serenade – think of that! If we all knew and taught our children, we could choose to keep out of the way of birds when they are nesting, and delight in their courtship rituals. We could be warned, too, that a hawk is overhead or a fox on the prowl down below.

In the absence of birds, we would have to create them, to create our own version of them, their song, and appearance. But I ask you, how long will it be before we forget what they sounded and looked like, before we have to rely only on recordings and photos? Will we lose the memory of what delights us about them, will we forget our felt sense of how they really were, how it was to be in the same world as them?

In the silence of the Trinity Tunnel, you don’t have the privilege of being regaled with their songs.

No Birds Land on Vimeo

No Birds Land Video on YouTube

You may also be interested in:

A second art installation and sound walk on the Chancelot Path of the Edinburgh cycle path network: Is There a Place for REVOlution or Peace and Biscuits

Links

The sound poem was inspired by Gertrude Stein’s If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1912) and the quotes are by Stein and Gail Simmonds’ in The Country of Larks

This project was shortlisted for a Sound Walk September award and can be found on Soundcloud.

The information about bird statistics comes from birdlife.org

Some of the tunnel information came from forgottenrelics.co.uk

Here is the Guardian source in the quote above

No Birds Land is in partnership with the RSPB and Sustrans.

With thanks to the City of Edinburgh Council and the following people: Ewan Davison, Ken Cockburn, Cosmo Blake from Sustrans, Erica Mason and Nick Hawkes from RSPB, Fiona Underhill of the City of Edinburgh Council, Eleanor Bird, Jim Campbell, Amy McNeese-Mechan, Logan Rutherford, Alan Moonie, Stephen Knox, Cammy Day, and Alice Cockburn.