I’ve been repairing my sound walk, No Birds Land, in the Trinity Tunnel of the Edinburgh cycle paths.
Tomorrow morning there’s a community walk along the Trinity Path where it’s situated and I’m going to say a bit about how I made it and why, play it to them, encourage participants to Stop and Listen to the Birds, and put the installation into the context of the tunnel, the old railway, and the history of the area.
It’s a wet and mucky job as the rain comes in and runs down the walls, bringing with it all sorts of minerals and deposits in a wonderful array of subtle and extreme colours. The there are the mosses and lichen, spiders and flies, and lots of tiny feathers embedded there too.
Mosses and minerals inside the Trinity Tunnel, Edinburgh The wet walls of the Trinity Tunnel, site of No Birds Land
As well as the pleasure of working in this environment and discovering the little messages and additions folk leave or add, it’s the interaction with the walkers, runners and cyclists I enjoy.
The first man stopped running and asked about what I was doing. He shared his experiences of going from light to darkness, activated the QR code, and thanked me.
Another woman kept running but called she called out, “That looks lovely!”
I offered a card to a couple of guys sheltering under umbrellas, who said “Yes please”. Then one said he’d already listened on a previous occasion and smiled.
Keith – he told me his name: – stopped and used the QR code (his son had told him about the ones along the Water of Leith). He asked me if it was the same sort of thing and I explained. “Nice to meet you”, he said, asking my name, and walked off, listening, so that my recorded Sound Poem rang out in the #trinitytunnel
A huge white, wet, fluffy dog barked and barked. I like to think he was v enthusiastic about No Birds Land as a work of public and activist art!
Sadly, someone has stolen the sign from the south end of the Trinity Tunnel #edinburgh Local graffiti on the opposite wall of the Trinity Tunnel, Edinburgh
If you’d like to join us, here are the details: Join the Drylaw Neighbourhood Monday Morning Walking Group and me for a tour on 28th July of the Trinity Path. You will learn about and listen to the No Birds Land soundwalk (funded by RSPB and Sustrans, shortlisted for a Sound Walk September Award) and Trinity area local history.
Either meet at Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre (DNC) at 10am (free return bus) or at the path entrance on Trinity Rd near the junction with Lower Granton Road. What3Words ///since.page.tells at 10.45am.
Ends approx. 12.15 at Trinity / back at DNC by 1pm.
Bring a pack lunch and drink if you like, plus something to sit on and keep you dry in the event of showers.
A sound walk and installation made in a tunnel for ‘Watch This Space’ #4WCoP23 September 2023 using graffiti by North Edinburgh artists and local history. Listen here.
Hand stitched pennants in the Ferry Road Tunnel on the Chancelot Path. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
Location
‘Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits’ is a site-specific Sound Walk and Art Installation on the Chancelot cycle path under Ferry Road in Edinburgh. It is on Google Maps and the location using What3Words is ///fallen.reach.bottle
You can use your phone to activate the QR code and listen while you walk through the tunnel. You can also listen at home (without the full effect).
Understanding the text
The text of this Sound Walk uses other people’s sprayed graffiti words, so it sometimes sounds like nonsense. In it, I am playing with the found text, trying to make sense of it. Sometimes I read the words (like ABDO or REVO) from left to right (as English) and sometimes from right to left (as Arabic), highlighting the effort we often have to make to understand each other, and how important it is that we do. Because this is a sort of creative prose or poetry, I also make up my own words to fit in with the letters I find.
Sound Walk topics include:
Local history
Communication between us (reading and language)
How to keep yourself going when everything seems bleak
How the Red Line has been used in activism, in this and other countries
The capitalist system and whether it helps us
Slowing down and noticing nature; using wall- or street-wisdom
Site-specific Art Installation
You will find hand stitched pennants looped on a red line on one side of the tunnel. The string of triangular flags are hanging from old metal hooks which were originally used for cable and wires when this cycle path (or greenway) was a railway. The images and found text are from the walls and surfaces around North Edinburgh.
#4WCoP23 Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
“AET REY NOOD Do you recognise this language? DAERB REY TAE. Can an internet app translate it? It’s ABout DOing / Or Don’t Be And (face the consequences).” This is text from the new Sound Walk. For clues, see the images below.
Doon Yer Tea, graffiti on the North Edinburgh cycle paths. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
I’m playing with words, making my own acronyms which are inspired by the found text. For example, ABDO (reading from left to right and back again from right to left etc) becomes: “And Between Doing Or Don’t Be. Anyway, By Doing Otherwise, Deciding to Be And Bide, Doesn’t Our Doing Become……A Beautiful Door Opening. Or Don’t Butterflies Ascend?” Am I speaking in riddles? I hope I haven’t lost you.
ABDO, graffiti in the Ferry Road Tunnel of the Chancelot Path. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
Is There a Place for REVOlution or Peace and Biscuits mini-videoREVO and BISTO, two of the most familiar ‘words’ of graffiti found in the Ferry Road tunnel of the Chancelot Path. Is There a Place for REVOlution? ABDO (reading from right to left: ODBA) is a character in Egyptian writer, Deena Mohammed’s Your Wish is my Command, a graphic novel. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
Using found words / graffiti that spoke to me
Unless you people see signs and wonders you will never believe
80% of ocean life is dead
Many
Deaths
Lives Matter
Unfuck the system
Fight
REVOlution, Revolt, Revoke
Part of the Peace and Biscuits sound walk script
Postcard made for the 4th World Congress of Psychogeography 2023. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
In this soundwalk, there’s some local history, activism and suggestions for when you are in a dark tunnel and cannot see the light at the end, the way out. There’s a film here on Vimeo that gives you a (silent) idea of the walk.
Walking across the Red Line . The Red Line is a symbol that a line has been reached and should not be crossed. An example of this would be the amount of carbon emitted into into our atmosphere. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
“I often use Street Wisdom if I need to get an insight on a situation or a problem. Once I’m tuned up, I’II hold the issue and just walk with that in mind and body, and see what happens. (It’s basically a shorthand way of doing the Quest: “Streets, show me some options with all this!”) Something often, if not I j. The other day I was full of different stresses, and the streets shared with me all kinds of patterns that seemed interconnected. I interpreted that insight as “Everything’s connected” (it’s nice to reduce the insight to 2 or 3 words). And that really helped!
Local graffiti Edinburgh. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and BiscuitsHand stitched pennant. Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits
With MANY thanks to Alba Bersolí (film maker ‘El día que volaron la montaña’ (When the Mountain Rumbles shown at the Catalan Film Festival in Edinburgh 2023 on Instagram @albabresolí ) for lending me her laptop and teaching me some Premiere Pro, going above and beyond to support me, and being an all-round wonderful woman.
New pennants (August 2025)
Notes
‘Your Wish is my Command’ is a graphic novel by Deena Mohamed reviewed here in the Guardian newspaper. There is a charcter called Abdo in it. ABDO is a word graffitied on the wall of the Ferry Road tunnel on the Chancelot Path where my Sound Walk is located.
My Sound Walk has been short-listed by walklistencreate.com for a Sound Walk September Award 2022. I am delighted.
I’m sorry to say that this installation has become ragged from the weather and time. You can still walk the wall and listen to the Sound Walk on your phone, but you will need to access it either before you leave home or from here if you have sufficient data, as there is no QR code currently at the site.
Location: Western Breakwater, Granton Harbour. What3Words ///piles.cargo.whips Walk along Chestnut Street, turn left onto Hesperus Crossway. The very long wall is straight ahead of you (possibly through a gap in the temporary fence) across some wasteland.
Here is a pdf with information about this sound walk and art installation.
Sound Walk and Art Installation, September 2021-September 2022
Sound Walk September, a global festival, has come round again and I am minded to reflect on the year that No Birds Land has been in the Trinty Tunnel on the Edinburgh cycle paths. Here is last year’s blog with all the details about location, transcript and documentation.
Funded by Sustrans and the RSPB, No Birds Land was shortlisted for a Sound Walk September award in 2021, and a year later, No Birds Land is still up, albeit in a different form.
Cave paintings
The preparation time for No Birds Land consisted of lengthy email conversations, and long hiatuses between communications with lots of departments of the City Council and tunnel owners; a frustrating process. I was in contact with all my local MSPs and Councillors, most of whom were very helpful, and some who pulled strings behind the scenes I think. In the end someone (maybe anonymously) telephoned me and suggested I go ahead!
What remains?
Although I had initially planned for wooden A boards at either end of this place where birds cannot nest or sing and hardly ever fly, the signage folk persuaded me that street signs would be better, given the weather and so on, and they have been fantastic, standing stalwart through wind and rain. With their air of familiar street furniture, you need to look twice before realising that they are something a little bit different. Furthermore, covered in graffiti and stickers nowadays, they blend into the tagged landscape beautifully.
The sound endures on the cloud. The QR code printed in indelible inks, its distinctive black and white geometrical pattern prevailing, is the interface between the ubiquitous mobile phone and ‘Soundcloud’, where it sits waiting to be triggered and listened to (to date 1462 people have listened). It’s an eerie experience for me to walk or cycle through and hear my own voice: “What can you hear? Hear, hear. What can you he-he-he…?”
I never thought it would still exist so much later, indeed I was asked how long it would be up for, and warned by several people that it wouldn’t last long, what with vandals and so on. Also, that I better watch out for any danger it might cause.
So what has changed?
The very long string of bunting with bird images and sounds on it, was trickier to install than I imagined even though I had my friend, tall-Andrew, to assist, so people stopped. They wanted to know what we were up to and immediately started to help. This community involvement has continued.
For 6 weeks it was untouched, but in October when I proudly led a group of Pilgrimage for COP26 hikers through to show them, it had suffered its first attack (maybe because school half-term had come and gone) and much of it was lying in pools of bright orange water, the run-off from the walls which had collected ores and elements on its way down.
Look at the colours the rain has co-created with the graffiti and the wall itself!
I had been checking almost daily before we left for Dunbar and the start of our Climate Trek. I would stand or sit close by to watch people interacting with it, listening to their conversations if they were in groups, and asking them what they thought if I sensed they were up for a chat. On Sunday afternoons, perhaps the busiest time of the week, about 40 people an hour went through and of them, 20 stopped to look, listen and comment. Despite my fears, it had stayed whole.
At this stage of the Pilgrimage, we had a journalist with us who was interviewing me as we walked and my distress was obviously clear because other members of the group started to kindly collect the parts and attempt to make good. However, we had to continue on our way to South Queensferry, so I phoned artist-Lesley that evening and asked her if she might do her best to attend to it until I was able to do so myself, and she kindly obliged.
Rotting twine
It has taken on a life of its own
Since then, unseen passers by have often repaired and rehung lengths. I used to do it myself but after 6 months, I thought I would leave it to have its own life, and now I see new types of string connecting the pennants, and sections which weren’t there one day have magically reappeared the next. Someone messaged me to say she had found a string of them on Wardie Bay beach. Little changes have been made, signalling the care that has been taken, and also showing, subtly to me, that there is understanding of the work itself.
See how s/he has used a fork of wood to prop it away from the wall to keep it dry – good idea!Who is the artist?
The graffiti scrawlers add to it, another artist has complemented it, and nature has made many changes. Walking with Jim Slaven along the canal as part of the Art Festival in August 2022, I was interested to hear him comparing the 2 tunnels along the Forth and Clyde, how one was built soundly, is dry and in tact, and the other was not and lets in the rain. Well the engineer who built the Trinity Tunnel, Thomas Grainger (no relation, even though that’s the exact name of my grandfather who was also a tunnel engineer and worked in Trinity House in London!) didn’t do a great job, because ‘my’ tunnel is verr-ry damp.
And No Birds Land seems to still have life because when people ask what I do and I tell them about it, they know what I mean. They say “Oh yes, I’ve seen it.” Happily they almost always add, ” I like it”. Walking along an adjacent path recently, I met a Community Policeman and he knew it too. Talking to dog walkers who were telling me what they thought of the new Sound Walk / Installation, The Wall (my entry for the Sound Walk September 2022), I heard, “Oh you are the artist! Yes, I listened to that and told my neighbours on the stair, “You must listen to The Wall’. We need more of these.” It’s heartening, of course.
The Wall, Western Breakwater, Granton Harbour
What is much harder to ascertain, is the effect that No Birds Land has had. Has it informed people about the plight of our nesting birds and why that is happening? Has it suggested alternatives to the prevailing habits of designing glass buildings with no ledges for birds to perch on, nor eaves for them to make their nests under, for example? That is so much more difficult to guage.
This type of long-term intervention in a public space, which is used by commuters and other regulars as a through-way between the sea and the city, encourages people to eventually stop and check it out, it allows for re-listening and sharing with friends and family (I have been told this). It went up at the tail end of the Covid restrictions, at a time when walking was still super-popular, and so there is a high footfall (12-48 people an hour on average). It has repurposed the space and brought art outside and to its audience.
Where can you go to walk along and listen to The Wall?
Here are the co-ordinates: 55.984877, -3.232373
What 3 words: ///piles.cargo.whips
Enter Chestnut Street, turn left along Hesperus Crossway and at the end of the street, walk straight ahead. It may be necessary to find a gap in the fence. You will see the wall in front of you and the QR code should be hanging on a bracket in the section to the left of another wire fence. Otherwise, you can access the Soundcloud recording using the link below and it will tell you what to do and when.
So-called common ground
The developers regularly shut off the area (which is ironic (see below)) and it’s sometimes hard to get to this installation. However, if you are unable to, you can listen below, look at the photos, and imagine you are walking!
At the very edge of the harbour, bordering a piece of scrubland whose time is nearly up – it won’t be long before it is ‘developed’ – is a tall wall separating the reclaimed land from the sea. It’s hard to find out who built it and why, but I have a pretty good idea. It’s marked as Granton Breakwater on google maps, although there are in fact three ‘arms’ to the harbour: the best known is Eastern Breakwater (note that the beach, Wardie Bay, is to the east side of that); the Middle Pier (recently renamed Chestnut Street – why?); and the Western one where the soundwalk is located.
chamomileBuddleiaRose Bay WillowherbThe land has been allowed to get on with flourishing
This is a spot of ‘guerilla art’, in the same vein as guerilla gardening!
Walls have been in the news in recent years and this unprepossessing one tends to go unnoticed, with the general exception of dogs and their companions. It borders the area which is, as I say, undergoing intense development, most of it for the luxury market. The plans show that there will be concrete walkways and a communal ‘garden’.
Walls serve complex functions and produce varying effects on the socio-geographical aspects of an area, an area in this case which has a rich history. The Granton community used to work and play here every day, it was alive with industry, and their voices can still be heard if you listen carefully.
Before – the site of an old railway with hooks for cables
In the meantime, small parts of the harbour have been returned to straight channels of water, and the railway line and its attendant buildings have, in the most part, disappeared.
It is a psychogeographer’s dream!
After
Keeping people in check – restrictions
The wall has a distinctive voice. It is not shy to speak, indeed it wants to be heard, it has something to say. After all, it’s another of those structures, like trees and the sea, which is always in one place, come rain, come shine, and has therefore witnessed a lot of what goes on over the ages. The southern end is still covered with roughcast, a sort of pebbledash, and if you look carefully there are fragments of crockery and other interesting hints of these lives.
(Beware the thistles! And try not to crush the chamomile, although if you arrive before midday you can gingerly remove a handful of flowers for a tisane which will taste quite delicious compared to the tea bags you can get in Lidl. The plants will simply send out more blooms in response, and their days are numbered).
Chamomile
This is a land of fences, and as fast as ‘they’ put them up, people have found ways through. Mostly. This was, after all, common ground for nearly 200 years. However, there are two places now where access / exit is impossible, making it necessary to approach the installation the long way round, past security cameras, and for no discernible reason.
Hesperus Crossway
During the past few years, place names have been changed, walls have been smoothed over, fittings removed, and ‘messy’ buildings have been redecorated so as to almost wipe out any hint of their former daily functions. The result is a gentrification and appropriation (in the name of regeneration), which erases most external reminders of the past. It must be remembered, though, that ‘the past’ was made by people, and many of those people still live in the area. Their memories are part of who they are; this past is a valuable part of their lives.
The chalk mural will disappear over time, and if a previous installation, No Birds Land is anything to go by, it may also be vandalised. These changes will be part of the duration and time-based aspects of the piece. It will be difficult to know who walks, hears and sees the installation, but by pacing the edgeland like this, learning about this liminal area and feeling the effect it gives, it is hoped that you and it will be stimulated. (Since then I have used spray chalk to redo the mural which should last longer in the weather.)
The Wall
You can locate this soundwalk and installation by taking the West Harbour Road, and turning onto Chestnut Street. There is a ‘Private’ sign. Turn left onto Hesperus Crossway, and go to the very end of the road.
what 3 words: ///voted.cycles.impose
Slip through the fence and walk forwards. It is a dead end, and in front of you is The Wall.
The sign says that this land is privateSecurity camerasNote the cycle lane opposite a ‘no cycling’ sign!
There is a new fence to your left, meeting the wall at right angles, part of which has been pushed down. You can go over that into the section of scrub land and walk towards the wall. There you will see the QR code to scan with your mobile phone and can then listen to the walk (headphones will probably be best).
Slip through the fenceIt’s a dead end with a wall. There is also a new fence at right angles on the left
You will see some of the chalk drawing ahead of you, and the wall (made of sandstone from the Dukeof Buccleuch’s quarries on the Granton Estate, ashlar and some of the larger facing blocks were quarried in Fife) stretches to both sides with the main part of the installation to the left. Once you are listening to the audio, you can walk in each direction according to the instructions, or make your own choice. In total the sound walk is 13 minutes 44 seconds, and it could take you around half an hour to 45 minutes to explore the whole.
You can walk south, inland towards the cityYou can also walk north, towards Fife
Please note that there is nowhere to park except on West Harbour Road, so it’s best to cycle or walk. Or, you can get a bus to Granton Square (16, 47, 19, 200) and walk from there – it will take you around 10 minutes.
If you are not in Edinburgh or cannot get to the harbour, here is a link to the audio part.
Quotes and references are from/to
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Wreck of the Hesperus
Rachel Carson Under the Sea Wind
RLS ‘From a Railway Carriage’
Local street names
I have tried to upload the walk to the Echoes app but it has been unsuccessful. I will try again later.
You may also like to download the Curious Edinburgh app, which will take you to other aspects of the harbour and tell you all about it. Also the Granton History and Railscot websites.
Walking without a donkey 