Tag: Lines of Enquiry

Community Walking Projects

First Friday Walk

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.

  1. ///Causes.Host.Home
  2. ///Perky.Fetch.Useful
  3. ///Notice.Case.Bugs
  4. ///Linked.Tides.Eager
  5. ///Bounty.Belong.Only
  6. ///Maker.Exit.Corn
  7. ///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 installation
Under the Bridge. Edinburgh cycle paths. Photo Janette Kerr
Notice how cold stone
Is, in case of chills and piles 
Bugs me every time.
Where the 5-ways meet on the Edinburgh Cycle Path
Log sitting linked to
Ruth, tides away from here, though
Eager to connect.
Not Log Letters but Log Drawings (of the soundscape) 
Pigeon poo bounty
Belongs here under the bridge 
Who to? Only coo!
Despite the metal mesh, the pigeons roost in the roof of the old railway tunnel where Janette draws
Maker mark on pipes
No exit for the sewage 
Rose and corn coloured.
Strange, but serious pipes on the hillside 
First Friday walking
Notice the noise of the drill 
Retail shop going up.
Final stop: drawing together, opposite each other at the end of the Leith Path near the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
Some of the drawings made during the First Friday Walk (November 2024 by Janette and Tamsin)

Notes

On the ‘Log sitting …’ haiku: ‘Ruth’ refers to Ruth Broadbent and our project Conversations from a Log

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

Walking with Ants

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 fungus
Frozen 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