WAYFARING: MAKING LINES IN LANDSCAPE A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Alan Hockley Department of Sports Management, Faculty of Design, Media & Management, Buckinghamshire New University, Brunel University June, 2011 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author under the terms of the United Kingdom Copyright Acts. No quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement 2 Abstract The interpretation of landscape, the significance of walking and the relationships that exist between them are rarely considered or critically examined in much of leisure research or outdoor pedagogic practice, despite their significance within other fields of academic study such as anthropology and cultural geography. This research seeks to explore how a variety of landscapes are perceived, how cultural and social interpretations influence this perception, and whether these interpretations may be re- envisioned by walking, or wayfaring, as an alternate way of making understandings and meanings with landscape. In exploring the disparate interpretations surrounding landscape, the concept of place and its specificity comes to the fore, as does the importance of the relationship between walking and how we make sense of place. A mixed methodological approach is employed to explore this relationship, combining auto-ethnography, phenomenology and the practice of walking itself. Utilising written notes, photographs, and recordings of personal observations and impressions made whilst on a combination of single and multi-day walks in a variety of locales both familiar and unknown in England, a series of reflective narratives were produced. These narratives serve to describe the experiences gained whilst wayfaring, and provide the data through which critical consideration is given regarding how landscape and place are interpreted in cultural and social contexts. Themes emergent from the narratives and discussed include psychogeography and the urban environment, countryside and suburbanisation, and landscape as amenity. In addition, consideration is given to stories of place, authenticity of place, the changing demographics of walkers, walking alone and with others, walking in different types of landscape, and the significance of paths. Key findings are that landscape is increasingly becoming places of consumption through practices of conservation, urbanisation, heritage and recreational amenity that produce a homogenous and hybridised character, and reflects an urban sensibility in regards to rural culture and nature. This might be resisted by walking where an engagement with the sedimented characteristics of a taskscape and its multi-generational footpaths are experienced. Such an embodied practice is a meaningful activity that might be understood through the concept of existential authenticity and, particularly with regards to long distance walking, might be 3 recognised as having components similar to that of pilgrimage. Furthermore, it is suggested that wayfaring offers an alternate perspective as a practice in the development of a particular relationship with landscape and place and has profound implications for outdoor pedagogic practice. 4 Acknowledgements Throughout the course of working on this thesis I have received much support, advice and encouragement from a number of different people, and would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their contributions without which my research would not have been possible. First, my thanks go to Professor Barbara Humberstone and Dr. Fiona McCormack for their patience, advice, support and encouragement throughout the period of my research. They both provided invaluable contributions in many different ways to the development of the ideas I was engaged with for which I shall always be grateful. I would also like to acknowledge the help of those within the Research Department for the Faculty of Design, Media and Management, in particular Laura Bray, and my fellow research students there with whom I had many interesting conversations and exchanges of ideas, in particular Ina, Emily, Muhammet, and Zoe. Thanks are also due to Buckinghamshire New University which provided funding for much of my research period and to attend a number of external conferences and workshops, and also to many of the lecturers and support staff there who directly or indirectly supported my work on the thesis. Finally, I wish to thank my family for the help and encouragement they have given over the years, and in particular my partner Sue for her love, assistance, support and patience. 5 Dedicated to my father Derek Hockley and my mother Pam Hockley 6 Declaration I, Alan Hockley, declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and have been generated by me as the result of my own research. This thesis has not been submitted for any other degree. 7 Contents Chapter One Introduction 1 Research Aims and Objectives 3 Thesis Structure 9 Chapter Two - Landscape The Cultural Landscape 11 The Origins of Landscape 16 The Phenomenological Landscape 19 Mythical and Spiritual Landscape 22 Ancient Sites in Landscape 27 Landscape and Place 31 Landscape, Place and Outdoor Learning 37 Chapter Three ? Walking Standing on Two Feet 45 Walking and Landscape 48 A Brief History of Being on Foot 51 Cultures of Walking 58 The Long Distance Walk 62 Urban Walking 66 Walking as a Pilgrim or to Protest 68 Gender, Ethnicity and Walking 70 8 Chapter Four - Methodology Paradigms of Research Methods 72 Auto-ethnography 77 Walking as a Mobile Methodology 84 Biography of Author 86 Summary of Research Rationale 89 Chapter Five - The Urban Pedestrian An Introduction ? Psychogeography 91 A Drift and Algorithmic D?rive 99 Through a Townscape and Beyond 104 Another Local Wander 109 An Analysis 114 Walking Urban Place 117 Chapter Six - Walking in the English Countryside An Introduction 127 Whiteleaf Hill 136 Homogenisation and Counterurbanisation in the Southern Countryside 141 Chapter Seven - Walking the Wall Eastwards An Introduction 150 Walking the Wall Eastwards ? Bowness on Solway to Steelrig 153 Exploring the Wall ? Haltwhistle and an Excursion along the Wall 166 9 Chapter Eight ? Walking the Wall Westwards Return to the Wall ? Vindolanda and Housesteads 170 Walking the Wall Westwards ? Wallsend to Steelrig 174 Chapter Nine ? Walking the Wall An Analysis 185 Tourism, Consumption and Authenticity of Representation 187 The Consumption of Heritage 187 The Representation of Authenticity 193 A History of Walking the Wall and Tourism 202 The Long Distance Walk 209 Walking the Wall ? Approaches and Perspectives 213 A Phenomenological Journey 213 Walking as Pilgrimage 215 A Conclusion to Walking the Wall 219 Chapter Ten ? Haltwhistle Walking Festival An Introduction 221 10 North of the Wall 222 The Full Moon Walk 224 South of the Wall 226 Stories and Place 230 Connecting the Personal with Place 237 The Sociality of Walking with Others 239 Chapter Eleven - Making Lines in Landscape An Introduction 244 The Cheviots 246 An Analysis 255 The Decline of Walking 255 Walking Paths 258 11 The Spectral and the Wayfarer 266 Chapter Twelve - Conclusion Conclusion 269 Recommendations for Further Study 284 References 285 Appendices 307 Appendix I - Pilot Studies 307 Appendix II ? The Cloud 313 Appendix III ? Notes on D?rive 316 12 Chapter One Wayfaring ? travelling, especially on foot. From Middle English waifaringe, journeying, from Old English wegfarende: weg, way; see way + farende, present participle of faran, to go on a journey. Faerd (Norwegian) ? a walking journey. ?A faerd is about the journey, not the destination? ? Nils Faarlund. Introduction Walking is an activity that most people take for granted, since it is a skill most of us learn very early in childhood, even before we are toilet-trained and have spoken our first words. Maybe because of this we rarely question why we walk, how we walk, where we walk and what is achieved by it, particularly since walking carries multiple cultural meanings and practices. Walking as recreation is one of these cultural practices that has developed, and is connected closely to being a way of perceiving, appreciating and having a relationship with landscape, but again this particular practice, perception and relationship has received little enquiry. Therefore, this research project seeks to explore how a variety of specific landscapes are perceived, how prevailing cultural and social interpretations might influence this perception, and whether these interpretations may be modified by walking as an alternate way of making understandings and meanings with landscape. It is through the combination of individual perception of a landscape and its multiple storied character that interpretations can be made of it, and from such interpretation a relationship is brought about between the observer and the place (Tuan, 1974). When a landscape is unfamiliar then the interpretation relies more upon an individual?s immediate perception of it (Spirn, 1998), influenced by the cultural and social implications it has for the observer (Schama, 1995). As a landscape becomes familiar, however, so then one?s interpretation of it tends to become more heavily influenced by its storied nature (Lippard, 1997; Cresswell, 2007) and so one?s immediate perception becomes mediated by these external sources, and in that 13 interpretation a process using the imagination is employed by the individual to conceptualise these stories of the landscape (Tilley, 1994; Macfarlane, 2003; Massey, 2005). In either case, any experience, interpretation or understanding of landscape is problematical in that it defies a singular perspective because it is reliant on these complex multi-faceted relationships between the individual, the cultural and the social. In examining how landscape is perceived and understood during the process of walking, I asked the following questions: a) How does an individual (I and others) perceive the experience of walking? b) What are the relationships that the self has with those various landscapes walked through, and how does individual perception and cultural and storied interpretations of landscape influence these relationships? c) In what ways are the imagination and understandings of landscape influenced or changed by walking, and what alternate perspectives might be developed through this practice in regards to landscape and place? What follows in this introduction further examines these questions along with a broader explanation of my research aims and objectives. It also provides a brief description regarding the content of the thesis, including my review of current literature, the methodology of research undertaken, and the following chapters? individual themes. 14 Research Aims and Objectives It is claimed that walking is Britain?s most popular outdoor recreation. The Ramblers? Association (2008) claims that 9.1 million adults in England, or 22% of the population, walk recreationally for at least 30 minutes in four weeks, whilst in Scotland, 30% of adults walk recreationally at least two miles in four weeks and in Wales 31.6%. Walking is the main activity for 27% of visits to the coast and 34% of visits to the countryside, and 65% of all visits to woods or forests are people going for a walk. These figures suggest that recreational walking is a pursuit that is close to being a mass participation activity, but the reliability of these statistics needs to be viewed with caution; the anecdotal evidence is that walks of more than a few miles are much less likely to be undertaken (Kay and Moxham, 1996), and the idea of a walk as a journey by which to explore a landscape through the course of a day or longer is an increasingly rarely found concept, particularly amongst the young (Edwards, 2007). Furthermore, between 1986 and 2005, the average proportion of journeys on foot fell from 34% to 23%, a decrease of 32%, whilst the total distance walked per person per year fell from 390km/244 miles in 1986 to around 320km/200 miles in 1995 (Ramblers Association, 2008). Kay and Moxham (1996), investigating countryside access for recreational walking via the footpath network, identified that only a small section of society are responsible for most of the visits to the countryside and for engaging with the majority of outdoor activities, including walking. Over half of the population rarely make such a visit. In addition, the evidence they collected also suggests that such visits are in overall decline and that many ?find themselves imprisoned in safe havens within very short distances of their cars; they are captured by picnic sites, well publicized villages and other ?honey pot sites?; and they are subtly frightened of being lost, metaphorically, no less than literally, on paths leading into unknown depths of the countryside? (Kay and Moxham, 1996:180). Whilst Kay and Moxham suggest more thought needs to be applied to the marketing of path networks and their design by regional and local authorities in order to expand recreational walking to the wider population, some consideration might also be given 15 to the cultural and social role that walking has in our society, how participating in the activity is communicated particularly in regards to outdoor learning and education (these terms are not synonymous and a definition is provided in a later section), and whether there are alternative perspectives regarding walking, landscape and place that may have a role in encouraging participation. The walk, particularly the long distance walk, has long been an activity central to many outdoor learning and recreational programmes. From short rambles in the countryside or day walks, to weekend or weeklong hikes, such journeys undertaken, often whilst carrying the basic requirements of shelter and food so as to be relatively independent, are one of the mainstays of achieving some of the aims of outdoor education. When the walks are of longer duration, it is the challenge element of the journey that is often emphasised in traditional Outdoor Education (Drasdo, 1972, Mortlock, 2000); the pitting of one?s physical and mental resources against the terrain, the weather, and the distance. The learning to work as a member of a team or a group is also cited as a benefit of this form of activity, as is the ability to appreciate differences amongst individuals, and learning to respect them. Travelling through specific environments such as the mountains or moors is often a common aspect of these trips, for example, the Duke of Edinburgh Award (2011) and Outward Bound (Miner, 1999). The experience of being in these places is also another reason given as to why the long distance walk or backpacking is used in outdoor education, although exactly how that experience manifests itself to the individual is rarely considered. Whilst there is much emphasis on the teaching of navigation, safety, nutrition, equipment, teamwork, and organisation for walks, particularly those of longer duration and in mountainous areas (for example Langmuir, 1995; Long, 2004; Ogilvie, 1993; Jardine, 2001), how the walk is experienced and meanings are made of the landscape travelled through is rarely explored. The landscape passed through is often presented as a resource to be used, a backdrop that provides the necessary components of hills, valleys and streams and where, ideally, there are few people to be encountered, or as an example of a particular geology or natural environment whilst on a field trip, the walk to it is an incidental aspect (Keighley, 1998). The specific qualities of different landscapes, how all are repositories of particular histories, myths, stories, and mysteries, and how these 16 culturally influenced phenomena are perceived, felt and imagined, by the walker are aspects that are less often of consideration, and only recently have been taken seriously and researched from a pedagogic perspective (Stewart, 2008; Wattchow and Brown, 2011) and this is from an Antipodeans? perspective. The visceral encounter with the land using both body and mind is rarely explored; the journey is described in terms of events and encounters, the landscape a mute bystander, rather than being described through what is perceived, how that perception might be enhanced by its storied elements, and the feelings and emotions provoked by these elements, whether together or separately. Therefore, this study considers the role both long distance walks and shorter excursions in my local area may have in the development of an understanding of the landscape and environments passed through, with a particular regard as to how places are perceived through the process of walking, their cultural and social underpinnings, their storied aspects, and how these may contribute to gaining a deeper relationship with landscape and sense of place. I make these walking journeys, therefore, as a wayfarer, in that it is the journey and not the destination that is my focus (Ingold, 2007), and my wayfaring is made in England, exploring a range of different environments. Towns, industrial areas, wasteland, and residential suburbs are as much a part of a journey as the moors and mountains; it is these landscapes and the developed rural countryside used for agriculture that make up the vast majority of the land to be encountered in England. This research explores journeys in a number of these locales and others, seeking the different ways of being in, understanding, relating to, and learning about landscape offered by a peripatetic perspective. This is undertaken by considering landscape and the stories that bind it to a range of specific cultural and social interpretations or meanings that people past and present made or make of it. In this way a ?feel for? or ?sense of place? is developed as landscape is personally and socially experienced and observed. The combination of the personal observable phenomena of landscape with how it is storied by inhabitants past and present, has an effect as to how landscape is subtly altered and re-envisioned in the imagination. Exploring on foot specific environments has received some critical enquiry (for example Wylie, 2005; Olwig, 2008, Lorimer and Lund, 2008; Lorimer, 2011) but little in terms of the urban and semi-urban landscapes (with some notable exceptions 17 such as Adams, 2001; Bassett, 2004; Edensor, 2008), despite the fact that it is within these areas that most English people live and work and where they spend most of their time. It is in these spaces where a community or culture may define itself, and where an individual may create a sense of their identity. These elements of the locale have considerable influences upon how these landscapes are perceived, understood, and encountered by individuals. Walking through and around one?s local area provides the opportunity to explore both the familiar and also to seek out those unknown corners previously unnoticed, ignored, or avoided. The exploration of various landscapes in England through walking provides opportunities to engage with each in depth and kinaesthetically (Edensor, 2000; Wylie, 2005, Lorimer, 2011), encountering and considering in an embodied manner that utilises multiple senses obscured or hidden aspects not easily apparent from the passing cursory glance. Such deep engagements take landscape from being just a backdrop, appreciated only for its aesthetic qualities, to something that is alive, dynamic and evolving, a milieu of cultural and social engagements (Ingold, 2000), a space of memory, mystery, and imagination. This form of engagement provides for the investigation of the relationships between the landscape, or place encountered and the individual (Tilley, 1994; Ingold, 2004; Ingold and Vergunst, 2008). In this way, the meanings and stories that may be drawn from it are explored through the feelings and emotions it provokes, and the affect it has upon the imagination of the perceiver. Furthermore, walking is an embodied practice that is a dialogue with the world; each is shaped by the other. As Ingold (2004:333) observes ?Through walking... landscapes are woven into life, and lives are woven into the landscape, in a process that is continuous and never-ending?. A consideration of these elements that encompass how the self experiences and makes connections to the landscapes passed through whilst engaged in a walking journey, both long and short, may be of some worth to practitioners of outdoor learning, providers of outdoor recreation facilities, and those bodies responsible for the preservation, upkeep or interpretation of landscapes, whether deemed as culturally significant, or of no special interest, even mundane. It is these areas of interpreting landscape that this thesis explores, and since such an engagement with landscape is largely a personal experience, the relationship between the landscape encountered and self is explored using an auto-ethnographical 18 approach. In this way I the walker, through considering the feelings and emotions a landscape provokes and the meanings and stories that are drawn from it, can come to understand landscape as a more vibrant phenomenon through its affect upon the imagination of the perceiver. Researching the subjective experience of walking through the variety of landscape to be found within England provides some illumination as to the following: how an individual perceives the experience; the relationship that the self has with that landscape; the role different landscapes and their cultural and social formations have upon that perception and relationship; and whether the practice of walking contribute in the development of an understanding of landscape, or of developing a different perspective of it. Through walking a landscape and considering its qualities, its stories, and how it relates to oneself may also connect to a broader interpretation of place that some educators in many parts of the world are considering, although in the UK these elements have been of limited investigation (Harrison, 2010). Many are interested in the development of environmental and ecological ethics and are turning to the indigenous cultures in their countries as a way of informing of a worldview regarding their land (in Australia and New Zealand for example: Martin, 2003; Birrell, 2005; Ellis-Smith, 2005; Stewart, 2008). These worldviews challenge some of the prevalent concepts of outdoor learning, and purport to be non-dependant on the Western philosophies concerned with dualism, rationalism, and objectivism. These writers offer the alternate philosophy of their countries indigenous cultures that consider that the land exists not just for humans, but for all of nature, and regard the landscape topography as being a storyboard of their connection to it, with almost every feature within it having some significance as to their cultural and sacred legacy. By introducing students to these alternate worldviews available in their respective countries, these writers and outdoor educators try to provide a way of gaining a deeper understanding of their land. Arguably in the UK there are no longer such indigenous cultures that display a respect and sustainable regard for the land, and so an alternate worldview that is part of this land may appear to be unattainable. However, the elements mentioned earlier, its storied nature, being a repository of cultural and social engagement, and of memory, mystery, and imagination, which may be discovered whilst walking through 19 landscape, may offer perspectives that appear to reflect a degree of similarity as to how indigenous cultures relate to their landscape. Through a phenomenological exploration of landscape on foot, seeking to uncover and investigate its storied nature and the mythic elements transposed upon it, both ancient and modern, alternate views may emerge that challenge dominant ways of understanding and controlling these spaces. By investigating walking as a methodological process by which to discover different landscapes and their associated storied elements, a building of a relational identity between self and the landscape may be developed. Since the places encountered are all repositories of rich and diverse cultural and social histories, this mnemonic of past and present held within the land offers many interpretive possibilities to be considered when engaging with landscape. In order to address the research aims and objectives of how places are perceived through the process of walking, considering their cultural and social underpinnings, their storied aspects, and how these may contribute to gaining a deeper relationship with landscape and sense of place, I undertook a series of walks ranging from one day to multi-day trips that passed through a variety of landscapes. These explored areas I was familiar with and local to and also included regions unfamiliar and distant. The choices of these walks were not arbitrary; they were undertaken with specific objectives in mind and developed in a sequential way from one to the next, each informed by its predecessor. The method of the research reflected the subject in that it too was a journey, and I was following a path both as wayfarer and researcher. 20 Thesis Structure In Chapters Two and Three of the thesis, a review of literature considers the key issues and themes that my research was engaged with. Chapter Two addresses what meanings are attributed to landscape, and how the experience and perception of it is a process of phenomenology. Landscapes? origins are traced from an artistic sensibility through to being interpreted in social and cultural contexts, considering how ancient myth, history and stories of landscape have informed our relationship with it, and how human activities or dwelling on the land have helped shape it. Leading on from these discussions considering landscape, some contemporary issues regarding place and space are explored. The final section considers the influence outdoor education programmes may have had in developing particular attitudes towards both walking and landscape. In Chapter Three, walking is discussed in its biological, historical, social and cultural contexts. It is considered as a basic characteristic of the human condition, and integral as to how landscape, environment and place are perceived, experienced and engaged with. The historical and changing cultural underpinnings of walking are explored, from its origins as transport and labour, through changes of attitude brought by the Renaissance, Romanticism and the urbanisation brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The final section of this chapter considers walking in the context of different cultural practices engaging with place. In Chapter Four, the methodological approach for this study is discussed. Paradigms of research methods are considered regarding their potential to carry out the empirical research. Drawing from my research aims and objectives, together with a consideration of some specific academic research processes from a variety of fields that investigate the experience of the walking/landscape combination, an auto- ethnographic approach is identified as being particularly suitable, employing reflexive narratives exploring the experiences encountered by an individual (myself) with the landscape. This methodological approach is discussed, as is the developing field of mobile methodologies. A final section provides a brief overview of my background and values since these have a key bearing regarding the development of the themes within the research. 21 The following chapters in the thesis contain the main body of research narratives and discussions arising from them. Chapter Five considers the development of psychogeography as a particular way of understanding urban place from a pedestrian?s perspective, followed by three narratives of walks undertaken in my local area, and then an analysis and discussion regarding the walker in an urban setting. Chapter Six deals with a walk in the south of England countryside, drawing upon a narrative of a circular walk made regularly by me that illustrates issues regarding homogenisation and counterurbanisation of landscape. Chapters Seven and Eight recounts the experience of walking the course of Hadrian?s Wall and exploring the surrounding central section in a series of two lengthy and two shorter narratives. Chapter Nine then considers how such a trail and the monument is considered as both tourist amenity and heritage, how the long distance walk is a markedly different way of encountering landscape, and landscape becomes hybridised and commoditised phenomena. Chapter Ten is based on my experience of walking with guided groups whilst attending the Haltwhistle Walking Festival. Narratives describe three of the walks I joined, and from them the themes of stories and place, connecting the personal with place, and the sociality of walking with others are discussed. Chapter Eleven contains the narrative of a multi-day through the Cheviot Hills. Following on from this, the changing demographics of walking is discussed, the significance of paths and trails considered, and some of the qualities that wayfaring possesses examined. Chapter Twelve has a final conclusion along with recommendations arising from the research and a consideration of further studies that might be followed in the future. 22 Chapter Two Landscape ?There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast? (Paul Scott Mowrer). The Cultural Landscape Landscapes are more than different topographies, they hold different social and cultural constructions and embodied practices that have multiple meanings (Marshall, 1992; Seddon, 1997; Muir, 1999), some of which may conflict or be contested, and others that are less immediately obvious. They may be described in a myriad of ways; as economic or leisure resources (Featherstone, 1991; Urry, 1995), as places of work and dwelling (Ingold, 2000), or play or learning (Henderson and Vikander, 2007) as home (Mais, 1927) or as a foreign land, as ecology (Abram, 1996), as geography and geology, as heritage (Hoskins, 1955), as archaeology (Bender, 1993), as urban (Edensor, 2003, 2008) , rural, countryside (Bunce, 1994; Cloke and Little, 1997) or wilderness (Macfarlane, 2007; Griffiths, 2007). They may be considered as a place or a space (Relph, 1976; Casey, 1993; Massey, 1995a, 1995b; Lippard, 1997; Massey, 2005) a region, territory or nation (Mais, 1927; Matless, 1998; Mitchell, 2002; Agnew, 2008), as an artistic view (Jensen Adams, 2002) or a route, as a map, or even an allegory for somewhere else (Harmon, 2004), a place imagined or dreamt (Macfarlane, 2003). Landscapes are also symbolic (Cosgrove, 1998; Muir, 1999); they might be interpreted and reflect the hegemonies of gender (Rose, 1993; Sharp, 2008), class, and ethnicity (Said, 2002), or considered as a spiritual entity (Goodman, 2002), and have been interpreted through myth, legend, and stories that tell of a landscapes past and its relationship with its inhabitants (Chatwin, 1987; Trubshawe, 2005). The Cultural Landscape Foundation (2009) provides one answer to the question what is cultural landscape: ?Cultural Landscapes provide a sense of place and identity; 23 they map our relationship with the land over time; they are part of our national heritage and each of our lives? They describe four types of cultural landscape, each capable of falling under several categories, these being a designed landscape (a site consciously designed or laid out in a recognised style or tradition; a vernacular landscape (a site that has evolved through the activity of people and reflecting social and cultural attitudes and character of an individual, family or community); a historic landscape (a site significant for its association with a historic event, activity, or people); and an ethnographic landscape (a site that contains a variety of natural or cultural resources that associated people define as heritage resources). Cooper (2010), however, suggests that the cultural landscape is regarded in two rather different ways; for some it refers to landscapes that are invested in cultural significance, even virgin jungles and mountain wildernesses, whilst others (including himself) refer to it as landscape that bears the mark of human intervention and control. Cooper discusses the cultural landscape as being within the discourse surrounding the aesthetics of everyday life and critiques the ?older environmental? ethics which presupposed a sharp distinction between nature and the human domain. He proposes that cultural or ?hybrid? landscapes provide a reminder of the implausibility of separating, even notionally, the possibility of human creative practice and a way of experiencing the world. Whilst recognising that Cooper is candid that his approach to the subject is from the perspective of farming and gardening, he somewhat ignores the first consideration of what the cultural landscape may be regarded as; landscape invested in cultural significance and so including ?wild? land, the connotations of which being very much derived from a Western cultural tradition (Adams and McShane, 1996; Lehtinen, 1999; Lopez, 1986, 2004). In a consideration of what constitutes the cultural landscape, it may be beneficial to conclude that it encompasses a broad field of philosophical enquiry, all of which provide particular perspectives that may inform a developing discourse regarding culture and representations of landscape. Jenks (1993:11) summarises the development of the concept of culture through a four-fold typology: 24 1) Culture as a cerebral, cognitive category that may be on one level a highly individualistic philosophy or on another a philosophical commitment to the particularity, difference, or even superiority of humankind. 2) Culture as being a more embodied and collective category that invokes a state of intellectual or moral development in society, linked to early social/evolutionist theorists competitive views on degeneration and progress, and taking culture into the realm of collective life. 3) Culture as the collective body of arts and intellectual life of one society, particularly associated with exclusivity, elitism, and specialist knowledge and socialisation, where it is established as within the realm of the produced and sedimented esoteric symbolism of that society. 4) Culture as a social category or as a way of life of a group of people that is pluralistic and has become to be the concern of the fields of sociology, anthropology and latterly within a localised sense, cultural studies. All these suggested typologies may still be cited as a way of describing a particular derivation of culture, but for the purposes of this thesis, considering culture as having a relation with social structures, a way of life and symbolic representation provides a starting point for a consideration of what is meant by ?the cultural landscape?. From a sociological perspective, whilst the terms cultural and social structure are often conflated, culture is often differentiated from social structure because of the viewpoint of it being an ?emergent process stemming from social action? (Jenks, 1993:26). Culture therefore results from the social actions arising from shared beliefs, interests and ideologies. Considering culture in the anthropological sense, it has played a central role in the discipline ever since Edward Burnett Tylor brought it into common use in the sense of the totality of human knowledge and beliefs, growing through innovation and intergenerational transmission (Wallach, 2005), being the fundamental values that guide human behaviour. From the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, cultural studies have emerged that incorporate elements of what both consider as culture with some modifications. Cultural studies holds to an anthropological view of being the whole life of a people, but not to the view of culture as a totality. Proponents of cultural studies also recognise the socialisation of identity and seek to understand the processes that bring this about and culture is not seen as fixed or in stasis but rather as emergent, dynamic 25 and a process; ?cultural studies is predicated upon conflict rather than order... is interdisciplinary? and ?cultural representations are viewed by cultural studies at all levels? (Jenks, 1993:157-158). Regarding landscape, Sauer?s (1963:343) central point in his 1925 essay The Morphology of Landscape is that ?culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result?. Whilst this position has been at the centre of much critical discourse and revisionism, as a basic explanation of what the cultural landscape might be considered as, it has been argued that it still holds some relevance (Schein, 2008). The theoretical concepts from cultural anthropology and landscape history that were incorporated in the first half of the 20th century into cultural geography demonstrates its interdisciplinary nature which still continues, and was added to in the 1960s that began an ?emphasis on the symbolic dimension of human activities, the relevance of historical understanding of societal processes, and a commitment to an interpretative epistemology (which) challenged the scientific reductionism and economism of a positivist human geography? (Duncan, Johnson, and Schein, 2008:1). It is Sauer?s (1963) positivistic stance that has been increasingly criticised (Cosgrove, 1983) because it posits culture as being an entity separate from individual human actions (Duncan, 1980). It also ignores the symbolic dimensions of landscape, the symbolic and cultural meaning invested in these forms by those who have produced and sustained them (Cosgrove, 1998). In a similar way to cultural studies, cultural geography spawned and was shaped by developing discourses including feminist, poststructuralist, postmodern, hegemony, diaspora, and post colonial studies and theories to such an extent that ?it has become futile to try to conceptualize it as a unitary field with a coherent agenda or well- defined boundaries? (Scott, 2008:24) to the point that some considered the term culture had become almost meaningless (Scott, 2008). However, these ?paradigm clashes? (Duncan, Johnson, and Schein, 2008:16) have subsided to a large extent, and the concept of landscape has developed into regarding it as a socionatural process and considering how it works and what it does (Bender, 1993; Matless, 1998; Mitchell, 2002). An account of landscape understood in this way therefore cannot be content simply to displace the illegible visuality of the modernist paradigm in favour of 26 a readable allegory; it has to trace the process by which landscape effaces its own readability and naturalizes itself and must understand that process in relation to what might be called ?the natural histories? of its own beholders. What we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these ?doings? are enacted in the media of representation we call ?landscape? (Mitchell, 2002:2). Through a combining of those paradigms that were subject to much vociferous debate, and considering them as having mutual benefits when regarding landscape as a place or space of enacted engagements, Mitchell (2002) offers a method of how to research it in the milieu of all its forms. What follows is a consideration of a number of these forms that inform our understanding of what constitutes landscape and its relationship with the concepts of space and place. 27 The Origins of Landscape Artistic interpretation has had a major influence upon how landscape is understood and conceptualised by western culture ever since the 16th century when the word became transplanted from the Dutch ?landsschap? meaning a small collection of farms or fenced fields (Tuan, 1974). Landscape came to mean a prospect seen from a specific standpoint. Then it was the artistic representation of that prospect. Landscape was also the background of an official portrait: the ?scene? of a ?pose?. As such it became fully integrated with the world of make-believe (Tuan, 1974:133). Both visually depictive art and literature have contributed and influenced how we tend to consider our surroundings. The promotion of viewpoints to admire the scenery is reminiscent of the artist seeking the idealised vista to reproduce on canvas or frame in their viewfinder. The very word scenery carries with it connotations of the stage, of the depiction of something that looks real and has substance, but is in fact a device, something created by humanity. This might be seen as particularly appropriate in regards to the British landscape, since all of this has been, to some extent or other, altered or affected by human actions. Landscape considered ?picturesque? reveals it as a view that is suitable to be rendered into a painting or picture (Wallace, 1993), and how we have come to admire these views of the rolling countryside of England, or the moors and mountains of Wales and Scotland is because we have learnt to like them, to consider them as appealing. The ?rural idyll? of yesteryear idealised by Wordsworth or Constable is a fiction conceived of an age that never existed. Beauty used to be ascribed once to the works of humanity, such as the cities and cathedrals, it is only comparatively recently with the onset of industrialisation and urbanisation that the rural began to appear as an idealised existence, and the term landscape began to be used to describe it (Schama, 1995). Landscape, therefore, is a cultural interpretation of the experience, and of the perspectives brought to it, based upon what representations are made of it by the individual through memory and imagination. It is suggested that the perception of landscape is based primarily upon the visual primacy of its comprehension, as Cosgrove and Daniels (1988:1) propose: ?A landscape is a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing or symbolising 28 surroundings?. Furthermore, they contend that such visual representations may be no less real than the landscape itself that is being represented since ?the meanings of verbal, visual and built landscapes have a complex interwoven history? (Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988:1). Schama (1995), for example, discusses how the forest and its representation has held different meanings and senses of identity for the Germans and the English, and how this is reflected in the stories and art from these two countries. In Germany, the forest has been considered in a mythic context, as where the idea of a German nation was born, where blood and soil were intermixed, where a militant nationalism was born, and was used by totalitarian politics as a justification for its policies. In England, the forest holds very different connotations; the story of Robin Hood and many of the plays of Shakespeare has the Greenwood as a place where ?the conventions of gender and rank are temporarily reversed in the interest of discovering truth, love, freedom and, above all, justice.? (Schama, 1995:141). These ideas of the woods being places of liberty and equality have also been used by the state in promoting ideas of being English. The need for wood to build ships for the Royal Navy between the 17th to 19th centuries added to ideas of the forests being associated with liberty in that it was upon these ships that England depended to defend against invasion (Schama, 1995). Macfarlane (2003:18) considers landscape in part as a construction of the imagination, that ?when we look at a landscape, we do not see what is there, but largely what we think is there? We read landscapes, in other words, we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory?. Therefore, landscape cannot be regarded in a purely objective way because of the subjective influences of our society and culture is always there, residing in memory and imagination. As Wasserman (2002:190) proposes ?Place and memory are embedded in our cultural landscape? Continuing to remember the multitude of stories, either through designed spaces or preserving sacred ancestral lands, can assist in maintaining cultural continuity into the twenty-first century.? Landscape is, therefore, a repository of stories of cultures past and present, and can act as a mnemonic in being able to interpret them. In being able to ?read? these stories within the landscape, or to discover a language by which to make 29 understandings of it, Spirn (1998) suggests, is to enable one to continue to make cultural connections with it, and also explore aspects that held significance for cultures that stretch back into prehistory. We imbue meanings on our surroundings and respond to them emotionally and in our imaginations; we see not only what is there but also what was and what could be. Such an experience and interpretation is highly personal and an incomplete one; what one person sees the other misses, what is relevant to one is irrelevant to the other. As Stewart (2003:313) argues: How we interpret our experiences is a function of how we have learned to see the world around us. Our ?way of seeing? our world is shaped by our culture, or the emphasis our community places on different aspects of the world around us? Understanding a community, or a culture, is contextual. A community, and its culture, develop and grow out of their own unique history, place and set of circumstances. How we encounter and experience a place is shaped by the interpretation skills we are provided with by our community. Communities, cultures and individuals are therefore deeply bound to specific geographic areas, and it is within these places that they are all interpreted. As Lopez (1989) describes, when one attempts to interpret a landscape our culture influences how we perceive it, and in turn the land influences our cultural perception: I think of two landscapes ? one outside the self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see... The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape... The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes (Lopez, 1989:64-65). 30 The Phenomenological Landscape A distinction is often made between the terms landscape and environment. Lassus (1998:88) defines landscape as ?a cultural construction of the mind, resulting from the perceptible and aesthetic considerations forming on a natural given?, and the environment is ?a state of things able to be improved technically and scientifically?. Lavoie (2005:13) makes a similar distinction, in regarding the physical world as artefact, or ?the environment?, whilst the landscape is the phenomenological world, or a world of relationships. It is the difference, Scruton proposes (1990), between an internal versus external understanding of the world: external being the way objects or artefacts of the physical world relate to each other in a causal way and internal being how we relate to the world, and this understanding leads to a perception using the imagination where one conceives the world as based on how objects, artefacts, and space relate to our experience. Landscape is therefore about the individual experience and perception of it. Velmans (2006:50), in a consideration of the consciousness, argues that ?perception is a skilful bodily activity which involves the whole animal interacting with the environment?. He adds: The realisation that most experiences seem to have both external location and extension also opens up a new way of understanding their relationship to what we normally think of as the ?physical world?. Rather than being ?apart from? what we experience, this physical world we perceive is a very large ?part of? our experience (Velmans, 2006:51). In the consideration of the phenomenology of landscape, therefore, the perspectives of the environment(s) or places within have to be considered at least a part of that perceptual experience, as does interaction with them is in part a construct of mind, brain and body. As Velmans (2006:51) notes: Crucially, this experienced world appears to be outside the brain, which supports a form of phenomenological externalism (the opposite of phenomenological internalism). This is a serious theoretical challenge. Unlike physical things, we do not normally think of conscious experiences as having ?location? (where they happen) or ?extension? (spatial dimensions). Pile (1996:217) draws on the work of Lacan (that the world is experienced by the individual in three spaces: real, imaginary, and symbolic, and the self is formed in 31 relation to others so that experience is as an alienated ?I?) in regards to the self, and the ideas of Freud of the unconscious, to suggest that instead of considering whether ?a particular landscape, like a city, is alienating or not, the question would be how and why it is alien?. Echoing Lacan, Pile argues that reality is constituted by the real, the imaginary and the symbolic, and the individual experiences it within these realms phenomenally. Husserl (2002) defined phenomenology as the science of the essence of consciousness as approached in the first person, and as the study of different forms of experience as we experience them, from the perspective of the subject living through or performing them. Experience is considered as a property of intentionality, it being a consciousness of or about something, something experienced, or presented, or engaged within a certain way. Therefore it is a study of meaning in a wide sense, of perceiving as to how an object is meant or intended. Husserl?s neo-Cartesian emphasis on the separation of consciousness and subjectivity, and of the mind and body have been challenged by Heidegger (1962) who suggests that scientific theories are historical and cultural artefacts, rather than systems of ideal truth as presented by Husserl. Heidegger saw the world as the realm of human activities and products, where a particular way of life or civilisation had its own ?distinctive trajectory of possibilities and constraints?, whereas the earth is that upon which the world rests operating according ?to its own modes - as distinct from those in which human life proceeds? (Gill, 2002:183). Merleau-Ponty draws on Husserl and Heidegger in the Phenomenology of Perception (2002), emphasising the role of the body in human experience as the engaged action, with things perceived including other people. Consciousness is argued as being embodied (in the world), and equally the body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world). Gill (2002:185) considers that landscape might be understood as a realm of strife where the earth and world (as proposed by Heidegger) meet and is an ?inevadable part of the human condition?. Furthermore, Gill considers that Heidegger?s eventual hypotheses share much in common with those of deep ecologists, both calling for a ?transformation of consciousness from the scientific-technological attitude that sees the earth as an object, which must be subdued by human subjects, to a way of being in the world where there is no ontological divide between the self and the life of the cosmos? (Gill, 2002:186). 32 To consider landscape, therefore, one must also consider how it is perceived by the self, in relation to a worldview held, and how that perception is made up as a relationship between the real, the imagined, and the symbolic phenomenal experience of the individual. Hirohiko Ohta (2001) has used the phenomenological approach to natural landscape as an alternative to what he perceives as the over-emphasis on positivist methodologies in the interpretation of landscape aesthetics. Fredrickson and Anderson (1999) also critiques quantitative, positivistic approaches in the investigation of landscapes in that they tend to produce simplistic interpretations of person-place interaction, and the focus is largely on the functional and visual components of the setting, describing places merely in terms of their physical location and appearance. The phenomenological approach is concerned with subjective interpretations that are made of landscape, and so it might offer a way that analyses the cultural connections and relationships between it and the self. Using such interpretive approaches in the study of landscape, Ohta (2001) suggests, allows for the consideration of how it interacts with the perceiver?s memory, background, impressions, imagination, and aesthetic judgements, and the consequential meanings and evaluations that are made from them. However, in his research, the subjects were shown pictures of landscapes on a monitor rather than experiencing it directly, and so it may be criticised as not being a truly phenomenological approach from the perspective of Velmans (2006) or Merleau-Ponty (2002), in that phenomenological perception is a holistic bodily engagement rather than being just a visual one. Whilst experiencing landscape, a walker perceives it with an intentional, engaged action, and with the multiple meanings it holds, consciously and subconsciously, on multiple levels via cultural bias, inclination, memory and imagination. It is through these prisms landscape and the places within may become representations of different times and of peoples? different worldviews. As Dorrian and Rose (2003:17) describe: ?Landscapes can often hold together a past and present, a present and future, or all three together. They are often understood as repositories of the past, holding history in their contours and textures.? 33 Mythical and Spiritual Landscape In Australia, the indigenous Aboriginal people regard the landscape as being physical evidence of the creation of life, each hill or shape in a rock imbued with a story of how all life came into being. As Tuan (1974:99-100) notes: ?Mountains and creeks and springs and waterholes are to the Arcanda [Australian Aboriginals] not merely interesting or beautiful scenic features; they are the handiwork of ancestors from whom he himself has descended.? Tuan (1974) explores the relationship between environment, perception and worldviews as being inter-dependant, and gives examples as to how the Giwke in the Kalahari have an intimate, named and detailed knowledge of the desert that is almost devoid of landmarks to a western eye, and the Aivilik Eskimo is able to travel for hundreds of miles across a featureless ice landscape through processes that are less visual than acoustic, olfactory, and tactile, guided by the direction and smell of winds, and by the feel of the ice and snow underfoot. The intimate physical knowledge indigenous peoples have of their lands are inseparable from their spiritual connections with them, and the stories that are told of them. Landscape is a part of the spiritual and physical domains of their land, and their very identity as a person or people is entwined with it. The spiritual identity of landscape is something that continues to be explored as a contemporary issue as well as being grounded in more ancient belief systems, for example Goodman?s (2002) very personal exploration of sacred mountains, or Worthington?s (2004) consideration of Stonehenge and the new-age movements that use it for both celebration of the spiritual, and for subversion of a mainstream. There are many consistent similarities found amongst indigenous and ancient cultures around the world, in regards to their myths, symbols and oral histories of existence that explain the creation and place of humans in a world that is seen as sentient, and the landscape a mnemonic that illustrates stories of creation, acting as both a dictionary of history and a map to find one?s way by; a proof that the land belongs to you and you belong to it, and that the spirit world exists as real and in parallel to the physical one (Tuan, 1974; Chatwin, 1987, Devereaux, 1992). Given these common themes of relationship with the land held by indigenous peoples, it has been argued (Devereaux, 1992, 1999, 2001; Trubshawe, 2005; Ellis-Smith, 2005a) 34 that it is likely that similar perspectives were probably held by the ancient cultures that inhabited Britain and who began to leave the signs of their presence on the landscape reflecting that relationship (Tilley, 1994, 2004). In the British landscape these remains persist, evidence of ancient, indigenous cultures that once had similar worldviews as to other indigenous peoples that still exist elsewhere today, such as in Australasia or North America. As Calloway (cited by Perrin, 2006:35) observes: Storied landscapes are surely not unique to the Native American West. They are common, for instance, in the Celtic regions of the British Isles? Mythic tales linked to specific places contained morals and teachings that enabled people to live as true human beings. Whilst many (although not all) of these mythic tales connected to landscape may have been lost in Britain, particularly in the non-Celtic areas of England, that is not to say that storied landscape does not exist there; legends, myths and stories of landscape persist from other ages (Westwood, 1986) and continue to be made now (Harte, 1998). Prehistoric sites litter much of the land throughout Britain, and many have local stories regarding their meanings and origins, and place names often give clues as to the storied nature of the landscape. One only has to start investigating an area that might be regarded as retaining some of its ?traditional? elements, such as medieval field systems or ancient heaths, moors and mountains (as opposed to landscapes wiped clean of all traces of previous human activity by intensive agriculture or urbanisation from the 18th Century onwards), and evidence of an ancient landscape with its habitations, enclosures, routes, symbolic representations, shrines of the land, and places of power might be discovered. The possibility has been proposed that we, as humans, are programmed to respond in a conscious or sub-conscious way to some of these symbolic representations within landscape (Jung and Von Franz, 1978), and so they may take on a deeper relevance within our psyche. Even in a landscape that has been urbanised or given over to intensive agriculture, some signs of ancient cultures landscapes may remain: streams or springs once sacred; churches built upon older sacred sites; myths associated with specific places; topographical features; ancient megaliths and stones. These elements act as memorials that connect us to an almost lost past, and, ?promise an authentic 35 physical experience of history... What the visitor loses in factual information, they gain in emotional depth? (Wasserman, 2002:193). In considering the role myth and stories have in landscape, some places have also in themselves been described as having mythic qualities. Devereraux (1999a) describes how the ancient Greeks had two words for place, topas and chora. Topas signifies place as a location, the physical features of it, and this is how we tend to see place now. However, to the ancient Greeks this was only one part of understanding a place, the other, chora, referred to place as a point of experience in the memory, imagination, or in the mythic dimension. We have lost this word for interpreting place, and so the ability to conceive it of having a presence beyond the physical dimension. Devereaux, (1999a:60) describes how the theologian Rudolph Otto considered feelings of eeriness or awe to be the ?earliest manifestation? of the holy and was how the concept of a place being holy or holding special spiritual significance developed. He used the term ?numinous? to describe this special quality that some sacred places seem to possess. Place names also may provide a window into past, sometimes ancient stories, events and myths that were attributed to places, and through them show how a place has a specificity of its own (Trubshawe, 2005). On the Isle of Lewis, the skyline of the Pairc Hills, viewed from the Callanish group of stone circles, resembles the form of a reclining woman. Sometimes these hills are called the ?Sleeping Beauty?, and the Gaelic name Cailleach na Mointeach translates into the ?Old Woman of the Moors,? a pseudonym for the Earth Mother (Devereaux, 1992). Other place names may also hint of their history. The landscape is a record of the past and of the present, and the memories, descriptions and names attached to it tell of the stories that link the place to an identity. This is a process that is ongoing, some myths and stories survive through the generations, through oral or written histories, whilst others are forgotten. New stories and myths are being created all the time, personal ones significant to an individual, or ones known to a small group of people, to ones that are known by the whole community (Harte, 1998). Myths are something often ascribed to an ancient past, but this is not the case; the phenomenon of the urban myth is evidence that the process continues (Whatley and Henken, 2000). 36 Stewart (2004:179-180), on a walk across Afghanistan, describes how landscape may offer insights into stories of myth, and of historical and recent events: In the Indian Himalayas, villagers had described their landscape in terms of religious myth. ?This hill is where Shiva danced?, they said or ?This lake was made by Arjuna?s Arrow.? But like Abdul Haq in Heart, these Aimaq villagers defined their landscape by acts of violence or death. I was shown the hundred yards which the young Commander Mullah Rahim Dad galloped when mortally wounded, after an ambush by men from Majerkanda, then the grave of a young man who had died of starvation on his way to the refugee camp. Places in the Scottish Highlands are also remembered by acts of violence: the spot where Stewart of Ardvorlich shot a MacDonald raider or where the MacGregors decapitated Ardvorlich?s brother-in-law. Around my house in Scotland the Gaelic place-names record death: ?Place of Mourning? or ?Field of Weeping.? But here the events recorded were only months old. Place names may reveal past identities that are now obscure or vanished, that suggest how a place was conceived of by past inhabitants or visitors, how it was significant, what made it a place rather than space. The very act of naming the place in a sense creates it; it ?brings them into being? (Bourdieu, 1990:55). By the naming of a place it is ?a way of allowing stories to be told about that landscape? (Macfarlane, 2003:191). Names are the records of landscape history, a mnemonic of a past that contributes to the ?chora? of a place, the complex identity that makes it unique. In so doing, it might be contending that the process of naming of a place ?construct social reality as much as they express it? (Bourdieu, 1990:134). As Tilley (1994:19) proposes: By the process of naming places and things they become captured in social discourses and act as mnemonics for the historical actions of individuals and groups. Without a name culturally significant sites would not exist, but only as a raw void, a natural environment. In a fundamental way names create landscapes. Place names hint at one significant story of a place; for example ?Hangman?s Wood? or ?Colliers Lane? were not named arbitrarily, but rather because of what happened at, or what stories were associated with, these places. 37 In considering the British landscape in terms of its ancient past and the meanings ascribed to it in mythical and sacred contexts, just as the character Arkady contends in Chatwin?s The Songlines (1987:5), that ??the whole of bloody Australia?s a sacred site?, so it may be considered that the whole of Britain is, or at least was, a sacred site where once all of the landscape was an integral part of a spiritual domain maintained through language, ritual and myth; it is just that we can no longer recognise it as such. As Wasserman (2002:190) proposes: History stays alive through storytelling, myth, ritual, and language. Language encodes not only important cultural stories, but also extensive knowledge of native habitats. With cultural homogenization, and destruction of natural areas, these stories are erased. 38 Ancient Sites in Landscape Whilst many of the stories may have disappeared, a few of the monuments and earthworks that reflected that spiritual world still remain. Whilst the stories may have largely disappeared linking myth to land, recent methodologies of archaeology are being employed in an attempt to gain an understanding of the relationship specific places in the form of prehistoric sites have with their prehistoric human inhabitants. To aid in the interpretation of this evidence of a prehistoric past in the landscape, phenomenology of ancient landscape (or cognitive archaeology) has been developed to rediscover some of the qualities, functions, and meanings the land possessed for its ancient inhabitants, and walking is considered as central to the interpretative process (Tilley, 1994, 2004; Trubshawe, 2005). Tilley (1994:1) describes this process as being a ?blurred genre? of a phenomenological approach in philosophy, cultural anthropology, human geography, and recent interpretive work in archaeology. He proposes that whilst ?the skin of the land has gone for good? apart from through diligent scientific analysis of pollens and mollusc shells ?the bones of the land ? the mountains, hills, rocks and valleys, escarpment and ridges ? have remained substantially the same since the Mesolithic? (Tilley, 1994:74). The study of such ancient sites and routes in respect to how they related to the landscape and the people who built and used them has been and is problematical. Of most of the archaeological remains known about, there is scant evidence as to why they were there and what they were used for, and what is known is often subject to revision and new interpretations. In addition, in the past much of prehistory (i.e. before written records) interpretation unfortunately was often contaminated by reasoning which said more about the concerns of the day rather than being based on a balanced review of the evidence. In the late 19th and early to mid 20th Centuries, the populating of Britain was described in terms of invasions, that warfare and territorial boundaries were integral to the relationship of the various ?tribes?, and that the Roman Empire was a civilising influence on barbarian groups (Halsall, 1997). These ideas related perhaps more to the concerns of the then British Empire, and to some extent legitimised its existence as having a historical precedent, rather than what is believed now, that Britain had been populated by differing cultures which influenced 39 and modified the existing ones, rather than driving them out (Pryor, 2001, 2004). Territorial boundaries were fluid and not necessarily fought over, and prior to and during the Roman Invasion there existed independently in Britain a sophisticated and well-functioning society rich in art, technology, and trade (Russell and Laycock, 2010). There is also evidence that it is only towards the end of occupation and after the Roman Empire had left that those territories became delineated and warfare became a means of colonising land (Pryor, 2005; Russell and Laycock, 2010). Similarly, when the question was asked as to why particular locations were chosen for habitation and the erection of monuments as opposed to others, the standard answer, according to Tilley (1994:1) was generally by relating them to factors such as ?demographic patterns, technologies, transhumance systems, territoriality, and control over exchange networks and forms of social organisation facilitating environmental exploitation as a means of adaptation?. This, Tilley proposes (1994:2) is again another example of ?contemporary myth making in which an exclusively modernistic western logic has simply become superimposed on the past. In the process how people may have perceived the landscape in which they lived is either regarded as irrevocably lost, or irrelevant, or both?. In a re-examination of established beliefs and assumptions of ancient sites, it was realised new approaches were required which sought to place these sites into the context that they were used by people with much of the same characteristics as people from contemporary times, and that studying maps of deposits and analysing data and individual items collected from these sites were not enough; the sites had to be considered in situ and as part of the landscape (Bender, 1992, 1993: Hirsch and O?Hanlon, 1995). In an attempt to achieve this aim of considering a site as being part of the surrounding landscape, Tilley (1994:74) observes that by using the technique of phenomenology to approach on foot a specific site ?slowly, from different directions, and anticipating arriving, it is possible to observe in a much more subtle manner the way it is related to its physical surroundings, the lie of the land?. Trubshawe (2005:77), who also uses the phenomenological approach in his investigation Sacred Places: Prehistory and Popular Imagination, comments that current archaeological thinking ?has moved a long way from simple distinctions 40 between sacred and profane places. Instead the prehistoric landscape is recognised to be more about the ?mindscape? of the people living there than the physical terrain?. In other words, through the considered approach to experiencing prehistoric or ancient monuments in the phenomenological manner, on foot and from different directions and even different times of the day and year, one may begin to see their significance for those who built and used them because of their situation in the topography of the land. Other practitioners of this approach have described it as ?monumenteering? (Devereaux, 1999). It provides another perspective as to how to ?converse with a landscape?, and of having ?a fully dilated experience with it? Lopez (1993:36-37). This approach might be considered as a useful way to explore a local place, not just in terms of prehistoric monuments and sacred places, but also ancient routes and paths, of medieval remains, old buildings, and of the more recent histories that are contained within the storied context of landscape. By walking these ancient sites, places and routes in the landscape, and also other more recent historical features, by attempting to inhabit the shoes of previous inhabitants, by being aware of the possibility that you are experiencing the same mix of topographical features, it may be possible to discern some of the meanings previously made of this landscape. A major caveat to this however is that it should be recognised that through the use of phenomenological approaches, it is possible that the interpretation one derives may be mistaken or the result of self-delusion. For example, in the case of archaeological phenomenology, Chapman and Gearey (2000) contests some of the conclusions that have been made from investigations of certain sites, in that they fail to fully consider palaeoecological data available that question whether the present open vistas were the same when the site was being used. In attempting to critique earlier assumptions regarding prehistoric sites, new ones may also be in the process of being made. Another example of how landscape phenomena may be being misinterpreted, or at least how it may be more about a belief rather than an established idea, might be the still contested theory of ley-lines. From an idea originally proposed in the 1920s (Watkins, 1994) from studying maps and observing what were thought to be straight routes through the land, it grew into a movement which believed that these lines had spiritual and metaphysical properties (Michell, 1986), peaking during the 1970s and 1980s. However, even those at the centre of investigating ley-lines, such as Devereux 41 (1992, 1999a, 2001, 2003) and Sullivan (1997), who spent decades researching the area, eventually concluded that the only evidence for what they termed ?straight line phenomena? was limited to either coincidental alignments or from certain coffin or corpse ways from medieval times that may have developed, in turn, from shamanistic beliefs regarding how the spirits of the dead had to be contained in straight paths to prevent them from escaping, (Sullivan, 1997:48; Devereux, 2001). Whilst this theory of straight line phenomena may offer some insights regarding the study of ancient landscape, the original ideas associated with ley-lines have been largely discredited, despite that many people continue to sincerely believe in their existence, and so for them landscape is imbued with a spiritual and metaphysical presence. The ley-line, along with crop circles and UFOs, might be seen as modern myths and legends regarding landscape that are still being made. 42 Landscape and Place Place appears to be a simple concept, easily comprehended, yet despite its familiarity, it is a complicated subject. Cresswell (2004) articulates the problem of defining place because it is so commonly used to denote ownership, difference, a type, a social hierarchy, or a particular sense of order: ?Place is everywhere. This makes it different from other terms in geography like ?territory?, which announces itself as a specialized term, or ?landscape? which is not a word that permeates through our everyday encounters? (Cresswell, 2004:2). A definition that might be proposed is that place has specificity, it exists in a way that whilst space is a more abstract concept, place has substance and physical form. The two require each other to exist: From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice-versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, the place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place (Tuan, 1977:6). By knowing a location through a particular association or relation with it, by naming it and giving or recognising it has a specific quality that it possesses, transforms it from being space that is passed through to be place which has a defined location. Furthermore, de Certeau (1984:117) asserts that a place excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location... the elements taken into consideration are beside one another... a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability. A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it... it has none of the univocity or stability of a ?proper.? In short, space is practiced place. Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers. The transformation that occurs from place to space by the act of movement raises a number of questions pertinent for an investigation of the relationship between landscape and walking, Through the action of walking, de Certeau seems to be suggesting that the specificity of place is loosened and space is but a transformed 43 version of place that is practiced. Trubshawe (2005:1) considers space as having a more abstract quality and explains: Whereas ?space? is more about what is conceived and thought about, ?place? is what is perceived and lived in. The modern mind might think of space as being a broader concept into which places are situated. However a little thought reveals that humans have had a sense of place long before the more abstract concept of space. Whereas we can conceptualise an empty space, the idea of an empty place suggests only where no people are present, but is otherwise physically present. A sense of place is the emotional and subjective interpretation people have to place, often understood in the personal relationship one has to a specific locale, and is significant in the establishment and maintenance of a sense of identity (Massey, 1995a; Lippard, 1997; Muir, 1999). These places hold distinct meanings for individuals and are accredited with certain attributes, they exist both physically and as places of imagination; stories are told and made by them, legends develop about them. They are perceived in as many ways as there are people doing the perceiving. In so doing, individuals construct their identity from their surroundings and how they involve themselves with those surroundings, this usually being done over a period of time and in specific areas. Particular places, locales, or areas become important as a relationship develops between them and an individual (Muir, 1999; Spirn, 1998; Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988). We may like or dislike these places, but we feel we have an understanding of them, a knowledge that is grounded on more than just a passing acquaintance with them, but based on having some history with the place, that for better or worse we belong to it (Tilley, 1994). They are where our lives are lived out, and where the social processes of community and neighbourhood may be found. As Tilley (1994:15) proposes: ?Personal and cultural identity is bound up with place; a topo-analysis is one exploring the creation of self-identity through space. Geographical experience begins in places, reaches out to others through spaces, and creates landscapes or regions for human existence.? Place is more than just a neutral geographical backdrop; it is a dynamic medium that people interact with, influence and are influenced by, where one?s identity becomes a part of the story of that landscape. Identity refers not only to lived experiences and 44 subjective feelings of every day consciousness, but also suggests that such experiences and feelings are embedded in wider sets of social relations (Rose, 1995). From this understanding of identity, a sense of place might be considered as not only arising from personal feelings towards that place and the significance it has for them, but also these senses of place pervade everyday life and experience. Relph (1976:1) articulates the importance place has by claiming ?to be human is to live in a world that is filled with significant places: to be human is to have to know your place?. Furthermore, a sense of place is more than just one person?s feelings about a particular place, but also reflect interpretations of place from particular social positions and reasons through processes of representation (Massey, 1995a). This particular categorisation of place is articulated through the combination of subjective experience informed by the processes of wider social and cultural contexts. As a corollary to this sense of place is the emergence of the concepts of placelessness as proposed by Relph (1976:82), described as being an inauthentic attitude towards place, and that ?it involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significances of places and no appreciation of their identities. It is merely an attitude which is socially convenient and acceptable ? an uncritically accepted stereotype?. Relph attributes the development of such inauthentic placelessness to increased mobility and tourism, which in turns has brought about a disneyfication of destination. Baudrillard, (1994) suggests that staged events and performances of theme parks have a close affinity to the simulations of heritage museums, and the visitors to these destinations are seeking the signs and representations of authenticity rather than any reality (Urry, 2002), an aspect of the McDonaldization of society (Ritzer, 1993). This identification of place becoming inauthentic has also been described as the homogenisation or hybridisation of place through a process of glocalisation; the mixing of global and local identities (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009). Aug?, (1995) makes a similar identification of the diminishment of place by describing the development of what he calls non-place, brought on by the processes of globalisation and supermodernity. These non-places are the ?mobile cabins called ?means of transport? (aircraft, trains and road vehicles), the airports and railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, large retail outlets, and finally the complex skein of cable and wireless networks? (Aug?, 1995:64). Furthermore, Aug? (1995:83) 45 declares: ?The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude and similitude. There is no room for history unless it has been transformed into an element of spectacle, usually in allusive texts?. Rather than considering inauthentic place as lacking a validity, Thrift (1994:223) suggests that such ?pseudo- places have finally advanced to eliminate places altogether?. The non-places of airports, hotel chains and leisure are parks are not described as such but as places of mobility, the means of transport ?the media of mobility? (Thrift, 1994:230). Thrift argues that all places have become hybridised, and so place is no longer indicative of stability. However, such an assertion that mobility has to all purposes replaced place, or even that placelessness and non-place is proliferating is contested. Lippard (1997) points out that places have always been hybrid, at least in the sense that different people have always been moving through them and thereby subtly altering them. Each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity, which is really what all ?local places? consist of. By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we may play a different role (Lippard, 1997:6). Places may also be considered as being socially constructed, in that the stratifications of a society do not occur in an abstract location but rather in space and place. This social condition or construction is particularly obvious when people transgress or deviate from expected modes of behaviour for particular places by acting ?out of place? (Cresswell, 1996; Humberstone, 2003). However, to consider place as being a social construction or a dominant form of it (Harvey, 1996) is contested by Malpas (1999) who, whilst recognising that specific places may be constructions of society, the social is also constructed by place, and on a much more fundamental level it is impossible to construct anything without first being in place. Therefore being in place is of primacy because it is from this that the social and cultural constructions arise from. Being in place implies an awareness of practiced place, of movement in space. Such movements through place constitute not only how it is formed but also how it is always reformed. Seamon (1980) dubbed the many repetitive routine and habitual routes through a location as a ?place-ballet? which generates a strong sense of place and of belonging. Furthermore, cultural geographers such as Thrift (1996, 2008) 46 have suggested embodied practices and performances, a ?body a-whereness rather than body awareness? (Thrift, 2008:126), should be considered as a way of engaging with the world, or ?the work of doing relation? (Thrift, 2008:127). As Cresswell (2004:37) remarks ?Place, then, needs to be understood as an embodied relationship with the world. Places are constructed by people doing things and in this sense are never ?finished? but are constantly being performed?. The bodily engagement and practice with place has significance, therefore, to the consideration of landscape as something other than just a cultural image. Possibly because it has been ?taken for granted as an aesthetic framing of the real properties of space and places... Landscape remains relatively underanalyzed? (Mitchell, 2002:viii). Rather being considered just as a visual entity, landscape requires reconsideration as somewhere that is moved through in a process of bodily engagement. Landscape may also offer a subtle difference from both space and place. ... place is the union of a symbolic meaning with a delimited block of the earth?s surface. Spatial differentiation implies spatial segmentation. This is not so of the landscape, however. For a place in the landscape is not ?cut out? from the whole, either on the plane of ideas or on that of material substance. Rather, each place embodies the whole at a particular nexus within it, and in this respect is different from every other. A place owes it character to the experiences it affords to those who spend time there ? to the sights, sounds and indeed smells that constitute its specific ambience. And these, in turn, depend on the kind of activities in which its inhabitant?s engage. It is from this relational context of people?s engagement with the world, in the business of dwelling, that each place draws its unique significance. Thus whereas with space, meanings are attached to the world, with the landscape they are gathered from it. Moreover, while places have centres ? indeed it would be more appropriate to say they are centres ? they have no boundaries. In journeying from place A to place B it makes no sense to ask, along the way, whether one is ?still? in A or has ?crossed? over to B... In short, the landscape is the world as it is known to those who dwell therein, who inhabit its places and journey along the paths connecting them (Ingold, 2000:192-193). 47 Ingold suggests the landscape that is dwelt in and moved through in a full embodied sense provides a better understanding of the relationship that may be had with it and is also subtly different to experience of space and place, but rather an encompassing of all three together as a conceptual totality. 48 Landscape, Place and Outdoor Learning Outdoor learning encompasses a broad range of definitions and concepts which arguably may be understood in one context whilst differently understood in another. Aspects that may be included as being part of the space it encompasses includes outdoor leisure experiences, such as outdoor recreation and adventure recreation, along with elements such as play, exploration and experiential learning. It also has more formalised pedagogic approaches that have been classified as environmental education, and adventure education, both of which come under the broad heading of Outdoor Education (Priest, 1999). Outdoor pursuits and activities cover both paradigms of recreation and education, depending upon how they are approached or utilised (Mortlock, 1973). However, for the purposes of this thesis, the term outdoor education will be used as an umbrella term for pedagogic approaches which encompass both formal and non- formal education, personal and social development, field studies, and outdoor sports (Humberstone and Brown, 2006). Outdoor Education is also closely associated with other areas in the outdoors field or outdoors industry including recreation, exploration and expeditioning (Humberstone and Brown, 2006), and has not only played and continues to play a major role in their introduction to young people, but also contributed towards the development of critical analysis and broader theoretical frameworks and schools of thought for outdoor learning (Humberstone, Brown and Richards, 2003). Outdoor education is an evolving pedagogy, reflecting or anticipating the requirements of a culture?s needs. One only has to look back over the last 100 years to see how its primary concerns have changed and adapted to address the concerns of the societies within which it operates. From a largely militaristic background (for example see James, The Moral Equivalent to War, 1910 or Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, 1909) founded in the days of empire and conquest, it developed to address wider issues. These range from practical training for survival, such as the establishment of Outward Bound in 1941 (Miner, 1999), to methods of encouraging the building of self esteem and confidence in individuals, the teaching of the values of teamwork (Ogilvie, 1993), and the use of challenge activities and adventure (Mortlock, 2000, 2001) for self-actualisation and 49 therapy. It has been proposed that the appearance of these different aspects of outdoor education coincided with the changing and developing concerns of the time (Miles and Priest, 1999). However, whether it has changed so much is open to debate (Brookes, 2002). Much of outdoor education still concentrates on the traditional concerns of developing skills for the activities themselves (such as rock climbing, kayaking, and going on expeditions) and the concepts surrounding teamwork, adventure, and risk for personal development (Priest, 1999). In many instances, the delivery of outdoor education, particularly in the U.S., has become known as Adventure Programming (Miles and Priest, 1999), and the place or the landscape where it occurs appears to be of less importance than the input of adrenaline fuelled experiences to achieve the required results. As Mortlock (1973:2) describes ?Outdoor education, to at least the majority of adolescents, are those situations in which they will find challenge, risk, dare, and excitement?. It is the hardships, of doing battle against the elements, of ?conquering? a summit that are often (although not always) dwelt upon, which places nature and landscape as something to be fought against (Henderson, 2002). Furthermore, with such emphasis being placed on intra-personal and inter-personal skills in outdoor education programmes (Ewart and Garvey, 2007), the approaches adopted have become to some extent formulaic strategies preoccupied with notions of risk, adventure and challenge (Wattchow and Brown, 2011), with those aspects concerned with environmental education and experiential learning being marginalised (Nicol, 2003). Brookes (2002) argues from an Australian perspective that the failure of a ?Victorian? outdoor education discourse to recognise specific cultural and geographical contexts has been ?attended by an uncritical acceptance of imported outdoor-education theory? (Brookes, 2002:406) and contends that: ?The development of universalist outdoor education can be read as the continuance of a colonizing mind-set, operating not through obvious physical occupation but through seepage into everyday assumptions...? (Brookes, 2002:407). Such a universalist approach concerned with challenge and risk (or perceived risk), inevitably brings with it a preoccupation for the proscribed outcomes, and the specific geographic location of the ?outdoors? becomes an incidental feature. They also tend to be short in duration, focus on the thrill element, and require the participant to take only minimal responsibility for their actions with little effort, 50 leading to minimal or no benefits being gained (Higgins and Nicol, 2002). Furthermore, the universalist approach is particularly suitable for adoption by commercial operations, committed to delivering a homogenised product that is standard, dependable and safe, or as Loynes (1998) describes it providing ?Adventure in a Bun?. Such an approach Hogan (1992) suggests transforms a place from having a special, even sacred quality into being just another commodity to be sold and consumed. Brookes (2006:4) also remarks upon the apparent lack of interest in places that provide opportunities for a continuing relationship in his thesis ?Situationist outdoor education in the country of lost children?: Although many outdoor education programs provide one-off visits to places chosen for novelty and strangeness, to fully comprehend any potential value of outdoor education programs one must also consider alternatives, especially those involving on-going relationships with particular places or regions. He further argues that determining what should be prioritised in outdoor education and how these priorities are distributed amongst communities and geographically is inherently situational, and that: The persistence of a universalist outdoor education discourse that fails to acknowledge or adequately account for social and geographic circumstances points to serious flaws in outdoor education research and theory, and impedes the development of more defensible outdoor education practises (Brookes, 2006:32). Brookes points to how the local place or area and experience of it has been marginalised by outdoor education in Australia, and the same may be said for the UK, where an emphasis is placed on the experience of challenge activities in unfamiliar environments, rather than considering it for its particular qualities. For example, despite the majority of the population living in urban or semi-urban areas, these places are generally deemed as unworthy of attention, or places that need to be escaped from. To consider these areas of having any potential as places where the experience of them, without so-called challenge activities, might be rewarding and beneficial appears to be an anathema to many within outdoor education. As Henderson (2002:138) questions: 51 How does the adventure educator teach a pedagogy that is to be ?with? landscape? How can our being adventurous be advanced into a relational and ecological context of being? I think it is best not to dwell on thoughts and deeds of physical hardship, distance covered, roughing it, ?living to tell the tale?, and physical fitness. This all seems sadly egotistical with emphasis on a hostile environment, where humanity has no place and ?place?, the territory, is not seen as primary. Henderson?s (2002) proposal is that an ecological relationship to nature and a spiritual engagement with it needs to be developed in order that a deeper understanding of the specificity of place and landscape might be realised. With the threat of environmental destruction beginning to be recognized towards the end of the last century, the realisation that human activity was fast depleting the natural resources became an accepted given (Roszak, 1978; Wall, 1997). The growth of environmentalism brought the recognition that the current western lifestyle is unsustainable, and with it alternate approaches for outdoor education began to be explored regarding environmentalism, and the developing of alternate philosophies and worldviews. Philosophies such as deep ecology (Martin, 1993), and Lovelock?s Gaia hypothesis, have been proposed as antidotes to a western culture intrinsically bound to a worldview that is dualistic; people are separate from nature, a worldview drawn from a Judeo-Christian ethic that humans are masters rather than members of the natural world (Nash, 1990). This dualism was developed in the philosophies proposed by Descarte and Bacon; the idea of objective truth as being the only truth, that the world is but a dead machine, and prepared the ground for the blossoming of the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of the ever increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental destruction. It is argued that with this predominant worldview where humans are seen as separate from nature, where nature is valued only as a resource, there is little likelihood that attitudes will change in regards to recognising the importance of maintaining natural eco-cycles, of reversing the current trend for continual economic growth, and moving towards sustainable modes of existence for humans, whilst also recognising the inherent right of existence for all forms of life (Abram, 1996). 52 Therefore there is a growing argument that it is this anthropocentric worldview where nature and the land is no more than a resource for humans that needs to be challenged, and for outdoor education to play a role in rejecting traditional dualistic thought (Nicol, 2003). Bowers (1993) proposes that a new language needs to be discovered in education to tackle what he considers are the cultural myths within that arena. He criticises the two thinkers that he contends to have had the greatest influence in shaping the discourse of critical pedagogy, Dewey and Freire. Whilst Dewey might appear to champion a non-anthropomorphic sensibility, Bowers (1993:97-101) identifies two aspects that he believes disqualifies him as being a fore- runner of ecological thinking; the way his thinking reflected a specific cultural agenda and bias, particularly with the privileged status he gave to the scientific method of problem solving, his method of defining intelligence, and his belief that tradition was not a legitimate source of authority in the guidance of human practices and beliefs. Other ways of knowing, other cultural and traditional truths and beliefs had no validity in this scientific model. Regarding Freire, Bowers (1993:109) identifies The hidden Eurocentric assumptions that are fundamental to his thinking ? the progressive nature of change, the view that only critical reflection can be the source of legitimate knowledge, the view of ?man? as the central actor in the universe ? have? been pointed out as ecologically problematic. Bowers contends that educators continue these ways of thought, however, with what has been termed ?critical pedagogy?, with an emphasis on using the classroom to ?liberate students from all cultural traditions? (Bowers, 1993:110-111). He proposes that the continuing anthropomorphic position in educational practice and theory is not suitable to seeking an ecological pedagogy, and suggests ? a shift from a culture of progress, with continual experimentation with new ideas, values, and technologies, to a survival-orientated culture, one that puts more emphasis on constructing a rich symbolic world to sustain its members over the long-term (Bowers, 1993:166). Bowers goes on to propose both new and ancient guiding metaphors are required for a sustainable future that include tradition as awareness of the continuity of the past, and contributes to long-term sustainability, and where science is but one of many forms of knowing. 53 The spiritual aspect of the outdoors has been suggested as one possible metaphor to be used. As Deeming (2000:32) concludes: Spirituality and its development cannot be separated from political, economic, ideological and ecological concepts of how past, current and future society operates. In light of the continuing commercialism of adventure and the increasing degradation of holistic value systems and Creation, there needs to be alternative ways of being in and part of the natural environment. Gair (1999:17) also makes the case for a spiritual dimension to be considered in the outdoors, commenting: It is interesting, and relevant, how much religious and spiritual thought is, naturally, associated with the outdoors. The aboriginal concept of land not belonging to any one human, but being a living thing available to all: forms of Eastern art based on natural shapes inspired by plants; Shinto water gardens; great journeys that prophets from many religions have made... these, and many other examples throughout history, firmly contextualise the symbiosis of man and the environment. Gair?s proposition is that there are many alternative ways by which a spiritual approach may build relationships with the outdoors and landscapes, as do Fredrickson and Anderson (1999), who consider the potential the wilderness may have as a source of spiritual awareness, and Adams (2002) who suggests that wild nature has qualities of the sacred. In Australasia and North America, the original native inhabitants? cultures prior to European colonisation are being recognised as having a sustainable relationship with their land (for example Basso, 1996; Henley, 1996; Harrison and Birrell, 2005; Stewart, 2008), where they exist as part of the natural order rather than separate from it, an attitude that is the antithesis of western dualism. In parts of Europe there remain some traditional outdoor cultures, such as friluftsliv in Norway (Dahle, 1994; Henderson and Vikander, 2007) or the Saami in Lapland (Mathisen, 2003) which exhibit traces of older attitudes towards the land similar to those found amongst indigenous cultures elsewhere. Land and nature are respected and revered; there is no division between the physical and the spiritual since they are regarded as indivisible, one is just as real as the other. Therefore, it is not just the physical practices that make these indigenous cultures sustainable in their lands; it is as much their attitudes 54 and beliefs towards their lands and nature, their deep relationship with them as entities within a spiritual realm where they have a sacred dimension, that means due respect and regard is given to their environment. These indigenous cultures may also have an increasingly important role in the teaching of Outdoor Education (Dahle, 1994) in that they may be seen as an antidote to what some see as the breakdown of community and morality caused by the increase of a mass or global culture (Strinati, 1995) In these areas of Europe, Australasia, North America and elsewhere where traditional outdoor or indigenous cultures still remain, outdoor education is beginning to consider both the philosophies and spiritual elements that are to be found there, as a way of informing of an environmental or non-dualistic ethic (Abram, 1996; Ellis- Smith, 2005; Harrison and Birrell, 2005, 2005a). However, in many other parts of Europe, including England, any traditional outdoor culture no longer remain, therefore, outdoor educators there do not have the possibility of using an indigenous culture?s worldview as gaining an alternate way of regarding the land. Whilst it may be appropriate to draw upon these indigenous cultures? worldviews in order to gain or inform an understanding of the landscape of, for example, Australia or the United States, it could be considered inappropriate to attempt to apply the specific beliefs from these countries to a foreign country. This is because it is the place the indigenous culture comes from that has resonance with and intimate knowledge of, and these are not transferable to another land. Furthermore, even in the countries of those indigenous peoples, the appropriation of their cultures and beliefs for re- interpretation by non-indigenous people carries with it the dangers of new forms of neo-colonialism (Bunce, 1995; Stewart, 2006) Maybe because in North America, Australia, and New Zealand there has been a debate about indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives on landscape, in recent years there has been some study in outdoor education regarding place as a specific and familiar entity, and how an individual experiences it or builds a relationship with it (for example Brookes, 2002, 2006; Bishop, 2004; Sobel, 2004; Birrell, 2005; Ellis- Smith, 2005; Stewart, 2003, 2006, 2008; Wattchow and Brown, 2011). In the same way because a similar discourse has not been possible due to a lack of that indigenous perspective, that is why there has been little research or attention given to place in discourses surrounding outdoor education regarding the UK 55 (Harrison, 2010). It may also be that whilst writers in Australian and North America are aware that outdoor education has neo-colonial aspects and are therefore less inhibited to critique them, UK outdoor educators are largely unaware of them and tend to stick to outdoor education?s traditional concerns. This is despite the fact other fields such as cultural geography, anthropology, and mobility (particularly in regards to walking) have extensively researched the relations between cultures, communities and geographical places (for example Cresswell, 1996; Cosgrove, 1998; Adams, 2001; Ingold, 2000; Lee and Ingold, 2006; Merriman et al., 2008; Edensor, 2010; Lorimer, 2011). Bearing this in mind, the next chapter considers walking, its cultural, social and historical significance, and how it has influenced the perception of landscape and place. 56 Chapter Three Walking ?I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in? (John Muir) Standing on Two Feet Walking is often described as a ?natural? activity, one that is so common-place that it is rarely considered as anything more than a form of locomotion for the human body, the way one encounters and moves through the physical world. It is something generally taken for granted, yet it is an activity that Solnit (2001) amongst others, contends is increasingly becoming marginalized and ignored by western society, despite that walking has been intrinsic as to how, until very recently, interaction with landscape and place occurred. It is a function and process of the human body that is so familiar that it is almost an extension of our senses like vision or hearing. However, walking is not an inherent, instinctive action. Like language Ingold (2000) contends, it is a learnt skill. Without the example and encouragement of other human individuals a child does not instinctively learn to walk, in the same way as it will fail to learn a language, instead their locomotion remains on all fours. It, like language, is an evolved trait of humans, both of which have been argued as having prime significance in our development of intelligence and is one of the defining characteristics of the human species (Leakey, 1979; Solnit, 2001) Walking, or more accurately, bi-pedalism was well established in Pliocene hominids three million years ago, and probably evolved as an adaptation to climate change when dense tree cover was being replaced by open savannah (Campbell and Bernor, 1976). It enabled the distant ancestors of homo-sapiens in Africa to cover large distances of land highly efficiently and with a minimum of effort at a walking pace, this being a highly efficient mode of travel even in comparison with true quadrupeds, but particularly so in comparison with occasional bi-pedal species such as chimpanzees (Rodman and Mc Henry, 1980). It also provided these early hominids 57 with an advantage over other foraging animals, with the senses arranged at the maximum height possible so as to be better able to identify potential food sources and threats, and having two limbs free for arboreal foraging (and much later in the evolutionary line to carry food or water), whilst still being able to take advantage of climbing skills in trees in times of peril (Wheeler, 1991; Nicholson, 2010). It has also been argued that an upright posture was advantageous in the hot savannah because the sun does not bake an upright animal as much as it does one on all fours with more of its body therefore exposed (Stanford, 2003). Bi-pedal walking (as opposed to standing or jumping) is an extremely rare system for mammals, requiring the delicacy of balance that is midway between standing and falling. Walking is a unique activity during which the body, step by step, teeters on the edge of catastrophe. Man?s bipedal mode of locomotion appears potentially catastrophic because only the rhythmic forward motion of the limbs keeps him from falling (Rothbart and Estabrook, 1988:373). With each step the human body is in the process of falling, one?s mass providing impetus, only being saved from this fall by the next step that simultaneously saves us and propelling us to the next fall. We proceed across the land in these series of falling moments, or footfalls, using gravity as an aid to momentum. What we may have gained from this form of mobility, however, we may have lost in others. Ingold (2004:318) notes that whilst the feet, impelled by biomechanical necessity, undergird and propel the body within the natural world, the hands are free to deliver the intelligent designs or conceptions of the mind upon it: for the former, nature is the medium through which the body moves; to the latter it presents itself as a surface to be transformed. Ingold (2004) proposes that because of this the human is a constitutionally divided creature, half in nature and half out. Furthermore, the dexterity of the foot, as exhibited by people who habitually go barefoot and so retain some prehensile capability, has largely been lost by the artificial application of the restrictive technology of footwear. ?Boots and shoes, products of the ever more versatile hand, imprison the foot, constricting its freedom of movement and blunting its sense of touch? (Ingold, 2004:319). 58 Walking unshod also carries with denotations of poverty, transgression or hedonism in western civilisations that might be traced back to 19th century anthropology, and preoccupations with the superiority of a European culture to present the foot accustomed to footwear as being the idealised form that is most in contrast not only between man and ape, but also between civilised man and the ?savage? native. 59 Walking and Landscape Walking connects us to a primal activity and mode of being. It also connects us to how landscape, environment and place is, and has been, perceived and understood from the human perspective. It is a fundamental part of the experience of being in landscape, which entails movement, rather than considering it from a fixed point or attitude (Merriman et al., 2008; Ingold and Vergunst, 2008; Hayden, 2011). As Tilley (1994) proposes, there is a continuum between the human body, consciousness, and the landscape. The experience of the landscape is established in the body and of its sensory and physical capabilities it provides. Through walking, a landscape and place is explored or encountered in a manner that is embedded in the human psyche, and the effect on our emotional cognition might be considered as processes that involve elements of both instinctual and learnt behaviour. Ingold (2004:333) suggests that the forms of the landscape, like the identities and capacities of its inhabitants, are not imposed but rather are emergent as ?condensations or crystallizations of activity? that are relational to each other, so there is a symbiotic process occurring between landscape and walking: ?Through walking, in short, landscapes are woven into life, and lives are woven into the landscape, in a process that is continuous and never-ending? Furthermore, the experience of landscape is modified by physical behaviour, how one interacts with it. To walk through a landscape is to perceive it in a complete form that involves both mind and body. As Solnit (2001:xv) notes: ?while walking, the body and the mind can work together, so that thinking becomes a physical, rhythmic act ? so much for the Cartesian mind/body divide?. Walking is a snub to the concept of dualism, of mind and body being separate. Thought is fused with action as both proceed along their paths. The art of walking is simultaneously an art of thinking, and an art of practice or operating in the world (de Certeau, 1984). Travelling through in the modes of transport such as cars, buses and trains, we passively sit, glimpsing just a thin veneer of the landscape, cut off to the point that it all becomes a blur. However, when walking the details of the environment may be noticed; the small, inconsequential features and oddities that constitute the specificity of a place are assembled in a flowing collage of perception. Lee and Ingold 60 (2006:70) describe the comments of a walker they interviewed that makes the comparison of the walker to the driver: I mean, certainly, you see a lot more when you?re walking. Driving, you look at the road ahead, or should be... Whether it?s New York or Sydney, the only way to see it is from the ground level; on your feet, wandering around... finding little lanes and places, and things that people who live there won?t even see. Whilst the comments are from the perspective of an urban experience, it serves as an example of how walking enables one to look around freely; to let the eye wander whilst still being mobile is a process of ambulatory vision or a ?path of observation?, not comprising of an infinite number of discrete points occupied successively, but a continuous itinerary of movement that is all ?in-the-round or solid, and that is all-of- a-piece? (Ingold, 2000:226). Whilst visual observation is enhanced when walking, other senses of perception are also being utilised that inform the process of perceiving the environment. When walking through a landscape one is engaging with it in the way the human body has become developed to do, with all the senses being utilised and optimised. To walk through a place is to become involved in that place with sight, hearing, touch, smell, the kinetic sense called proprioception, and even taste... Proprioceptive stimuli, signals from the muscles, indicate among other things the slope underfoot and one?s rate of movement (Adams, 2001:188). The land itself is felt by the soles of one?s feet, its irregularities of contours by one?s legs, the body and hands may make fleeting contacts with the surroundings, and the sun, wind and rain are elements that are felt. One can see at a speed that is not too fast to miss the detail but also is continuously evolving, and one?s hearing draws the gaze to fresh objects or hints at the unseen and hidden. Smells become dulled after a short time of noticing them, but when walking one is presented with continuous panoply of scents that are as much tasted in the mouth as smelt by the nose. As Hillaby (1968:235) wrote of his walk from Lands End to John O?Groats: Walking is intimate; it releases something unknown in any other form of travel and, arduous as it can be, the spring of the ground underfoot varies as much as the moods of the sky. By walking the whole way I got a sense of gradual transition from one place to another, a feeling of unity. The mosaic of my own country and its people had become a sensible pattern. 61 Through walking in a landscape or environment, one?s perceptions of it are evolving with every step; walking helps to bring about a different focus, a different way of seeing. Action, perception and reflection become an entity of itself, and a continuum of all the senses experienced simultaneously allows for a deeper sense of place to develop (Tuan, 1974). A place walked through is made by the shifting interaction of person and environment, in which the movement of the whole body is important rather than just an act of vision outwards from a fixed point (Lee and Ingold, 2006:68). The embodied process of walking through a place is also the process of how that place is constituted in a mobile rather than static sense. Furthermore, Casey (1993) proposes that something emerges from the conjunction of culture (the act of walking) and nature (landscape or place) that is not present when the two are apart. This emergence he describes as ?thickening? when each element gains in concert with each other. Casey provides the following as an example: When Thoreau ambles into the surrounding wildscape, he thickens the scene into which he walks. Not only does he leave distinctive marks in the form of footprints and tracks, but his ambulatory activity subtly reshapes the natural world through which he moves. As he saunters through an uncultivated field or an uncut forest, he creates an ?information trail? that announces his presence to seen and unseen wild beings. Even as he watches the natural circumambience, it watches him (Casey, 1993:253). The walk becomes a symbiosis of the activity and the place, each informed by the other, and thereby from the perspective of the walker, rendered indivisible from each other. 62 A Brief History of Being on Foot To consider walking as the activity it is today, it is necessary to recognise the cultural and historical underpinnings that have shaped how it has developed from the human mode of locomotion to the range of cultural expressions and engagements it represents now. As Wallach (2005:12) describes: We?re wanderers ? always have been. It goes back to upright posture and our ability to outwalk our relatives. Homo Erectus walked to the Solo River in Java 1.8 million years ago; to Dmanisi, near Tbilisi, 1.7 million years ago; Beijing about 1.3 million years ago; and to Europe about 800,000 years ago. Waves of hominids spread across the world originating in Africa, the final one being Homo Sapiens some 100,000 years ago who eventually colonised the world through their walking first as hunter-gatherers (Leakey and Lewin, 1992; Mithen, 2003), and then as nomadic farmers (Mithen, 2003; Pryor, 2004). From this mobile background, farming increasingly began to be utilised during the Mesolithic/Neolithic period in Europe, and so communities began to depend on modifying their local environment for food resources, rather than travelling to where they were to be found. As these communities developed, so rudimentary routes through the land began to be developed into networks of paths and tracks linking settlements, providing access to fields, woods and water and opportunities for economic development (Hindle 2001; Pryor, 2001, 2004). These tracks were added to by the Romans who built their roads in order to impose their rule, and as population levels grew, so did the various tracks and paths expand to accommodate them (Hindle, 2001:36). By medieval times, walking in Britain denoted you were poor, a peasant who would rarely, if ever, travel further more than a few miles from where they lived (Wallace, 1993), and to travel if you had wealth was to do so either on or drawn by a horse. To walk through a landscape was either a chore or a penance; a necessity of labour or faith. For most people ?Walking was a mundane, everyday activity, taking them to work, market and church, but rarely over any great distance. Walkers did not travel? (Ingold, 2004:321). Walking as recreation, therefore, had very few advocates or proponents, beyond it being anything more than a thing to be avoided or suffered, and was rarely regarded 63 as an activity to be enjoyed, and never as a means of making understandings regarding self and place. The few proponents it did have were limited to the aristocracy who walked in walled gardens, and the reason for doing so was primarily for exercise (Solnit, 2001). Those who walked did so out of necessity, and these were the peasants who almost by definition never went into town but toiled in the country: Peasants travelled a lifetime on narrow paths. They charted their ambling by familiar features and the rising and setting sun. Like the falcon tethered to his gyre, peasants, on the way to and from their fields, nearby streams and woods, market, and church, perpetually circled their own villages. They rarely ventured beyond the shadow of the local chateau or beyond the ringing sound of the parish church bell. To do so would have been to enter a wild place, a no man?s land, where they would have lacked identification and protection (Amato, 2004:50-51). The idea of travel before the 18th Century was, for the majority of people, an alien concept, and so a traveller encountered would generally be regarded with suspicion if not outright hostility. In medieval times, there was good reason for regarding travellers from without the parish boundaries with a degree of animosity. Not only did it upset the conventions that one remained in one?s locale or place, it was also dangerous to travel; thieves, footpads and highwaymen were very real hazards (Jarvis, 1997), the conditions of the roads were very bad, and to travel on foot was infinitely worse than to travel by horse or carriage, despite even these being often highly uncomfortable (Wallace, 1993). This was because to walk was not only slower, but it also denoted your class, wealth and so your status in society. To walk was to be poor or a criminal (and there was little differentiation between the two by the higher echelons of society). These prejudices dictated a general cultural ambivalence to the traveller who walked, and as such, pedestrianism was generally avoided for the social stigma it attracted. During the mediaeval period and even at the height of pilgrimage in the 14th Century when many thousands of people engaged in walking as penance to spiritual sites in acts of devotion or salvation and also, it must be said, as a way to escape their lords and to have adventure (Frey, 1998), there was legislation enacted in an attempt to control the movement of people, based on the feudal law of the time (Edensor, 2000). To be on foot without license was to risk being presumed a beggar or, even worse, a 64 ?footpad? (Jusserand, 1961). A footpad was the poorest and most feared form of robber on the highway. Being horseless and on foot because of their poverty they could not easily detain or overtake a rider or a coach, so they were forced to prey on other walkers who were also poor, and more likely to kill for a few shillings since they could not easily escape any resultant hue-and-cry; they, just like the more respectable poor, were condemned to being confined to the circle of a day?s walk (Wallace, 1993). Therefore, the common experience for most people never to leave their local area, ?whose families had been bound for centuries to the circle of a single day?s walk on the land? (Wallace, 1993:27), was reinforced by restrictive legislation forbidding even the possibility of venturing outside their parishes. This legislation was introduced in the 14th Century as a reaction to the weakening of feudal bonds and an increasing amount of people who took to the road, a result in part of the effects of the Black Death that was ravaging the land and creating a huge demand for workers, since up to a third of the population had died (Hatcher, 1994). The upper echelons of society perceived this movement of labour as a threat both to the individual and society, and it was made necessary for any person leaving their village to carry sealed papers stating the cause of his journey and the date of their return; without them they would be provisionally jailed. Legitimate travel was limited to a number of reasons or authorities; as a messenger for one?s lord, a licensed minstrel or peddler, a pilgrim or a student, and even then letters of passage became necessary to avoid the risk of incarceration. ... wandering itself ? what we would think of as genuine wandering, moving about without bounds or (necessarily) explicit purpose ? was traditionally criminal, and English laws fostered the perception of travellers as potential wanderers whose character and motives should properly fall under suspicion (Wallace, 1993:29). These ideas of the traveller as being a threat to the ?natural order? of society only began to change gradually in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries, when travel began to be considered in other contexts. Developing trade and competition for resources in far-flung lands contributed first to the awareness that international travel was necessary for both commerce and national interests (Marshall, 1998). As the oceans were explored and new continents and countries discovered, so new ideas and beliefs 65 came into contact with those who undertook these, often perilous, journeys. Through the acquisition of wealth from new colonies, and the experience of the merchants, traders and sailors who made it possible, the idea of travel as being transgressive and alien began to be usurped. Amongst the upper and middle classes, attitudes were changing ?with the rise of mass readerships and ?popular curiosity? twinned with the social phenomena of widespread travel in the service of empire...? (Leask, 2002:7) a cultural revolution began to take place. However, the preferred form of travel was the horse and carriage even though neither was very much faster or comfortable than walking at the time (Jarvis, 1997). Travel was an activity of the well-to-do, who could afford such things. They considered walking to be tedious and commonplace, a view that lingers in the residual connotations of the word ?pedestrian? (Ingold, 2004:321) Even though walking was considered with disregard by most, the popular curiosity with travel extended to the working classes too, the stories returning sailors told about their travels resulted in a certain glamour and excitement to be connected with journeys. Pandora?s Box was opened, and the change was underway that legitimised travel as a positive pursuit, both individually and for society. Thompson (1970:158- 159) comments that previous to this change in attitudes: ?The intervening countryside had been a regrettable nuisance to be negotiated as rapidly as possible, a possible source of peril from accidents or highwaymen and discomfort from dirty inns, rather than a source of pleasure?. By the 18th to 19th century, both ideas about landscape ideals and the role of walking began to develop. Where once gardens and enclosed parks had been the preserve of the walk for the leisured classes as exercise and courtship, and so with them coming to reflect an idealised form of landscape that romanticised nature (Thacker, 1983), the walk in the surrounding landscape began to be explored. The philosopher Rousseau (2005) in the late 18th century attributed walking in nature as being a form of meditation, linking back to a peripatetic tradition of philosophy from the time of Plato, and championed the benefits of the experience. This revisionist approach was also occurring elsewhere. Just as the artistic renaissance in Italy had influenced the rest of Europe, so in the travelling across the Alps to reach there for ?the grand tour?, a new aesthetic appreciation for mountains and wild, natural scenery began to be 66 formed within the social elite, along with them being a place for self expression (Fleming, 2001; Macfarlane, 2003). In Britain, the landscape in its natural, ?wild? form began to be explored in literature and on foot. The works and walks of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, R.L. Stevenson, Jane Austen and later in America Henry David Thoreau and John Muir have all contributed not only to a romanticised and idealised notion of landscape, and walking as a virtuous way to experience it, but also the beginnings of a regard for nature, its preservation, conservation, and the building of relationships with it. However, it is William Wordsworth who most contributed to developing this particular cultural and aesthetic engagement with landscape. While others walked before and after him, and many other Romantic poets went on walking tours, Wordsworth made walking central to his life and art to a degree almost unparalleled before or since. He seems to have gone walking nearly every day of his very long life, and walking was both how he encountered the world and how he composed his poetry (Solnit, 2001:104). Walking was not only a statement by Wordsworth of his radical political sympathies with the common man, but was also how he explored his relationships with himself, others and nature, and part of his method of writing (Wallace, 1993). Furthermore, the symbolic figure of the farmer as an embodiment the earlier Georgian aesthetic of cultivator and preserver of the agricultural cycle ?suffered a loss of stability with the advent of rural change and the new possibilities suggested by speed and technological innovation? (Edensor, 2000: 84). Wallace (1993:68) contends that Wordsworth replaces the ideological space that the farmer once inhabited as being symbolic of the countryside with the figure of the walker: the localizing yet travelling action of walking replaces cultivation, not only in the formal sense of metaphorical substitution, but in the sense of redefining cultivation in its extended sense as being both placed and moving, stable and changing. The lyrical poetry Wordsworth and his contemporaries composed provided an impetus for tourists to come and visit his beloved Lake District, seeking to walk the hills there just as they had, and developing an admiration for an unspoilt, unsophisticated rural scene. ?This kind of appreciation was fostered, and socially deepened by easier, faster travel from the middle of the century? (Thompson, 67 1970:159). The development of the railway network coinciding with this emerging fashion of walking in the countryside (and the first guidebooks for tourists), which was not only aesthetically pleasing, but also considered as a virtuous activity and good for the mind and body, in the context of ?muscular Christianity? that was becoming increasingly in favour (Watson, Weir, and Friend, 2005). Romanticism took walking from being ?a lower-class necessity and an upper-class select activity, and transformed it for those with means and a certain subjectivity into an elevated vehicle for experiencing nature, the world, and the self? (Amato, 2004:102). As the social conditions in the 19th century improved to allow not only relatively safe travel upon the roads and paths, but also for relatively fast methods of transport to develop, so walking became an activity increasingly culturally defined and engaged with as forms of recreation, tourism, leisure, therapy, courtship, and dissent and protest, both in rural and urban contexts (Solnit, 2001; Amato, 2004; Nicholson, 2010). Furthermore, with public transport becoming an affordable commodity for ordinary working people, walking began to become regarded as a choice rather than a necessity, and so its connotations with poverty also began to diminish (Urry, 2000). With the onset of industrialisation throughout Britain, populations were transferring to the towns, and walking began to be used as an escape from them by the masses. Just as more people were engaging in walking as a pastime, so this coincided with more of the traditional rights of way being closed to them by land owners, and more common land being enclosed (Wallace, 1993). An Act of Parliament in 1815 facilitated this process enabling two magistrates to close any path they considered unnecessary, and it is probably closures as a result of this Act that led to the formation of an association for the Protection of Ancient Footpaths in the vicinity of York (Stephenson, 1989), the first in the country and rapidly followed by many more. In a similar vein, walking clubs multiplied throughout the country that organised not only weekly excursions into the countryside, but also to represent the demands and interests of walkers, and towards the end of the century the landowning elite?s control of access over swathes of countryside began to be increasingly challenged. Furthermore, the challenges were coming increasingly from clubs in the urban, industrial areas with memberships that reflected those populations (Hill, 1980). The walker was being transformed from being primarily equated with the archetypal lone 68 figure of the Romantic poet in silent contemplation and reverie, to being a collective pursuit, increasingly a form of allegiance to a particular philosophy or way of life, and where conversation and sociability were key elements of the activity (Amato, 2004). The Manchester YMCA Rambling Club was a typical example of such clubs, whose members ?would walk seventy miles between Saturday afternoon, when work ended, and Sunday evening? (Solnit, 2001:164). Trespass was increasingly deployed as a method to gain access to land, since so much of land was in private hands, and this sometimes led to violence (Stephenson, 1989). Early in the 20th century organisations appeared that further drove demand for increased access to the land for walking such as the ?Boy Scouts, suffragettes, Zionists, socialists, youth and athletic associations, religious and philanthropic groups, labor congresses, and national and paramilitary movements? (Amato, 2004:207). Through the twenties and thirties, walking clubs organised mass trespasses as a form of demonstration and protest (Rothman, 1982 Samuel, 1999). In 1935 the Ramblers? Association was formed from the federation or rambling associations, which lobbied Parliament for access rights, and in 1949 The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed that required county councils to map all rights of way and once having done so they were considered definitive (Stephenson, 1989). Further Acts of Parliament have followed that have consolidated access rights for walkers. Whilst access rights to open land are not as widely available as in many other European countries in England (as opposed to Scotland which has legal access enshrined in the Land Reform Scotland Act 2003), the network of paths, bridleways and by-ways that make up public rights of way are a legacy that defy the hegemony of enclosed, private land. They are a characteristic of landscape that is recognised as being distinctly British (particularly so in England), integral to its make-up and how it is engaged with. Walking these paths and trails according to Solnit (2001:162) is: the antithesis of owning. It postulates a mobile, empty-handed, shareable experience of the land... Certainly one of the pleasures of walking in England is this sense of cohabitation rights-of-way paths create ? of crossing stiles into sheep fields and skirting the edges of crops on land that is both utilitarian and aesthetic. 69 Cultures of Walking Walking can be invested with many varied cultural meanings (Lorimer and Lund, 2008), and no such thing as walking in itself, there are only varieties of walking (Wylie, 2005). One particular and very pertinent variety to this thesis is wayfaring, which is the making of a walking journey and a sense of defining who the walker is; each are the same as the other and ?an active engagement with the country that opens up along his path? (Ingold, 2007:76). The wayfarer is not so much concerned with the destination but rather with the journey and so distinct from being a mode of transport solely concerned with getting from place to place. As such, wayfaring encapsulates to a certain extent some of the modes of recreational walking. In the consideration of recreational walking and its diversity, Kay and Moxham (1996:174-175), from an exercise with a group of students, established two distinct orders of walking practices. The first group of practices in ascending order of effort required included sauntering, strolling, ambling, plodding, promenading, wandering, walking, and roaming, these identified as being ?easy, casual; capable of spontaneous participation by groups of mixed abilities; relaxing and sociable; conventional, mainstream activities? The second group of practices, again in ascending order of effort required, included trail-walking, marching, hiking, trekking, hill-walking, back-packing, yomping, and peak bagging, these being identified as ?strenuous, rigorous; requiring both planning and preparation; challenging and rewarding; esoteric, minority activities for aficionados only.? In between these groups came tramping, striding, and rambling. This is by no means a definitive list of the varieties of walking; others might also include pottering, tottering, dawdling, shuffling, ambling, and sauntering of the more casual forms, or plodding, trudging, tramping, and slogging when the going is more demanding; limping and hobbling could also be included, maybe even wading (Nicholson, 2010). How you walk denotes the type of bodily engagement you are deploying with the land. The above serves to illustrate not only the wide variety of walking practices there may be, but also the ?contested modes of walking and reflexive values? that may be attributed to them (Edensor, 2000:88). Even the gait of walking has been identified as a cultural indicator, as Ingold (2004) discusses in his consideration of the march- 70 like stride of the booted or shoed westerner, against the shorter paced, naked foot of some tribal communities. Walking has been integral to human history, and that history becomes part of the history of culture and imagination, as Solnit (2001:4) notes: That imagination has both shaped and been shaped by the spaces it passes through on two feet. Walking has created paths, roads, trade routes; generated local and cross-continental senses of place; shaped cities, parks; generated maps, guidebooks, gear and, further afield, a vast library of walking stories and poems, of pilgrimages, mountaineering expeditions, meanders, and summer picnics. The landscapes, urban and rural, gestate the stories, and the stories bring us back to the sites of history. Walking has therefore not only contributed to how landscape has become culturally perceived, it is also a cultural practice in itself, with performative and creative aspects (Long 1997, 2005; Lorimer and Wylie, 2010). It is as Edensor (2000:81) suggests ?informed by various performative norms and values which produce distinct praxes and dispositions?, a practice that may either reflect conventional attitudes surrounding space and place, the body and landscape, or challenge those conventions of what is deemed as ?appropriate? behaviour. Walking is, therefore, an embodied practice (Edensor, 2000: Lorimer, 2011). Whilst an activity such as dance, performed usually within prescribed spaces and following particular styles, might be associated easily as cultural expressions, walking is less often considered as performance. And yet, walking, both as recreation and moving about one?s locale as transport, is a form of bodily expression that follows certain practices and norms deemed as appropriate; there are appropriate ways to dress, appropriate places to go, and routes to follow. It is a bodily praxis that transmits identity and entails ?movement through space in conventionally stylised ways? and in addition might ?serve as a medium for bestowing meaning on the self and the social, natural or metaphysical realities through which it moves? (Adler, 1989:1366-8). To walk in the English countryside is to be involved with the sensibilities that come from the configurations of self, travel, landscape and nature (McNaughten and Urry, 1998; Olwig, 2008; Edensor, 2010). Wylie (2005:235) describes these ways of 71 ? being-in and being-with a landscape practised as both nature and nation, remain the precondition and the milieu of contemporary countryside walking in England. And troupes such as romantic or sublime notions of the walking self ? male, solitary, and self-reliant, but also dizzied by extension and expanse ? advance ineluctably into cultural politics, into complex histories of protest and access and discursive entanglements of walking, gender, rurality, health, fitness, happiness and patriotism. Many of the present common assumptions made as to why people go for walks are still grounded in the Romantic Movement?s perspective regarding walking in the landscape. What was idealised then, such as nature, rural life, the scenic views, the exercise itself, are still common perspectives offered now as to why people like to go for a walk, and perhaps more significantly, why it has been legitimatised and strengthened as an appropriate and condoned mode of behaviour for the visitor to the countryside. For over two hundred years walking has both developed and evolved into a complex milieu of differing activities and pursuits, but all grounded in the belief that is a ?natural? activity. Walking has evolved from being a form of locomotion, something no more thought was given to than was breathing or seeing, to being an idealised way to encounter nature (Henderson and Vikander, 2007) and as aerobic exercise (Morris and Hardman, 1997), and follows proscribed forms; the walk to the shops or work (de Certeau, 1984; Lorimer, 2011) following pavement and pedestrian crossings, the ramble from the car-park to hiking long distance paths (Hillaby, 1968), exploring recognised (and promoted) walking areas (Harding, 1994), or completing all of the 284 summits of the Munros, the mountains in Scotland over 3000 feet (Lorimer and Lund, 2008). Particularly with the latter three, there are also a plethora of guidebooks available informing one as to how to interpret the landscape, its history, culture and natural fauna and flora, the best routes, and where to stay, and how long to take (for example: Storer, 1987; McNeish, 1996; Macadam, 2000; Richards 2004; Charles, 2009). An entire industry has also grown up to provide specialised clothing and equipment for ?walkers? at premium prices, that despite its stated functionality also follows fashion aesthetics that contribute to an increasing consumerist attitude in walkers; the latest in a series of modes of behaviour that reflect the cultural or social norms of the 72 day. The walker as consumer is now, therefore, becoming increasingly prevalent as a cultural pattern of behaviour; not only in terms of financial transactions, but also that the individual experience of the walk should now fulfil certain expectations, and tick particular boxes of satisfaction (Ashcroft, 1996). New practices of walking, such as Nordic Walking, have been introduced that promote the learning of appropriate technique through accredited practioners, having with it the attendant costs of training and equipment that is required (Shove and Pantzar, 2005). The tourist industry has not been slow in recognising this increasing desire for ?product? that fulfils the requirements of the consumer. The marketing of certain areas and places as appropriate for the walker by developing them as brands has rapidly become de facto in Britain, particularly England. Plate (2006:112) makes the point: the past decades have seen the rise of the themed walking tour as a cultural product offered to tourists as consumption, enabling them to consume the urban (or rural) landscape as they purchase the tour. Serving to distinguish audiences, these tours systematize and construct the tourist gaze, selecting not only the places to be looked upon, but also the terms in which the gaze is framed. Meanwhile, whole swathes of the countryside have been reassigned their product brand labels for the walker to consume (Urry, 1995); Wainwright?s or Wordsworth?s Lakeland, Bronte Country, Hardy?s Wessex, the Jurassic Coast, or Hadrian?s Wall Country. With these designations of themes being applied to landscape, an idealised and packaged version of the place is presented, with all the associated ?points of interest? integral as part of that reinforcement of a particular moment of history or literary invention. It is a reproduction of iconic memory or invention that conjoins the myth of place to the development of income for the local economy. Therefore, the consideration of walking as a cultural activity is to also understand that it carries significance as to how landscape is encountered and (re)produced, and might reinforce accepted norms and values of behaviour, but is also inherently subject to change and re-interpretation that challenge these behaviours. Some examples of walking as a cultural practice follow. 73 The Long Distance Walk Walking long distances are amongst the less common cultures of walking, and as mentioned before ascribed as being challenging, esoteric and for the aficionado, requiring planning and preparation (Kay and Moxham, 1996). There are broadly two types of long distance walker, although they share a similar genesis. One is to many the familiar form of the hiker or backpacker following a long distance trail or route carrying a rucksack of varying weight and composition (not to be confused with the term backpacker that is used to describe generally an international traveller of limited means who carries their possessions in a backpack and uses other forms of transport such as vehicles and aircraft). The other is slightly less familiar and describe themselves as ?long distance walkers?, walking ?challenge walks? of distances anywhere between thirty to one hundred miles within a set amount of time. Whilst both types walk long, sometimes prodigious distances, they represent different approaches, one competitive, one (in the main) not, although both groups to varying extents (although not always) share a sense of completing the route they are following within a given span of time, if only approximately. The long distance walkers (as opposed to backpackers) or challenge walkers are often part of a walking club or group, and such walks are planned and organised with check points and rest areas with refreshments along the way. They are designed with set distances in mind, rather than the linking of one place to another, usually of 30 miles or more, the 100 mile route to be completed in 48 hours being the greatest challenge (such routes being known as ?the hundreds?). The route may be sometimes on a repeated loop, sometimes on one linear route, and are usually accomplished with little or no rest (LDWA, 2010). The antecedents of such walking goes back to the 17th and 18th centuries when aristocrats and gentry would bet wagers on their carriage footmen to race ?heel to toe on the turnpikes, heaths, downs and racecourses of England? (Welch, 2009:59), and were the forerunner of both long distance walking and ultramarathoning since they could last up to twenty-four hours or even take place over six days. With the growth of the press, long distance walking became increasingly popular as a sport to follow rather than participate in, one of the most famous participants being Captain Barclay who walked a variety of challenge walks for wagers including one where he walked one mile every hour of every day and night without break for 1000 74 hours (Radford, 2002). Gradually, these types of walking evolved into go-as-you- please events where trotting or running were allowed, some being over five hundred miles, and eventually developed into the codified walking of the Amateur Athletic Association (Welch, 2009). Challenge walking grew out of various walking clubs between the 1930s and 1960s, when a number of classic routes to be walked within a set time were established such as the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge (go4awalk, 2011) and the Lyke Wake Walk (LWW, 2010). In 1971 the Long Distance Walkers Association was established, and from 26 events listed in the diary for virtually that entire year, it has grown so that just for the month of September alone in 2008 there were 24 (Welch, 2009:66). The sport of long distance walking appears to be increasingly popular, this being as much for the social aspects of it as it is for the challenge to get your time down and the competition aspect of it (LDWA, 2010). One of the more peculiar aspects of long distance walks, usually when they are over fifty miles and most often on the hundred mile challenges is the hallucinations that some people experience. Welch (2009:85) comments: I met people who had encountered John Major on traffic control, Roman armies on the march and slugs the size of handbags crawling up the walls of village halls. I was told by others that they had observed faces appear on the moon, green-eyed cats perched in trees, a mother and daughter in 1950s summer clothes sitting in the sunshine in an orchard ? at midnight ? and an old-fashioned railway station with wooden buildings and platforms that unaccountably disappeared within fifty yards of approaching it. Possibly even stranger most people appear to enjoy these experiences, and even that they are of help in completing the walk. ?Hallucinations seemed to be part of the mystery and magic of Hundreds? (Welch, 2009:89). Regarding the other type of long distance walking, or backpacking, these may cover similar distances to the challenge walks or much more, but are done over a number of days or weeks, and if not relying on using accommodation provided by others along the way, often carrying some type of basic shelter, sleeping and cooking gear, and a supply of food. This type of walking is much more recreational, although it is also common for it to be used as part of an outdoor education programme (Langmuir, 1995; Long, 2004). 75 Backpacking is a relatively modern name for a recreational activity that developed from travelling on foot as necessity or obligation. As discussed earlier, aside from those who made pilgrimages for adventure, recreational long distance walking before the late 18th century was a rarity although not unheard of. William Coxe and William Bowles made long journeys through England and Europe, John Stewart hiked from India to England via Arabia, and Carl Moritz walked through southern England (much to the incomprehension of those who rode past him or provided his lodgings) all between 1770s and 1780s, and all belonging to a class of people who were relatively wealthy and privileged (Amato, 2004). During the course of the 19th century, distance walking gradually became more popular as the exploits of the early walking sportsmen became publicised and the opportunities for travel and peripatetic recreation became established, as described previously. One of the earliest accounts which presented hiking and camping outdoors as a recreational activity was R. L. Stevenson?s 120 mile solo hike with a donkey in the Cevennes mountains of south central France in 1878 (Stevenson, 1916). That this type of recreational travel coincided with the great age of exploration is probably not a coincidence, the activity being seen as adventurous and exciting. Writers such as John Muir (1998) with his accounts of epic walks to the Florida coast and through the valleys and uplands of the Sierra Mountains, further inspired walkers to undertake longer walks, with the basic necessities of shelter and food being carried in rucksacks designed for the task (Graham, 1927). As walking established itself as a popular recreational activity during the first half of the 20th century, so long distance walking and camping/hostelling also developed in popularity, and the first unofficial long distance routes began to be created using ancient rights of way and drovers tracks, often in upland country (Stephenson, 1989). With the establishment of official rights of way in the post war period, it was not long before official long distance trails were created, the first being the Pennine Way in 1965 (Nicolson, 1981). Over the next few decades long distance trails proliferated, being developed by the Countryside Commission, local authorities, voluntary groups and individuals (Blatchford, 1986; LDWA, 2010). Backpacking became established as a niche special interest activity in the spectrum of walking, together with the availability of associated magazines, route guides, instruction books and specialist equipment. 76 Backpacking over a number of days, moving through an ever changing landscape is a very different proposition to a day walk. To begin with, the load on your back is greater; there is real effort required to carry it mile after mile, sometimes over rough and mountainous terrain, feet can become blistered and the body may ache. But with that effort comes a sense of freedom, of being released from the normality of day to day life, of being able to make your own shelter at the end of the day independent from others, remaining in close contact with your path and the sky and the earth. Being on one linear line crossing the landscape gives a different perspective entirely where future and past may be lost in the moment of now. Wylie (2005:246) describes this difference regarding his walk on the South West Coast Path: Unlike the criss-crossing walks through which one might come to know a given region, and view the same scenes from a variety of perspectives, the Coast path is a continual passing-through. Between an unknown country ahead and an already-forgotten country behind, the walk moves at best within provisional parcels of space: this slope, this view of the coast ahead, the Path as far as that curve round a bend. Wylie also identified that as the walk progressed, so a sense of unease developed from a feeling of becoming more ghostly with every step. This echoes with Pinder?s (2001) essay on ghostly urban walking, and the apparitional process of walking being perpetually arriving or departing, between there and not-there (Derrida, 1994). Wylie describes this as the spectrality of walking, and that to be spectral is not to vanish but to haunt: ?To haunt a landscape is to supplement and disturb it. Equally, passing- through is at once both passing-into and emerging-from? (Wylie, 2005:246). Whilst these perspectives of being in a continuous process of passing through and emerging from the landscape, or the spectrality of walking, are some particular aspects of a long distance walk, Terrill (2006:23-24) describes others that articulate not only how the mind is subtly changed by the process, but also how a sense of the wider landscape was gained on his walk along another coastal path, this time in Pembrokeshire: The thing about walking hour-after-hour, mile-after-mile is you reach a point where you almost forget you?re walking... the repetitiveness lets you slip into a trance, a kind of meditation in motion. The body proceeds on autopilot and the mind is free to wander or even empty itself. During the hardest Pembrokeshire 77 miles I was soaking up the landscape without realising, and as a result become part of it, like the rocks and the pounding waves... I saw how the land fitted together, noticed similarities in places far apart, recognised for the first time that all the separate features weren?t unrelated but were essential parts of the whole. It?s as if the coast was a song. Walking a short distance slowly would have let me appreciate each individual note, but moving fast and far meant I could enjoy the whole tune. Terrill?s walk was faster than most, yet his description and Wylie?s before serve as good examples to provide a sense of what the experience of a long distance, multi- day walk is like; at the one time being of and in the moment, and yet at the other being part of the panoply of a greater whole. Urban Walking Walking by the urban pedestrian is often considered as having less significance because it tends to be a habitual, sometimes daily pattern of transportation, often comprising of short distances and task or goal orientated that are repetitive (Lorimer, 2011). They may or may not be social in their action, and often are fulfilling an obligated purpose of making a journey to school, to walk the dog, to shop, or to commute to work. The obligated purpose also extends to walking as work; postmen, child-minders, refuse collectors, the bobby on the beat, and those workers who use a car or bus but still finish their journey on foot; the community nurse or doctor, the salesman, and the social worker. Apart from the visiting tourist who is obliged to walk to see the sites of a city with a fleeting ?spectatorial gaze? (Urry, 2002:44), the recreational walker or the walker as a wanderer in an urban context is a less common figure, limited to the designated heritage trail (Sheilabees, 2010), or thematic walking tours (Markwell, Stevenson and Rowe, 2004; Time Out, 2011). Beyond such engagements, walking in the urban context for its own sake has increasingly become linked with the term of psychogeography, a theoretical perspective of walking as a critical and aesthetic practice (Bassett, 2004). This practice extends from the fl?neur in early 19th century Paris, typically portrayed as a disinterested, leisurely observer (usually male) of the urban scene who takes pleasure of being a secret observer lost in the crowd of the changing spectacle of spaces and places (Ferguson, 1987), through the Dadaist avant-gardes events and the surrealist 78 chance and spontaneous wanderings, or drifts, in the 1920s (Bonnet, 1992), the writings of Walter Benjamin (2002) about his urban investigations, the d?rives of the situationists (Debord, 1987), the work of de Certeau (1984) and Lefebvre (1996), to the walking art of Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, and Marina Abromovic (Moorhouse, 2002; Solnit, 2001) and contemporary writers such as Ian Sinclair (2003, 2003a). These different perspectives have used different methods of walking combined with different aesthetic, critical, and political strategies (Jenks and Neve, 2000) and have also been involved in the changing visions of the city and attitudes towards spaces (Bassett, 2004; Morris, 2004). Guy Debord (2007:5) describes psychogeography as ??the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.? He also describes it as a concept with ?a rather pleasing vagueness? that hints at the contested nature of the area and its history. Alternative methods have been explored to introduce randomness to routes, such as ?drifting? with no set destination or goal (Bonnet, 1992). The d?rive developed from the random drift as a way of exploring an urban landscape through non-random methods such as following a short set of repeated directions (an algorithmic d?rive), or by using the map of one city to navigate in another, even by chasing smells (Debord, 2007). As John Rogers (2006) described it during his lecture Remapping High Wycombe: ?It is the antithesis to the led walk. It is a self-authored heritage trail of the present?. Much of contemporary psychogeography has been informed by Lefebvre (1996) and de Certeau (1984), both interested in seeking to understand and theorise the practices of ordinary people through an analysis of the patterns of their everyday existence. Regarding people who walk in the city, de Certeau (1984:93) observes that their bodies follow the ?thick and thins? of an urban text which they write yet are unable to read: The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other. 79 Whilst de Certeau articulates both theoretical and conceptual ideas regarding space, place and how they are shaped by movement, and the ?otherness? the urban pedestrian possesses, psychogeography is increasingly concerned with seeking out the forgotten, overlooked and the imagined. Rather than the theorist, it is the novelist, the poet and the performance artist who now occupy centre stage (Coverley, 2006). Walking as Pilgrimage or to Protest Walking is a practice that may reflect spiritual and political expression (Kumar, 2000). The pilgrimage has long been an element of human spiritual activity, and is found in all of the world?s major religions, with varying emphasises being placed on the journey or destination, depending both on the religion and the pilgrimage being undertaken. For many pilgrims, however, both now and in the past, the physical journey is linked with the spiritual one, one of self-discovery and of salvation (Frey, 1998). As Solnit (2001:46) describes: ??pilgrimage is almost universally embedded in human culture as a literal means of spiritual journey, and asceticism and physical exertion are almost universally understood as means of spiritual development?. The journey on foot motivated by faith or strong belief seems to be a common theme reaching through all traditions, just as the physical journey might be considered as a metaphor for one?s journey through life (Wallace, 1993:17), and the destination as a metaphor for one?s death, salvation or the start of a different journey (see Allin and Humberstone, 2010). Walking as a form of meditation, as a way of attaining a different psychological state, is a concept recognised by many cultures and religions and continues to be a significant element in the spiritual pilgrimage, but there has been little research done on this in the West. Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1999) have described what they refer to as ?flow?, and discuss it as a state of mind where one is fully immersed in the activity one is engaged with, as if you are at one with it, where the boundaries of subject and object are blurred, even as if one is in a state of bliss. Therefore, it may be argued that the act of walking through a landscape that speaks of our place within it may also, through the activity, bring about a resonance that may be subtle but is nevertheless significant as to how we regard it. Protest marches and processions have something of the pilgrimage about them, and are indicative either of an element of political dissent or a mode of cultural 80 expression; a group of people drawn together by a common, strongly held cause and walking through the streets to a significant destination, a demonstration of their passion. As Solnit (2001:216) observes: Public marches mingle the language of the pilgrimage, in which one walks to demonstrate one?s commitment, with the strike?s picket line, in which one demonstrates the strength of one?s group and one?s persistence by pacing back and forth, and the festival, in which the boundaries between strangers recede. Walking becomes testifying. It may be significant that it is rare that political demonstrations are described as walks; they are marches, the etymological sense of the word meaning ?to trample down? (Amato, 2004:6), reflecting the combative and martial undercurrents that often bubble just under their surface. There have also been people who have walked alone as a demonstration of their political belief (Kumar, 2000), particularly those striving for a form of salvation on Earth, rather than in heaven, calling for disarmament, the ending of wars, and world peace. Whether walking alone or in groups or crowds, both protest marches and processions carry with them elements of ritualised behaviour. They tend to follow defined and traditional routes, may occur on traditional specified dates, and are part of a long history of where ordinary people express their social and political motivations in an overtly public manifestation. The most common form of the pedestrian secular pilgrimage now is the sponsored walk, where a particular cause is supported by the raising of money for it by pledging to walk a specific distance, often at a particular place, and sometimes within a constrained period of time. Again, this demonstrates similar motivations in that the participant is demonstrating their willingness to undertake a journey that often involves challenge and hardship in order to deliver a kind of salvation, in the form of financial support, to the cause they are supporting. Nicholson (2010:18) considers that it places the walk in an undesirable category: ?The implication is that walking is some eccentric and out of the ordinary activity, so rare that people would only do it for the money. There?s also the sense that walking is a form of suffering: by walking we share the pain and sorrow of the AIDS sufferer or the cancer victim?. The sponsored walk is a curious phenomenon; by doing it to raise money it has elements of selflessness and sacrifice for a greater cause that reflects aspects of 81 the pilgrimage and by implication the idea for doing it for its own sake is an absurdity. Gender, Ethnicity and Walking Cultural ideas and discriminations surrounding gender and ethnicity are also factors that are reflected in walking. What are deemed as being appropriate ways of walking for one group is not necessarily the same for another. An underlying cultural prejudice still considers, for example, the lone female walker or a group of Asian men, as respectively irresponsible or a threat. In regards to women walking the streets, Solnit (2001:233) comments: Women have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting that most simple of freedoms, taking a walk, because their walking and indeed their very beings have been construed as inevitably, continually sexual in those societies concerned with controlling women?s sexuality. Walking as a practice has codes and models of behaviour that follow what society considers as acceptable behaviour; not to follow these is a transgression that brings about disequilibrium of place, since place is defined through patterns of behaviour reflecting the norms and values ascribed to it (Massey, 2005). In addition, the very style or way we walk, the gait and posture, have developed from proscribed styles deemed as appropriate, and influenced by a variety of elements ranging from the footwear worn, to the promotion of the idealised, western stride with its origins from the military march (Ingold, 2004), or the leisurely stroll of the promenade announcing social class and implicit sexual activity (Solnit, 2001; Amato, 2004). In this context, landscape and walking needs also to be considered in terms of how the gendering of space and of the activity acts as a constraint for women to engage in either, particularly when without male company or alone. As Solnit (2001:240) points out: ?access to public space, urban and rural, for social, political, practical, and cultural purposes is an important part of everyday life, one limited for women by their fear of violence and harassment... fear of rape puts many women in their place ? indoors, intimidated, dependant yet again on material barriers and protectors rather than their own will to safeguard their sexuality. 82 This patriarchal hegemony is reflected in how countryside walking is ?beset by conventions about what constitutes appropriate bodily conduct? (Edensor, 2000:83). Landscape and walking might be ascribed certain significances that contribute to a process of excluding and including on the grounds of one?s gender or race (Rose, 1993). Solnit (2001:244) gives the example of the photographer Ingrid Pollard who made a series of portraits of herself in the Lake District where she went to try to feel like Wordsworth, and felt nervous instead, and comments: ?Nature romanticism, she seemed to be saying, was not available to people of her color?. The sequence of self- portrait photographs which Pollard produced were conscious transgressions that highlighted a symbolic association that white, male and upper class were ?in-place? in the landscape, and female and Black were ?out-of-place? (Humberstone, 2003). All of these forms suggest that the activity of walking has, and continues to hold, a particular significance in both the demonstration of held ideals and principles as an individual and part of a group, and as symbolic of what it is to be human, as a social, cultural, political, and spiritual being (Adams, 2001; Edensor, 2000; Slavin, 2003). The following chapter describes the methodological approach chosen to research the above and also the significance walking has in making a relational understanding of place and landscape. 83 Chapter Four Methodology ?Isn?t it really extraordinary to see that, since man took his first steps, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking... questions that are tied to all philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world? (Honor? de Balzac). Paradigms of Research Methods This chapter discusses the methods of research considered, and also the philosophical underpinnings that have been utilised in deciding how best to approach tackling the themes and issues raised in the preceding literature review, in particular how landscape is interpreted through the embodied approach of walking and how relationships with place are established through this practice. It also seeks to reflect the reflexive journey that was undertaken in deciding within which theoretical paradigms I felt suited not only the topic but also my own worldview or perspective, and how the methods of research were developed from considering different approaches and the particular strengths and weaknesses that they contained. Sparkes (1992) identifies three main paradigms that have influenced research in physical education, that of positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory. Positivism is rooted in the concept that the social world is constituted of tangible facts that are relatively immutable and can be readily observed and measured, seeking to uncover singular truths; subjectivity and ambiguities are avoided (Sparkes, 1992). Differing meanings made are therefore avoided or ignored since these tend to contradict the idea of there being positive truths (or facts) to be found. Therefore, research from a positivistic perspective largely utilises quantitative methods, since these offer opportunities for obtaining definitive answers through an objective approach of measurement. A qualitative approach to research, however, embraces the concepts of ambiguity and subjectivity that is such an anathema to positivism. As Denzin and Lincoln (1994:4) 84 propose: ?Qualitative research is many things to many people. Its essence is twofold: a commitment to some version of the naturalistic, interpretive approach to its subject matter, and an ongoing critique of the politics and methods of positivism.? Denzin and Lincoln (2005:14-20), considering qualitative research from a North American perspective, have characterised successive qualitative research movements of the 20th century into eight historical stages or moments that overlap and simultaneously operate in the present: a) The Traditional Period (1900-1940) ? ?objective? colonizing accounts of field experience reflective of the positivist paradigm and concerned with the foreign ?other?. b) Modernist Phase (1950-1970 and to present) ? also known as the ?golden age? sought to formalize research methods with rigorous studies of social processes using in the latter years emerging interpretive theories such as phenomenology, critical theory and feminism but still concerned with validity and producing reliable results that were able to be generalised. c) Blurred Genres (1970-1986 and to present) ? boundaries between the social sciences and humanities becoming blurred in a ?genre diaspora? with researchers using a wide complement of existent and emerging paradigms, methods and strategies for research along with diverse ways of collecting and analyzing empirical materials. An interpretative approach that challenges positivistic stances. d) Crisis of Representation (1986-1990) ? research and writing become increasingly reflective articulating the consequences of blurring the genres interpretation of the field. New ways of writing were sought as issues surrounding whether validity and reliability can offer legitimacy to qualitative research resurfaced, and the researcher?s voice, rather than being edited out, comes more central. e) Post-modern (1990-1995) ? in an effort to confront the crisis, experimental forms of writing are explored where theories are read as tales from the field; telling a story through the forms of auto-ethnography, poetic form, ethnographic fiction and drama are utilised. f) Post-experimental Enquiry (1995-2000) ? these new and novel forms of expressing lived experience and interpretation become regarded less as 85 experimental and increasingly accepted as legitimate approaches to qualitative research. g) Methodologically Contested Present (2000-2004) ? the success of these ventures, however, lead to conflict and retrenchment in certain areas with a continuing discourse of the crisis surrounding representation of experience and text, legitimacy, and the role and potential for text to make substantive effects of change in the world. h) The Future (2005-to present) ? is the current trend of confronting the methodological backlash critiquing these new forms of representation. The qualitative, interpretative researcher, therefore, whilst maybe rejecting the positivistic stance of quantitative research because it reproduces one type of science that excludes too many alternate voices (Huber, 1995), is also confronted by accusations that such a postmodernist stance is an attack on reason and truth (Silverman, 1997). Furthermore, there are a wide range of approaches that might be utilised as a research methodology, the choices, however, are dependent on the research subject. Whilst qualitative research inherently uses multiple methods of enquiry (Flick, 2002), by using these multiple methods reflects an attempt to secure an in-depth understanding of the subject or phenomenon in question and offers an alternative to validation. It is a strategy that adds rigour, complexity and richness to the enquiry (Flick, 2002). An inquiry into the relational aspects between self, identity, culture and landscape whilst on a walking journey suggests that such considerations are certainly qualitative ones, rather than quantitative, and an interpretative approach is arguably an appropriate paradigm within which such relationships can be considered. This interpretive approach views the social world as being socially constructed (social constructivism), where any interpretations made are experiences of individuals, and the researcher attempts to illuminate these perspectives to gain insight into these differing worldviews. The interpretive approach, as Denzin and Lincoln (2005) have suggested, emerged from the moment of blurring of genres (Geertz, 1983) and a range of research traditions which include ethnography, hermeneutics, naturalism, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and constructivism. Such an approach also utilises a net of premises consisting of the epistemological, the relationship between the inquirer and the known, the ontological, the nature of reality and of being a 86 human being, and the methodological, how the world is known and knowledge is gained of it (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). The researcher becomes ?bound within a net of epistemological and ontological premises which ? regardless of ultimate truth or falsity ? become partially self-validating? (Bateson, 1972:314). Therefore, all research is by its nature interpretative because it is ultimately guided by the researcher?s own interpretative framework, their beliefs and feelings regarding the world and how it should be understood and studied. To gain some understanding of the experience of landscape whilst walking through it, and how one?s identity and culture are bound up in that experience, the approaches of ethnography and phenomenology were chosen as having potential to provide insights regarding these perspectives. Whilst in the 1960s ?critical ethnography? was largely based on classic Marxism or neo-Marxist critical theory, the philosophical basis for it has grown as new identities that included race, gender, and sexual identity emerged (Foley and Valenzuela, 2005). The positivist, quantitative approach that prevailed in social science research that held an objective social science produced value-free ethnographies, began to be challenged, and more intuitive or subjective ways of knowing began to be considered as equally valid forms of epistemologies (Rosaldo, 1989). A typical theory of guiding practices in ethnography is based on the model of a phenomenological orientated approach that embraces multiple realities. The theory that underlies a socio-cultural system or community is developed directly from the empirical data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Ethnography tends to explore the nature of social phenomena, rather than testing hypothesis, works with unstructured data or analytical categories that are not closed, investigates in detail a small number of cases or even just one case, and the analysis involves explicit interpretation of meanings and functions of human actions through the form of verbal description and explanation with any quantification or statistical analysis taking at most a subordinate role, if any role at all (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994). The experience of landscape whilst walking through it might also be considered as a combination of perceiving it phenomenologically, whilst interpreting that experience through cultural and social perspectives that are concerned with one?s identity and ideas of self. By utilising the approach of ethnography, these patterns of social life and behaviour are described and interpreted by the researcher from investigations in 87 the field, whilst also recognising that the phenomenological relation between perception and its objects are not passive. As Holstein and Gubrum (1994:263) discuss, ?subjectivity is paramount as the scientific observer deals with how social objects are made meaningful?; it is human consciousness which actively constitutes the objects of experience, and when considering how meaning is made of social phenomena, it is a subjective approach that is required. Drawing upon these two interpretative approaches and considering them in the context of experiencing and relating to landscape as a walker, the form of auto- ethnography has characteristics particularly suitable for detailing the phenomenological experience and considering how landscape is interpreted through its storied character and cultural and social influences. In addition, by utilising the approach of participant observer during the research process, rooted as it is in the ethnographic tradition of describing a culture or aspects of a culture (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994), also allows for issues to arise ?naturally? within the process being considered, without undue prompting from the researcher. 88 Auto-ethnography Auto-ethnography is ?an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural? (Ellis and Bochner, 2000:739). It is through such personal accounting of the research experience that the social construction of the research process can be explored, and through this type of reflexive ethnography that the researcher?s personal experiences and knowledge are significant in the making of understandings regarding the culture and self (Humberstone, 2009). Furthermore, by exploring these experiences, the reflexive ethnographer attempts to make sense of their situated feelings and selves and may also use relationships with other participants in the research context to understand that culture or experience that is being investigated. Auto-ethnographers, according to Reed-Danahay (1997), may place varying emphasis on auto (the self), ethnos (the culture) and graphy (the research process). Whilst multiple notions of the self are positioned at the centre of the research story, considering a range of emotional reactions and embodied experiences, these are contextual to the cultural space it is exploring, and it is through the connections between the personal and the cultural that a deeper understanding of them may be made. Ellis and Bochner (2000:6) describe this tension that exists between the personal and the cultural: Back and forth autoethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide- angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations. Furthermore, auto-ethnography ?is a critically self-reflexive approach that simultaneously analyses the world external to the critical subject and the critical subject?s own reconstruction of it? (Rowe, 2006:424). A number of academic writers have contributed to the encouragement of exploring alternative ways of writing to address issues around representation, power with respect to the authorial voice, and the value of different ways of knowing (Foley, 1992; Richardson, 1994, 2000a, 2000b; Sparkes, 2002), and the use of the auto-ethnographical form has been 89 suggested by a growing number of qualitative scholars (Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Holman Jones, 2005). Auto-ethnography is a narrative of self that Richardson (1994) defines as an evocative form of writing that produces a text personal to the author and tells the stories about their own lived experience. It is through the dramatic recall, strong metaphors, characterisation, phrasing, and the holding back on interpretation so that the reader may be invited to emotionally respond to the text and make their meanings from it. They are what Church (1995) describes as ?forbidden narratives? in that they challenge the accepted view that the author is silent and removed from the text. This research approach may also be seen as appropriate as a form of enquiry regarding walking journeys in landscape, since the narrative story is often described through metaphor in the context of a journey, and landscape interpreted through stories and imagination in the context of a culture. Auto-ethnography offers the possibility to investigate how the walker experiences and culturally constructs landscape, and also considers how the walker undertaking journeys is the ?other? during this process, as the traveller that is passing through a place rather than occupying it, forever mid-stride between the here and there (Wylie, 2005). Whilst writers describing their walking journeys in the commercial media often use narratives about their experiences, it is less commonly used by academics in the consideration of aspects of landscape, apart from some notable exceptions (for example Edensor, 2000; Adams, 2001; Ingold, 2004; Wylie, 2005; Lee and Ingold, 2006; Lorimer, 2011). Wylie (2005:234) uses narrative and descriptive writing as a ?creative and critical means to discussing the varied affinities and distanciations of self and landscape emergent within the affective and performative milieu of coastal walking? from a single day?s walking whilst engaged on a multi-day, linear journey along the South West Coast Path. His paper considers these affinities and distanciations as a sequence of emergences: ?woodland enclosure and anxiety, haptic enfolding and attenuation, encounters with others and with the elements, moments of visual exhilaration and epiphany, the rock and bones of footsore spaces? (Wylie, 2005:245), and his research being between articulations of self and landscape from a phenomenological perspective located in that place, and that of a projection of cultural meaning. 90 Wylie?s (2005) paper has been a considerable influence as an example of how it is possible to use the narrative form to explore landscape from the walker?s perspective, and provides an informative basis for this research. However, one has to be aware that auto-ethnography can become a self-indulgent treatise, rather than one that is ?self-knowing, self-respectful, self-sacrificing, or self-luminous? (Sparkes, 2002:90). This is one of the criticisms of this form of research, but Rinehart (1998:212) contends that the misapprehension that the genre of auto-ethnography is self- conscious navel gazing is ?grounded in a mistrust of the worth of the self?. To assert such a genre is self indulgent because it is about the self and no one or nothing else is a kind of wasteful dualistic thinking according to Jackson (1990:11) because it ?wrenches apart the interlocking between self and society?, and explicitly ignores the fact that it is not just about the self (auto) but also about culture (ethno) and the research process (graphy). Having a social-constructionist view of the self as relational, contends Gergen (1999) challenges the dominant ideology of the self-contained individual that underpins these notions of self indulgence. As Mykhalovsky (1996:132) explains, ?to write individual experience is, at the same time, to write social experience?. In the writing of an auto-ethnography it is the telling of a story using self-reflection that requires the reader not to sit back as a spectator, but to engage with it. In the reading of an auto-ethnography ?we are taken into the intimate, embodied world of the other in a way that stimulates us to reflect on our own lives in relation to theirs? (Sparkes, 2002:100). Furthermore, it can be a way of making communion between self and others, of time and space being interrelated, and also as a witness offering ?testimony to a truth generally unrecognized or suppressed? (Frank, 1995:137). Therefore the approach of auto-ethnography as a research methodology is well established. However, recognition has to be given that it is a relatively newly developing field of inquiry, particularly in regards to investigating how one relates to landscapes and the meanings made of it. Whilst this approach has been utilised in the areas of contested identities including gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and disability (see for example, Pringle, 2001; Tsang, 2000; Carlisle Duncan, 2000), its use is less common where the self-subject is not the ?other? as in speaking from a marginalised position or challenging established hegemonies. 91 In addition, from studying my auto-ethnographic field-notes of the pilot studies (see appendices) of walks conducted, whilst the narrative form does enable me to consider the nature of my experience of landscape and how I relate to it, some further issues are of concern. The first is connected to what was previously mentioned: from what perspective am I (as the source of data) approaching the research topic or culture, is my story offering a testimony of unrecognised or suppressed truth, and is the resulting narrative sufficiently evocative so that the reader might make their own meanings from it with minimal interpretation from myself? Furthermore, considering landscape and its stories is to also consider other people?s perspectives or experiences; they are already actors in the stage I engage with. The inevitable aspect of meeting others whilst on these walks (see appendix I), provide an example as to how an entirely different aspect of the same landscape might be interpreted differently. This raised the question how might an auto- ethnographic narrative also encompass other voices, experiences and interpretations of landscape? Moreover, the subjective nature of my enquiry inevitably means that my focus of attention tends to concentrate on particular elements that I find interesting or is part of my own ?worldview? or system of beliefs. Despite Rinehart?s (1998) and Jackson?s (1990) persuasive defence of the genre, could this lead nevertheless to what has been one of the criticisms of auto-ethnography, the writer being self- absorbed (Davies, 1999)? All of these questions raised required some careful consideration for them to be resolved. The first consideration regarding the methodological practice when using an auto- ethnographical approach is that of the narrator as ?the other.? In many auto- ethnographies, the narrative(s) are often concerned with how the subject is considered a marginalised figure within a society or culture. As Tierney (1998:66) asserts, ?auto-ethnography confronts dominant forms of representation and power in an attempt to reclaim, through self-reflective response, representational spaces that have marginalized those of us at the borders.? However, I would argue that it is not necessary to be ?at the borders? to use auto- ethnography as a methodological practice. If the research in question is about the subjective experience of walking and landscape, then writing about those experiences in the subjective way that auto-ethnography affords would appear to be particularly 92 applicable, as well as relieving the researcher with the problems of speaking for ?the other? since they are the Other in their narratives (Richardson, 2000b:11). Indeed, the postmodernist critiques of traditional qualitative writing practices has led to the ethnographic genre to include not only auto-ethnography, but also poetry, drama, fiction, and even visual arts. Richardson (2000b) describes these as Creative Analytical Ethnography (CAP Ethnography), where the author has moved beyond conventional social scientific writing. However, considering these methods of scientific enquiry as being somehow separate or removed from the mainstream has led them to be labelled as experimental or alternative, and has, in turn, reinforced the perception that traditional ethnographic approaches are the standard (and by implication the preferred) methods to be employed in research. Richardson (2000b:10) argues: CAP Ethnographies are not alternative or experimental: they are in and of themselves valid and desirable representations of the social. Into the foreseeable future, these ethnographies may indeed be the most valid and desirable representations, for they open spaces for thinking about the social that elude us now. Therefore, an auto-ethnographic mode of enquiry should not be considered as being just for those subjects who find themselves positioned at the borders of a culture or society, but rather as a particularly nuanced form of research that embraces subjectivity, rejects notions of mind/body duality, and seeks to recreate lived experiences and evoke emotional responses in the reader. Such a self-reflexive approach enables fresh perspectives to be explored that connect the self to the social and the personal to the cultural. Whilst Richardson?s (2000b) defence of auto-ethnography as not having to be exclusively about those on the borders of a culture or society supports my use of it in this research project, the reliance on the reader to make their own interpretations of the narrative places it in the genre of evocative auto-ethnography which distances itself from realist and traditional analytical approaches of ethnography. However, the narratives that I produce, whilst employing many of the characteristics championed by Richardson (1994, 2000a, 2000b), Ellis (1997), and Ellis and Bochner (2003), reflect rather an approach suggested by Anderson (2006) of analytical auto-ethnography, who proposes that the recent dominance of evocative 93 auto-ethnography has obscured the recognition that auto-ethnographic research is compatible with more traditional ethnographic practices. Such an approach allows for the researcher to be part of the research group or setting, for the discourse to include those other voices, and for interpretation to be made by the researcher in developing theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena. The five key features of analytical auto-ethnography Anderson (2006:378-388) proposes are: a) Complete Member Researcher (CMR) status ? a member of the social or cultural world under study. b) Analytical Reflexivity ? entailing self-conscious introspection where the researcher is reflexively engaged with the ethnographic data that is situated within their personal experience and sense making. c) Narrative Visibility of the Researcher?s Self ? the researcher?s own feelings and experiences are incorporated into the story and considered as vital data for understanding the social world being observed. d) Dialogue with Informants Beyond the Self ? unlike evocative auto- ethnography which seeks narrative fidelity only to the researcher?s subjective experience, analytic auto-ethnography whilst grounded in self-experience also seeks the interrelationships between the researcher and others. e) Commitment to Theoretical Analysis ? rather than simply documenting personal experience and perspective or to evoke emotional resonance with the reader, analytical auto-ethnography uses the empirical data gathered to gain insight into some broader set of social or cultural phenomena than those provided by the data themselves. The presentation of my auto-ethnographical narratives are therefore not meant to be an emotional journey for the reader of my subjective and personal experience, but rather creative and evocative accounts of my walking journeys that attempt to adhere to an accurate portrayal of what was encountered and felt, with reference to other people?s interpretations, and following on from them a critical analysis of the arising themes or motifs (Kidd and Finlayson, 2009). The research process is part of the story, tracing the experience of engaging in a variety of walks both alone and with others, recording a narrative that represents not only a personal perspective, but of other perspectives and how these inform the personal journey too. Even when walking alone, external perspectives and influences 94 are there: a map, a guidebook, the following of a particular designated trail, or route. These are subtle influences as to how one experiences the landscape with a particular regard, within cultural and social boundaries as to how one engages with a place, or where one is allowed to go. When walking with others, the engagement with that landscape is given a different dynamic; other opinions and stories arise, another source through which to consider how relationships are made with it, and how they may have an effect on one?s own. To conclude, through the process of considering what form the research was to take, the narrative form was identified as suitable for the investigation of how people relate to landscape whilst walking through it, whilst an auto-ethnography coupled with participant observation for an ethnographic study of other walkers provided approaches that allowed for comparative analysis, reflexivity, and interpretation arising from the emergent data. Such an approach also reflects aspects of a journey in that only the first few steps are known; the future directions to be taken and any eventual outcomes are hidden, and may only be discovered by undertaking that journey (Fetterman, 1998). 95 Walking as a Mobile Methodology Making journeys are a fundamental aspect of human mobility, of our dwelling in the environment and engaging with it. It might be considered as a spell of going or travelling, viewed as a distinct whole or an excursion or expedition to some distance. A journey is a narrative of passing through time and space, having a close similarity with the writing of a daily record found in a journal, and the etymological origin coming from the word ?jurnee? before the 13th century which originally meant one?s passage through life (Barnhart, 1988). It is an amalgamation of space and time, and a consideration of both, constituting a passage that is not necessarily dependant on a destination or a goal; at its centre is the notion of movement across landscape being seen as an entity or practice distinct in itself. How we understand and relate to our surroundings are distinctly different when moving or being mobile from when we are static (Thrift, 1996; Urry, 2000, 2007), and in recent years emerging methodological processes have increasingly been adopted to research and represent mobile experiences, becoming termed mobile methodologies (Fincham, McGuiness and Murray, 2010). Mobility research is concerned with all manners of bodily variant, transient behaviours and technologies, both in virtual and non-virtual space, and in the context of Sheller and Urry?s (2006) new mobilities paradigm has mobile practice and culture as being central in the consideration of social science processes that they suggested had ?largely ignored or trivialised the importance of the systematic movements of people for work and family life, for leisure and pleasure, and for politics and protest? (Sheller and Urry, 2006:208). The mobilities paradigm undermines a ?sedentarist? approach that considers stability and place being a static consideration and normal, whilst distance, change and place as being in motion are considered abnormal. Rather than attempting to be a totalising or reductive description of the world, it instead suggests a set of questions, theories and methodologies that seek to make better understanding of it. It is from this perspective, as suggested by Cresswell and Merriman (2011:5), that ?Mobile, embodied practices are central to how we experience the world, from practices of writing and sensing, to walking and driving. Our mobilities create spaces and stories ? spatial stories?. Our experience of and in the world, therefore, is considered from the perspective that we move through it in a variety of practices and 96 engagements that are fluid and complex, and emerging from that bricolage of engagement and practices are the stories of social life. The idea of routine, the mundane or ?taken for grantedness? of much mobility study is also an important aspect; as Fincham, McGuiness and Murray (2010:5) note: It is the pervasiveness of mobilities that conceals it as a key factor in shaping our everyday experiences ? movement is too familiar to be of note and as a result the mobile constitution of the world goes unexamined and evades the critical gaze. Furthermore, when such routines are considered with other conditions of everyday life such as community it is possible that ?a dialogue emerges between the researcher and field of research which articulates new elements of everyday life? (Freudendal- Pedersen, Hartmann-Peterson and Drewes Nielsen, 2010:29). In the context of landscape, a methodology of mobility overcomes the associations it has with static pictorialism, and instead considers how it is emergent and animated through mobile and material practices and performances (Merriman and Revill, 2008). A significant strand of mobility research considers the role walking plays in interpreting and practicing landscape or place. Walking is regarded as a body technique (Mauss, 2006) and a practice with performative properties that make engagements with the world (Thrift, 2008). Through the social and cultural technique of walking landscape may be mobilised, animated, articulated and performed (Merriman and Revill, 2008). Walking also may be considered as being a product of places, an ordinary feature of everyday life, as a reflexive and internalised self- regard, and as wilful or artful engagements (Lorimer, 2011). Therefore, in considering walking as being an embodied practice of habitus and engagement with the social and material world (Lee and Ingold, 2006; Ingold and Vergunst, 2008), the activity has innate properties that recommends it as a methodological approach. Furthermore, as having distinct cultural meanings or expressions (Lorimer and Lund, 2008), or where the self and the landscape are in a process of simultaneously emerging and dissipating as if a spectral entity (Wylie, 2005), so landscape and place might be re-envisioned as being indivisible from the cultural practice and engagement of walking. 97 Biography of Author The use of auto-ethnography as a research methodology requires a reflexive approach of enquiry when attempting to analyse the narratives produced. Since an interpretation of texts written by oneself is from a personal perspective, it is necessary to consider how both the narratives and interpretation is grounded and influenced by the cultural and social background of the author. Auto-ethnography is an account of personal experience, and as such is concerned with a particular perspective of the self. However, as Bochner and Ellis (1996:24) point out, ?If culture circulates through all of us, how can auto-ethnography be free of connection to a world beyond the self?? Any personal narrative is indicative of the broader social and cultural environments it inhabits; the researcher as author has to acknowledge how the personal, what we describe as the self, has not arisen somehow independently and fully-formed. Rather, it is through an accumulation of genes, of human influences, and experience within specific environments that constitutes the individual. Therefore, recognition must be given to the fact that such perspectives regarding the self are not neutral; they have been influenced and developed through one?s background and experience, and so it is necessary in any auto-ethnographical discourse to include an element of examination of them so that any interpretation can be seen from that context. Since the methodology of auto-ethnography is about uncovering the connections between the personal and cultural (Ellis and Bochner, 2003), my background as author would appear to be relevant, particularly when auto- ethnography demands ?a critically self-reflexive approach that simultaneously analyses the world external to the critical subject and the critical subject?s own reconstruction of it.? (Rowe, 2006:424). In this regard, the following might be seen as my ?personal profile? which goes some way in describing the entry conditions of the self when embarking on the research, producing the narratives, and finally attempting to analyse or interpret the findings. A Personal Profile As previously described, my approach to the research subject is obviously influenced by my make-up and personal prejudices. I am an English white male, just into my fifties, and so do not occupy a position of being a marginalised ?other?, unless being 98 a committed walker is considered as such. Walking is a central aspect of my life, an activity that has developed over the years from being an adventure pursuit in my youth to being a philosophical and personal engagement with my environment. It is as a walker I explore the places I visit, whether they are familiar or not, in an embodied practice of wandering pavements, parks, woods, fields, and paths. It is also as a walker that I approached my research subject; it initially propelled me into returning to higher education, sustained my developing interest in academia, informed the beginnings of my inquiry, and is part of the methodological praxis. Some biographical details may contextualise why I consider walking is such an important element in my life and why I think its social and cultural attributes and the potential contributions it has for them is worthy of deeper consideration. Many years ago at the age of 19, a friend and I walked the 270 miles of the Pennine Way. Despite the typically wet weather throughout, the experience had a profound effect on me. I had never encountered such landscapes; they were literally a revelation to me. The misty moors and wind-swept up-lands we traversed in those 17 days were everything and more that I had imagined; seeming to be repositories of mystery, history, and stories that only could be discovered by the steady and intimate exploration of being on foot. I became a committed walker, with trips in the UK varying from long day walks in my local area, and weekends away to upland and mountainous regions, to long backpacking journeys for holidays, often following long distance trails. It became my main leisure interest, and increasingly any spare time I had was spent walking. During my late twenties and through much of my thirties the nature of work I was involved in entailed intense periods of very long hours during the summer, and because of this I had accumulated significant amounts of leave-time owing and so was able to take some extended trips during the quiet down-time of mid-winter to parts further abroad such as India, Nepal and New Zealand where I was able to continue my passion of backpacking. It was an activity that had become part of my identity, of who I felt I was. In my early forties I resigned from my job, feeling burnt out because of the ever increasing long hours it demanded. Since I had no immediate plans as what to do in the future, but had some savings put aside, and in the absence of any other ideas, I 99 decided to fulfil one ambition that I never thought I would have the opportunity to do; walking from Lands End to John O?Groats. It took me just over three months to complete, following in the main footpaths and avoiding roads on a meandering route through England, Wales and Scotland. And it was in the course of this 1300 mile ramble that I began to think about outdoor education as being a possible new avenue to pursue for a replacement career. It had struck me in the course of my journey how much the demographics of walkers had seemed to have changed since the early eighties ? where had all the youngsters gone? No longer were the long distance paths the preserve of young people as it had been when I first started walking them. Now the main age group seemed to be those over fifty; what had happened? Upon my return home, I found that my local University ran an Outdoor Education and Adventure Recreation degree course. Serendipity seemed to be at work, and I enrolled. My final dissertation upon the perception of wilderness reflected an increasing interest in how landscape is interpreted culturally, and when the opportunity came to continue my studies by enrolling as a PhD student, I decided that I wanted to research the relationship between walking and interpreting the cultural landscape. Therefore, I am very much a participant member of the cultural activity I am researching, and approach the research primarily from that perspective. All of the academic areas of enquiry I visit, including amongst others ethnography, outdoor learning, cultural geography, phenomenology, and archaeology, are considered primarily in the context of being a walker. It is from this very specific embodied and mobile perspective that my thesis aims to explore understandings of landscape and place. 100 Summary of Research Rationale From the consideration of issues raised in chapters two and three, it is proposed that the experience of walking in England (and elsewhere) might be reconsidered in outdoor education and leisure for the possibilities it offers to engage with the storied character of the landscape, as a way of establishing a particular relationship with it, and developing alternative understandings of it. The wide variety of historical or contemporary cultural elements to be found when walking, in either urban or rural settings, and how one identifies with them or not, and why that is the case, offers a way of exploring the alternate perspectives held of place and landscape. Such experiences also need to be considered in the context as how walking is a process and practice integral as to how landscape and place is perceived and understood. In order to investigate the above a number of walks have been undertaken, the routes devised to offer opportunities to investigate a variety of types of landscapes and their effects on the self and identity. These walks include places that might be termed as having archaeological, historical, cultural and social significance, and traverse through urban, semi-urban, and rural areas; a mix of environments that might be recognised as being what makes up the majority of the English landscape. A number of walks also took place in the my local area, a landscape that is a mix of urban, semi-urban, arable and wooded countryside, so as to investigate the specificity of the local place and its significance in regards to identity and effects on the self. During the process of making these walks, data for future reference were collected in the form of audio recordings, photographs, notes, and recording a daily diary. These were used to produce a series of auto-ethnographic narratives, a form utilised by Wylie (2005:234) when investigating ideas of self and landscape whilst on the South West Coast Path who focuses upon: the distinctive ways in which coast walking patterns into refracting orderings of subjectivity and spatiality ? into, for example, sensations of anxiety and immensity, haptic enfolding and attenuation, encounters with others and the elements, and moments of visual exhilaration and epiphany. Whilst these narratives invite the reader to emotionally respond to the text and make their meanings from it (Richardson, 1994), they also form a basis for further consideration using the model of analytical auto-ethnography as suggested by 101 Anderson (2006). By using the narrative form in these two mutually compatible approaches to investigate the subjective affects of landscape and walking through it, and considering the phenomenological, psycho-geographical, and imaginative interpretations that might be derived from such encounters, this research provides a critical means of discussing and examining the varied responses experienced. In addition, through the implicit primacy walking has in perceiving environment, whether it is urban or rural, such a phenomenological approach offers possibilities of exploring how specific places are intimately connected to wider landscapes, both physically and metaphysically, and how this contributes to issues regarding the relation of self and to having a sense of place. 102 Chapter Five The Urban Pedestrian ?Places that inspire true affection in residents and visitors have one thing in common: the probability of sore feet.? (Editorial, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sept. 2002). An Introduction - Psychogeography In this chapter I wish to explore walking in urban environments, a subject area rarely explored in the popular press, but perhaps where walking and place are most at threat and so at their most political, contested and controversial. In considering the specific conditions found in urban pedestrianism I am going to briefly consider some historical perspectives of walking in the urban context, and some approaches encompassed under the term of psychogeography which have walking in urban space at their core. Using a number of auto-ethnographic narratives from walks conducted in town and beyond, I consider their significance as a method to illuminate or even counter the alienating conditions of conurbations, in addition to considering some of the largely hidden historical remnants in that urban environment and how they contribute to making an understanding of a sense of place. Walking journeys both historical and contemporary are often associated with linear travel through landscapes deemed appropriate for such an activity; in countryside, wild land or wilderness. To set off for the eponymous walk is considered to be as much as an opportunity to ?get away from it all? into a rural environment, to leave urban conurbations behind to reconnect both with nature and a ?natural? aesthetic, as it is a desire to simply travel somewhere on foot. The recreational walker is considered ?in place? in a rural setting, and consequently, ?out of place? in a city or town, an aberration as to behaviour that is expected or appropriate, and so a practice of transgression (Cresswell, 1996). This delineation of where it is deemed proper to conduct a walking journey for pleasure appears to hold sway for the vast majority of recreational walkers and travellers, and is reflected and reinforced by a plethora of walking journals, 103 magazines and literature that are vociferous in promoting the concept of rural and wild areas as being the only suitable places to pursue such activities. However, in recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the possibilities of urban and semi-urban walking tours and journeys, both as recreation and a means of reconnection between the pedestrian participant and an urban aesthetic. This revived discourse surrounding the urban pedestrian has been reflected not only in popular literature such as Self (2007) and Sinclair (1997, 2003), but also in areas of academic research, for example Curtis (2008), Markwell, Stevenson and Rowe (2004), and Edensor, (2008). The reasons for this renewed interest is due in part to a growing recognition that whilst an increasing proportion of people in the Western world now live in urban environments, there is also a perceived increasing disconnection with these places, leading to alienation with the community and cultural capital contained therein, and it has been suggested that urban walking may be an antidote to this disaffection (Adams, 2001; Jacobs, 1961). A further emergence has been the perceived need to promote ?walking for health? campaigns (Ramblers Association, 2008) that require territories with ease of access, both financially and geographically. However, whilst these factors have much validity, the re-emergence of the urban recreational pedestrian also appears to reflect a rejection of some of those notions that promote the rural aesthetic as being more interesting, superior or natural over an urban one. Furthermore, neither this practice of urban walking, or its quality of transgression that has elements of political action and opposition to the consensus, are entirely new. Whilst urban walking within the recreational walking fraternity continues to be considered contentious, and in some quarters even regarded as the antithisis as to what walking is for or about, there has in fact been a long association in literature with travelling on foot within the city and environments of built conurbations that has long been disregarded. The value of peripatetic wandering on foot to access the soul of urban place its peculiarity of character, as opposed to the more familiar pursuit of country walking as recreation have been recognised by a significant number of writers. Defoe in the 18th century, De Quincy, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Baudelaire, and Dickens in the 19th, and Beckett, Kafka, Orwell and Kerouac in the 20th, to name but a few, might 104 be considered the original exponents of this literary tradition of the wandering pedestrian, or the fl?neur as Baudelaire (1995) described those people who walk the city in order to experience it, adrift in its spectacle. The fl?neur emerged originally in nineteenth century Paris, a leisurely observer of the urban scene or a secret spectator of spectacle (Ferguson, 1987; Tester, 1994). This established position of the Parisian fl?neur as observer of spectacle was turned on its head in the twenties by proponents of new ideas and practices in the form of the Dada movement. They staged a number of events and urban excursions of banal regions of the city (Bassett, 2004), but did not survive long as another movement separate but associated with them began to develop, that of surrealism. A notion that was central in Surrealist theory was the ?uncanny? and a ?fascination with the outmoded in all forms, including outmoded spaces? where chance discoveries might initiate a dream-like reverie of ?historically repressed moments? (Bassett, 2004:399). They also experimented with more organised walks both in the city and out into the country intending to achieve a state of hypnosis and disorientation. However, whilst this movement also did not last long, the fl?neur continued as a concept suitable for recasting and re-imagining. In Benjamin?s The Arcades Project (2002), he proposed that the fl?neur was one of three figures, the other two being the archaeologist and the collector, who were necessary to excavate the hidden secrets of the then decaying Parisian Arcades. It was also the fl?neur who provided the images that were the starting point for Benjamin?s ?complex notion of the ?dialectical image? where past and present moments flashed into a ?constellation?, and provided a moment of illumination and awakening from the collective dream? (Bassett, 2004:399). It is these components of literary traditions and approaches of styles and practices of city walking that have contributed to wider aesthetic and philosophical movements where ?Walking appears as a mode of inquiry, a politics and an aesthetic practice (and often a fusion of all three)? (Bassett, 2004:399). From these established principles another trend developed that employed the term psychogeography to define and delineate its particular aspects and aesthetics from what was regarded as traditional notions of pedestrian travel, attempting to examine and divine the intertwining relationships between the act and art (or performance) of walking with the cultural and social fabric of an increasingly urban or at least human influenced environment or landscape. This approach originated within the Lettrist 105 Group in Paris during the 1950s, and is associated in particular with Guy Debord whose definition described psychogeography as: ?The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals? (Debord, 2007:5) Debord?s psychogeography evolved within the dogma of the situationist movement of the time (Bassett, 2004), which in turn was a development of surrealism and the avant-garde, and was presented as an original conceptualisation of his own invention. However, whilst he may have coined the term of psychogeography and undoubtedly was responsible for its particular interpretation, the concept of it, if not its particular definition, was already firmly established, its antecedents traceable back through a host of peripatetic writers, as previously mentioned. Before the Parisian situationist movement of the fifties fragmented, largely due to egotistical intellectualism and petty jealousies arising amongst the membership (Coverley, 2006), psychogeography had developed first into a movement and then an ideology that encapsulated elements of radical left-wing politics, art and psychology. It was one element in a triumvirate that also included the concepts of ?constructed situation?, a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary ambiance and a game of events, and ?unitary urbanism?, the theory of the combined use of arts and techniques as means contributing to the construction of a unified milieu in dynamic relation with experiments in behaviour (Chardronnet, 2003). However, psychogeography has, as Debord (2007:5) himself describes, a ?pleasing vagueness? about it, which has allowed it since to be appropriated for a wide variety of ideas and interpretations to the point that it has transformed far beyond its original form. Whilst the originating dogma of the surrealist and situationists has never quite disappeared amongst certain artistic and intellectual cliques, and continues to develop into other philosophical treatises, such as de Certeau?s influential ?Walking in the city? in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), there has been a recent revival of interest both in psychogeography and its origins that challenges its elitist doctrine, and gives the opportunity for it to evolve into something more accessible. It has become recognised that the Parisian occupations of de Certeau, Debord and Benjamin should be considered as being amongst a host of other literary characters, some of which have been mentioned earlier and many of whom were largely 106 concerned with the inner-workings of another city, that of London. Whilst not employing the term, many of these protagonists were preoccupied with the predominant characteristics of psychogeography; that of walking, artistic inspiration, political radicalism, perceptions of urban space and place as sites of mystery and the unknown, and how these might affect the imaginations, emotions, and psyche of the performer. Therefore, psychogeography is a very modern term for a very old fascination with walking in the urban contexts of towns and cities. Paradoxically, or maybe why it holds such a fascination, such places were and seemingly are ever increasingly hostile to the wandering walker (as opposed to the shopper) to the point that it is an almost subversive activity. Even in the 19th century, an urban pedestrian there to explore rather than to pass through on errands or going to and fro from work was regarded with suspicion. It should also be remembered that these original literary walkers were exclusively male; a female walker would have been considered even more out of place and inappropriate, and so in real danger of verbal or physical abuse, or even considered as a prostitute; in the parlance of the time and significantly, a ?streetwalker?. Even now this same peculiar prejudice against independent female walkers is still an all too common occurrence, and seems entrenched in a cultural horror of women being unescorted that has prevailed in western society for centuries (Solnit, 2001). Criminal activity and the dispossessed poor were elements that seemed to hold a fascination for many of these early peripatetic authors, possibly because they used them in their writing both as a metaphor for the degradation that cities imposed, and the inevitable dehumanisation that resulted from such degradation. It is an irony that from these wanderings in the underbelly of the burgeoning urban landscape, a new literary aesthetic developed in the 19th century concerned with the plight of the ?lower? classes along with a revisionist regard for the previously disregarded districts of a city?s geography. From being regarded with suspicion, the urban pedestrian is now either that or, even possibly worse, a totally disregarded figure; degraded by consumerism into becoming a shopper rather than a walker, following designated routes from shop to shop, purchase to purchase. Multi storey car-parks in the centre of towns and cities linked to shopping malls even eliminate the need to be outside; pedestrian becomes troglodyte in artificial, cavernous cathedrals dedicated to consumption worship 107 (Urry, 1995), their movement dictated and pushed literally into the margins of the streets by the omnipotent presence of the motor vehicle. Taking a walking journey in urban centres with the purpose of exploration or leisure is to challenge this preoccupation with retail markets and the obsessive exchange of money for goods, thereby wilfully subverting these representations of the city and urban spaces as engines of capital by actively seeking different meanings, connections and routes within them as demonstrated by such popular writers such as Peter Ackroyd (1985), Will Self (2007) and Iain Sinclair (1997, 2003). They continue this peculiar alliance of the urban and the peripatetic, attempting to search for new ways of apprehending such environments through the practice of walking and in doing so overcoming the processes of everyday experience that reduces our surroundings into one of drab monotony (Coverley, 2006). This post modern evolving strain of psychogeography carries with it the essentials that has gone before, but has also added elements of the occult and considering views of the present through an appreciation of the past. Such considerations, therefore, are immersed in the facets of local history along with an appreciation for dark imaginings, myth and the landscape as a repository of stories that encompass both. This contemporary discourse in psychogeography offers possibilities for reappraising the walker in an urban context and providing different approaches in exploring it In addition, it has been argued that by walking an urban landscape one is provided with a deeper insight into the meanings it may have held for past inhabitants. In his seminal work The Making of the English Landscape W. G. Hoskins declares: There are so many towns to be seen, and each must be ? or ought to be ? approached for the first time on foot: certainly all the smaller towns. For only on foot does one detect the subtle rise and fall of ground to which the earliest settlers were so sensitive, or alignments in the town scene that may throw light on some fundamental change or plan: or the names of streets and lanes that set the mind working at once (Hoskins, 1955:250). Therefore, when I conducted a number of walking journeys through my local environment, in and around the environs of High Wycombe, an old market town west of London fast becoming but another habitat for commuters working in the city, I attempted to utilise some aspects of psychogeography in conjunction with seeking a historical perspective of the places visited. The intention was to attempt to explore it 108 as a landscape in the spirit of Benjamin?s (2002) fl?neur, a nebulous concept (like so much of psychogeography) but one that might best be described as a wandering anonymous observer in the milieu of city life (Baudelaire, 1995), whilst also being influenced by some preoccupations of more recent psychogeographers; seeking out the symbolic and imagined, and elements of the mysterious and hidden in the experience, with particular regard for the underlying history that might be uncovered. With this in mind, I initially conducted some research into local history by delving into the archives of the local museum and library, and discovered aspects or stories located in the specific landscape of the town and local area, and explanations of sites of historical interest and importance. With this additional insight and knowledge, I sought to seek out these sites, or come upon them by chance on my drifts and d?rives (or purposeful wanderings). Furthermore, as Will Self proposed during a discussion about psychogeography, it is an antidote to the increasing alienation felt by urban dwellers by creating an interface between the individual and the anonymous, and through walking one can connect to the physical reality of the urban space (BBC Radio 4, 2008). I wanted to test this proposal by producing a set of narratives that attempted to explore an urban walk as a continuum of experience exposing not only the physical reality of place, but also its counterparts; the imagined and the symbolic. An important element in realising this was having a modicum of insight and awareness regarding the historical perspective of the places visited. In addition, using the methodology of auto-ethnography in producing these narratives of my walking journeys enables a dialectic with the self to be established or constructed (Sparkes and Smith, 2008:297), an approach that has many features in common with that of narrative psychogeography. From a number of narratives written describing numerous excursions over the course of a year, I have selected three that address some of the areas that I shall explore. The first narrative is of a day I spent with a student group where we experimented with two approaches of exploring urban place used by psycho-geographers. The first approach was following the feature or theme of water in the landscape, the second was following an algorithmic d?rive or a simple set of instructions as to the direction taken. The second and third narratives are of day walks I undertook on my own that 109 explored historical and contemporary features of the town using in part an ancient by-way as a common theme in both. 110 A Drift and an Algorithmic D?rive It was an early spring day, and a haze of green buds were beginning to appear on some of the trees down on the Rye, the large open park close to the town centre where our group had been told to assemble for a day of psycho-geographic experiment and practice. Most of the group of students were not familiar with the area, whereas this was my local patch. In addition over the last few months I had been delving into the history and geography of the town, which ran along a thin and steep-sided valley within the Chiltern Hills. I gave a brief orientation talk as we sprawled on the slightly damp grass, the cool breeze slowly being countered by the growing warmth of the sun as I attempted to impart some of my enthusiasm regarding what I had discovered about our surroundings. I described that the huge ice cliffs of the last glacial maximum had run parallel to the hills somewhere close to this valley, and that the bones of a woolly rhinoceros had been found not far from here, whilst but a couple of hundred yards away the remains of a Roman Villa and baths lay under the open-air swimming pool as did the course of a Roman road. I pointed across the green sward where during the English Civil war a battle had been fought that had left over a thousand dead, their graves somewhere hereabouts but still undiscovered, and deep under the hill beyond was the abandoned bunker that had once been the nuclear strike command centre for the U.S. Navy. I finished my brief introduction to the Rye, hoping that imparting these little known historical facts about the immediate vicinity might engender amongst my audience a new appreciation of the unique qualities a place might hold. The students? response seemed to range from a studied indifference to quizzical puzzlement. My enthusiasm so far appeared not to be catching. We took an amble over to the swimming pool, as I explained that the reason the baths had been built was probably because of a natural spring that had once risen close to the site, and had supposed medicinal value which also explained the place?s name that was still in use; Holywell Mead. Suggesting that we look for the site where the spring used to be, with a flourish I produced some dousing rods from my bag and distributed them amongst the group. This led to some not very serious or convincing attempts in using them, as the students circled arbitrarily around the grass eyes cast down seeking a response from the rods which I had made from wire coat-hangers with biro barrels as handles. Even after I had pointed out the small metal cover almost hidden in the grass where I knew the spring had been capped in the late nineteen-fifties, still we could not get a convincing flicker. Gathering in the dousing rods, I eventually explained to the students that the purpose of the day?s session was to engage in some psycho-geographical walking practices, and that for the morning we were to try a type of purposeful wandering known as a drift or d?rive, the key being to this particular drift was linking together sites connected with water by walking between them. I also reminded them that I had requested, when booking the day?s session 111 with them earlier, that they bring a method of recording the activities in some way, whether by taking notes, photographs, making sound recordings, or even by gathering found items along the way. Fortunately they had remembered; some had notebooks whilst all had cameras on their phones. We set off across the mead, chattering about the validity of dousing, having not gained any results of note. I recounted the time I had encountered some ley-line hunters who were using dousing rods and crystals amongst the megaliths of Avebury. They had demonstrated how the rods were affected by passing between two of the stones, claiming that it was because of a line of ?energy? that ran between them. I was (and still am) highly sceptical of their explanation, but had a go myself. Despite being convinced their claims were nothing more than new-age psycho-babble, and determined that I was not going to get any reaction, as I walked between the stones the rods crossed and then parted just as before ? something odd was occurring on a level that was beyond any logical understanding or explanation. We passed a long mound with a grate set in it at one end into which we peered. We could hear a distant roar coming from its subterranean depths and conjectured that maybe it had something to do with the Wye, a chalk stream that ran close by along one edge of the Rye and down the valley, but as to the mound?s purpose we had no idea. We carried on passing the 15 th century Bassetbury Manor, catching a glimpse of the large water-wheel to its rear, and followed a drive to cross a residential road and walked down Bowden Lane which bordered the Wye. At the end of this cul-de-sac I pointed out a spring that bubbled up from the stream?s bed, before passing under a disused railway embankment built by Brunel and onto a footpath, ducking under an elevated iron sewage pipe. The stream here pooled, and another spring was spotted bubbling up in its centre. The group were now getting into the game, taking frequent pictures, and looking for further signs of water to follow, eventually choosing to take a path that passed by some modern sewage works; an older site that had been used for the same purpose lay beyond and had recently been bulldozed, a fire burned in its centre sending white billows of acrid smoke over our heads. A distant roar came closer as we followed a path that brought us to an outfall of water from the works back into the stream, the sharp smell of ozone rising from the thundering rush. A short distance on we came to a footbridge where an impromptu game of pooh-sticks was played before deciding to cross to make our way back towards the town centre following the bank of the Wye stream via the busy London Road. We soon found ourselves back close to where we had started on the Rye and walking along a strip of formal gardens between the road and the stream, once a Quaker cemetery. No headstones remained, although there was a memorial stone with the inscription: ?To those Wycombe residents who fought and died in Burma 1941 to 1945 ? When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.? Beyond was Pan Mill, the last working water-wheel on the Wye which once had over a hundred stretched along its length, this last example preserved by the Wycombe Society. After wandering its surrounding gardens and peeping over a wall at the pumping station 112 presumably extracting water for the town, we decided to finish our drift of linking water features along the Wye?s environs. We crossed the London Road and walked up the hill to the local museum for lunch and to have a look at the site of a Norman fort in its grounds; all that remained now being a tree-covered, steep-sided mound. The students were in an ebullient mood, leaping down grass banks and across newly planted flower beds in the museum grounds. After our break, we walked down to the pedestrianised town centre and the old Guildhall where a low, worn-smooth finger of stone was set into the pavement. This was known locally as the ?dog stone?, its origins and purpose unclear. Some claimed it was a boundary stone although being in the centre of town that seemed unlikely, whilst others argued that it was the remains of a stone-circle citing as evidence that another mysterious stone was to be found in the walls of the church a short distance away, and that churches were often built within the bounds of pagan sites of worship. After we had taken a few photographs of the stone, I briefed the afternoon?s activity explaining that it was to be an algorithmic d?rive, and handed out the directions of ?Second Right, Second Right, First Left, Repeat? written in a column on a piece of card. The group was split in two and each set off down different streets, following the directions on the card and so being led by both a constrained but random method of pedestrian travel rather than by the usual choice or habit. The group I joined set off along White Hart Street whilst I encouraged them to try and look afresh at it and the shops we passed, taking notes or photographs of whatever caught their eye. Above a travel agents carved in stone was a boar and a ram, leading us to conjecture that at one time there had been a butchers there. I mentioned that High Wycombe had been once a major livestock market town, and that only a hundred years ago or so the ?High? had supplanted ?Chepping?, a word derived from the Old English ?cieping? meaning a market- place. We reached the second turning to the right which was Bull Lane, a narrow cobble-stoned alley at the end of which were two unobtrusive lumps of stone set low in a wall. These were supposedly ancient boundary markers of the town, linked to the equally old ceremony of ?beating the bounds? when they were ceremoniously beaten in turn around a parish every year on Ascension Day, a practice dating back to Anglo Saxon or even Pagan times. Wycombe used to have a bizarre adaptation of this tradition by using young boys? heads as the object to do the beating with, apparently to ensure that the practice was not forgotten. Passing out of the passage into an open, paved area called Frogmoor, we walked by a high building which had a stucco render script high in the eaves to the front that read ?Hen and Chickens. Rebuilt 1888?, and to one side ?Peace? and a Dove with an olive twig in its beak. I wondered whether this was to celebrate the end of a war, or to celebrate a continuance of a peaceful period. Our route took us under a railway arch, pausing to admire the complex brickwork, and into an area known as Temple End, so named because the Knights Templar once owned the 113 land there, passing a small block of offices named ?Chepping House?, a memory of the town?s old name. Our next second right took us briefly onto Benjamins Road (Benjamin Disraeli had once been the local MP), and then we took the first left onto Roberts Road which I had never even driven along, let alone walked. The terraced houses were late Edwardian, most being somewhat shabby and run-down, painted walls peeling, their small front gardens given over to cracked concrete for parking cars, the fences and walls broken, and stunted weeds and uncared for bushes struggling for purchase amongst a detritus of litter. A pervasive depression seemed to occupy the street, the pavements empty apart from us and the lines of grey rubbish bins. Between the houses on our left we could see across the valley to derelict industrial factories, to our right long gardens, many containing old but substantial brick buildings leading us to wonder whether they had once been stables or barns, or even the old railway line workshops, the tracks long dismantled, all forgotten legacies of what was there before the building boom early in the 20 th century. One house that caught my eye had a large stone lion holding a shield atop of the stone wall by its drive, behind which was an off-white, rust streaked metal sheet fence sign-written with the ominous text ?Are you ready for the day of the Lord?? The next second right was reached and we turned onto a new road running up the hill lined with modern starter homes, reaching a parking area that even though technically was private land, was also our second right since a hole in the chain-link fence could be seen at the far end leading through to a footpath. We discussed whether this was a legitimate route, and decided that since judging by the size of the hole it was obviously used by the local kids and dog walkers as a short cut to the path, then so could we. We cut across the parking area and followed the short earthen path in the grass to pass through the gap which I pointed out as a good example of a ?desire path?, a route made by the repetitive actions of pedestrians rather being an officially designated one. We dropped into a hollow-way, its steep banks lined with trees and bushes, and I realised we were on the old Coffin Way, a very old path that ran from ?Four Ashes? high above the town down to the cemetery. Time was now getting on, and I realised that if we now turned left we would be taken well out of town before we could turn off it, so instead we made our way down the path in the opposite direction as I explained that whilst Coffin Ways are footpaths that are still frequently to be found in northern European landscapes, their origins are less well known. Some are very ancient, and often follow direct lines across the land, which has led to conjecture that rather than this just being the quickest route from A to B when carrying a coffin, it was because of the pre-Christian belief that the spirits of the dead can be contained within straight lines. This belief is also linked to the meaning behind mazes; if you follow their prescribed, convoluted routes then evil spirits cannot follow you. As we strode down the hill I posed the possibility that this sunken path might be one of the oldest features in the landscape of the town; possibly an ancient pagan processional route 114 for the carrying of the dead to their final resting place close to the stone circle and the sacred stream at the bottom of the valley. We came out onto a residential street next to the cemetery and made our way back to our starting point at the Guildhall where we met up with the other group. After a brief discussion as to where we had gone, and finding out that the other group had given up on the d?rive in favour of a pub, we went our own ways. I was a little disappointed with them for giving up on the idea so soon, but at least I think in my group we had enjoyed our algorithmic d?rive and overall the day had gone reasonably well. However, as I made my way home, I wondered whether my enthusiasm for walking the features and local history of the town had made any difference as to how the others felt about the place. Was it just me who felt I was uncovering hidden mysteries and secrets? Was psychogeography a meaningful pursuit in discovering the urban landscape, or a geeky eccentricity? Maybe it was a bit of both. 115 Through a Townscape and Beyond I set off from my home on a breezy morning, walking down the hill towards the town centre, passing along the railway embankment with its familiar view over the valley of the tower of the church struggling to be glimpsed above the rooftops and encroachment of ever higher blocks of flats and offices, and quickly reached the broad main street. Shoppers drifted across this now pedestrianised area, relatively empty it being a non-market day, and I strode along its length and into the covered area of the Guildhall scattering pigeons as they squabbled over a bag of discarded chips. The sunlight was streaming down upon White Hart Street as I entered it, making the shadows feel even crisper as I passed down its length. Workmen had been digging into the road set with attractive square granite blocks but repairing the hole with an ugly strip of black tarmac. ?Another act of unthinking municipal vandalism?, I thought as I passed and walked through Bull Passage, passing the two ancient stones that sat unnoticed at the bottom of a wall, marking a boundary within the town at some time, but I wondered why there were two so close together; boundary stones usually stand alone. I liked the mystery these old stones represented, seemingly forgotten in the town centre, but an enduring reminder of the past, a familiar and almost comforting feature to me. I came out of the narrow lane into the open area of Frogmoor, and then onto the London Road and into an artificial canyon being constructed of glass and steel, the new and much heralded shopping mall. Ahead of me arose a cliff of scaffolding and plastic sheeting blocking out the sky; a new town centre was being consecrated as a temple to consumerism. Ironically the Wye steam ran underground here, previously temporarily covered by a car-park with the vague commitment that one day it would be opened up again, and had been suggested in some quarters as to being a true site of sacred significance. Now it had been irrecoverably built on, and would never be seen again, it?s meandering route a memory. Streams are uncommon in the Chilterns, there being but a handful of examples to be found amid this high, chalky and therefore porous landmass, and maybe that was why it was considered as sacred, particularly as at this point it was joined by another stream from the Hughenden valley. Chalk streams, as they are known, are a rarity in Britain, and even rarer in the rest of Europe being found only in a small corner of France. Yet on a justification of increasing the available building land by a few dozen square metres and despite it being the reason why this valley was settled and why the mills came to be built that made the town, the river is now deemed as having no importance and no significance. I imagined its flow beneath my feet as I passed along the pavement by the retail centre in waiting named the ?Eden Project?; paradise is now to be found waiting to be purchased in its new cathedral. The old buildings opposite, always tatty but with a character that spoke of a haphazard assemblage and adaptation, were now boarded up prior to demolition. I noticed the sign 116 above one; ?Heritage & Sons ? Funeral Directors?. It seemed to serve as a mute commentary for the fate of the old town. Passing the bus station the pedestrian is reduced to an autononom. I was forced to negotiate serried ranks of barriers and pedestrian crossing points, their directives stopping or starting my progress across a succession of roads. Buses, cars and people were all engaged in a ritual dance about each other, executed to the blinking and beeping rhythms of red and green lights. I negotiated the crossings and made my way onto Desborough Road, passing the evangelical Kings Centre. A poster in a window advertised the Alpha course, asking ?Is there more to life than this?? It seemed to me an apt comment on the citadel to consumerism being built just round the corner. I was slowly getting away from the town centre environs. I noticed that the old Victorian school, once derelict and hidden away behind boarding, had been given a new lease of life as offices. In contrast across the road there were decaying industrial buildings, one of them clad in peeling wooden planks that had once manufactured cane furniture, now long closed, its windows so thickly grimed with dirt as to allow no glimpse of what lay within. At a turn in the road I looked down an old factory access road. An elevated iron walkway crossed over it linking a collection of non descript factory buildings with the red brick facade of a Dickensian four-storey building, the small panes in its serried large windows all smashed, shards of which were ground into the broken and oil soaked tarmac below. A few businesses clung on within the crumbling factory, now the preserve of double glazing companies and car workshops. I set off along the narrow pavement of Green Street, the name a memory of when it was once one of the old drove routes into the town that can still be traced as a direct and almost straight route along roads and paths, nearly into the centre of town. I caught a glimpse of the green dome and minaret of a mosque behind some flats, and at the end of the road took a turn to find it on Jubilee road next to the Oakridge Baptist church, and realised that the minaret was actually a miniature representation of one, and not much wider in circumference than a domestic chimney. I retraced my steps to get back onto the old drove road, now called Dashwood Avenue and carried on along its length. Some have claimed that the route is also part of a ley-line, one of those linear patterns in the landscape that are so seductive to some because of their mystery and the seemingly incontrovertible evidence claimed for their existence, but for others these lines have been proven to be no more than a modern new age myth born out of misinterpretation and imagination. Another dome, this one much larger and with a cross on top, started to come into view ahead, behind which I could see the tops of the beech trees growing on the ramparts of an Iron Age fort called Desborough Castle. The pavement slowly climbed up the rise towards it, and I passed a green corrugated iron workshop, dilapidated and abandoned, ?Big Fish? unaccountably chalked on its side. As I got to the Half Moon pub at a crossroads I caught a 117 glimpse of a Red Kite soaring just above it and shortly afterwards passed the third funeral service business I had seen on my route so far. At the top of the rise I passed the St. Mary and St. George church with the impressive dome, and then Castlefield and Rowcliffe woods, descending the gentle slope to some crossroads and onto Gallows lane, vaguely recalling that gibbets were often placed at such crossing points and the edges of towns. I crossed over Chapel lane and set off up a tarmac path going straight up a hill, a long section of galvanised metal handrail running along its centre. After labouring up the steep path, I came out onto Grove road, and looking back I could now see a panoramic view of the town and the broad valley it was set in. Crossing over Heathfield road, and noting how many references there were up on the top of these hills around the town to open heath or moors, I passed through a new metal kissing gate to enter Sands Bank nature reserve, a strip of woodland set between back gardens and open fields; the town starting to be left behind now. The path was now muddy rather than paved, to one side of it a low flinty bank amongst which a few red bricks occasionally protruded; probably the remains of an old wall. The wind freshened, as I gained a ridge rising up away from the town. I passed out of the reserve and into a wide strip of trees and hedgerow with views down across large fields to the football stadium set in the valley below, beyond which woods rose up the steep flanks of the hill opposite. I continued along the narrow path following the route of the old drove road that was now choked with trees and bushes, in the distance on an opposing slope In the distance I could see a line of toy-like vehicles descending the margins of a field and I wondered what they were up to; guns out on a shoot or off-road training? I reached the house marked on the map as Druids Hutt. A tantalising name; maybe denoted an ancient past, or possibly merely the site of an 18 th Century folly? Dogs barked at me from behind a high fence as I slithered by on a mud churned lane, and a little way further on by a thatched cottage there was a sign tied to a tree reading ?Mitsubishi Motors ? Slow?. This explained the vehicles I had seen earlier; probably demonstrating their off road capabilities to potential purchasers, and it was these that were responsible for the slimy state of the track. The track passed by a viewpoint looking down the hill slope between a long green avenue of trees. At the top of the avenue was a peeling metal statue of what looked like a representation of a Roman astride a horse, at the bottom was Dashwood House, its white Doric columns gleaming in the sunlight. I stopped and sat underneath the statue for a sandwich, gazing across the valley bright in the winter sun, watching cars far beyond buzzing along a busy road just below the thin strip of a railway line. Both routes ran along another valley that was beyond Bledlow ridge, a long hill that lay opposite and almost level with me, dominating the two valleys that met below and where there had been once another Iron Age hill-fort. Now perched on its remaining ramparts there was a church, a gleaming golden dome balanced as if floating on top of its tower, and once a cramped and precarious meeting place for the notorious 18 th century Hell Fire Club. 118 Despite the sun, I soon became chilled, and so moved on, walking down a lane off of the hill to reach the London road at the bottom of the valley, crossing over and to find that for the first time in several years the headwater of the River Wye had running water in it, meandering through the open pastures. I followed its course downstream for a short way, passing an electricity sub-station with a sign on it saying: ?The Pound ? formerly used for impounding stray animals.? Some definitive evidence of the several drove routes that used to meet at the head of these converging valleys. I passed the village school emptying of children, a lollipop lady escorting a trickling stream of them across to a car-park, and after pausing briefly to decide which direction to take, I plumped for a sunken path of another old drove route overhung with Yew trees that climbed steadily up the hill below the ramparts of the hill-fort and church. Occasionally I glimpsed through the tangled trees the meadows below and the glittering thread of the river weaving through them, upstream fading into a faint line until disappearing all together, the only clue to its underground course a dark mark through a field. At the open land close to the top of the hill I sat on a bench briefly in the setting winter sun, looking westward down the valley over its green fields lit bright in places, elsewhere in deep shadow, before crossing the hill?s brow when the whole of the Wycombe valley came into view, the tight surrounding hills seeming to tumble down into the distant jumble of buildings running along its bottom, the occasionally glimpse of the river amongst them a vibrant blue. I bounced down the hill to the Bradenham road, the busy one had seen from the statue earlier, and walked along by it for a short distance almost deafened by traffic. Two trains passed along the railway line before I turned up Cookshall lane towards the tracks, passing a second-hand car dealership and a few houses, the traffic roar from the road beginning to fade. I noticed a half moon for the first time hanging low in the blue winter sky as yet another train pulling a long line of freight wagons passed over a bridge under which I was walking, and then picked up on a footpath running up a field, the low sun now picking out every depression and mound on its surface in a succession of light and shadow. At the top of the field I entered a wood and followed my nose through it, having never been this way before, and meandered along getting gradually higher before reaching the back of some houses where I followed a narrow passage running between two to come out into an estate of new build semi-detached houses. The roads seemed eerily quiet, with no children playing outdoors and few cars passing by the neat but characterless houses. I took a path back into a wood where I could hear a woodpecker hammering somewhere close by and followed a muddy path until it started to descend whereupon I turned back into the estate and crossed through more quiet roads passing an unexpected duck pond called Gosling Grove. I turned down Willoughby Walk that, even though it was marked as a dead end, I hoped would provide pedestrian access over the hill to the next valley of Hughenden. At its end a path continued to reach a road that I crossed to follow another and came to a path at its end that eventually began to head down into the valley. 119 I came out into an open field with a monument to Disraeli in it. I rested a while on a bench and from where I was sat I could see Hughenden House through the trees below, and beyond and to the east the route of the Coffin Way, the path that ran down to the cemetery, just below the brow of the hill over which was my home. The valley below was by now in shadow, the sun only reaching the hilltops, and I knew down there was another stream, at present unseen, that was the Hughenden brook that eventually joined the Wye underneath the new shopping centre. I went back into Tinkers Shaw wood and descended steeply down into the valley, the factory roofs of Broome and Wade coming into view and that I headed for, eventually coming out onto a road that I followed to where it crossed Hughenden brook. Here I picked up on a path that ran between the gushing waters of the weed clogged stream on one side, and the wall surrounding the disused factory on the other, the smashed windows of the buildings and rusting iron works beyond betraying its long dereliction. Last time I had passed this way the brook had been reduced to a dry ditch of broken glass and beer cans. Now it appeared almost healthy as I walked along despite the obligatory shopping trolley left in its course, although the gardens that backed on to it were an unsightly detritus of collapsing corrugated iron sheds and rusting cars. At a footbridge the brook disappeared under a culvert before reappearing a few hundred metres further on in a supermarket car park where the remains of a medieval bridge had been found. Here at Temple End, I crossed the busy road to pass the old Police Station, and onto first Benjamin road (named after Disraeli) and then Priory Avenue (echoes of the pre-reformation age) to go by Hamilton School that had a poster outside with an ambiguous meaning that amused me: ?Look out ? Walkers About? As I crossed onto Priory Road lined with its distinctive, gothic style Victorian villas the streetlights were beginning to come on, giving an orange glow to the fading light in the clear sky. I crossed the busy Amersham Road and walked along the road above the railway, and then turned up past a block of flats called Havenfields to eventually reach my road and then house in the gathering dusk. 120 Another Local Wander It was a warm summer?s morning as I strolled down to the large recreational space running along the bottom of the valley to the east of the town centre, crossing the bridge over the River Wye by Pan Mill, and set off westwards across the broad expanse of the Rye, my eyes seeking clues for the subtle curves in the hillside to my left hidden by a dense covering of trees. I could just about make out the shape of Roundabout Hill that would have been a prominent feature if it was not for the wood that wrapped around it. There was the constant muted roar of traffic noise coming from the London Road to my right and I tried to imagine what I would have heard if there were no cars, and the town but a sleepy hamlet. Maybe then the rush of water from the Wye would have been the dominant noise, and the merest shout would have echoed around the steep encircling hills. I passed out of the recreation grounds and joined the course of the London Road, opposite to the fortress-like Court buildings, and walked along to a gyratory road system that had old low brick walls set in the tree planted island, circled by a thick mass of stop-start traffic. I wondered if the land had belonged to what was once Lord Carrington?s House, a large and impressive building set in the extensive grounds opposite, and now Wycombe Abbey School providing private boarding education for girls. I was curious to see more of this forbidden estate hidden behind high enclosing walls and railings. It sat right next to the town, yet was terra incognita for its inhabitants apart from a privileged few. I enquired at the gatehouse whether I could take some photographs of the house and grounds and was directed to the bursar?s office to get permission. Here I explained my interest in significant sites of the local landscape, and to my surprise I was given a pass and told I could wander where I wished in the grounds. I walked around the imposing house to find an attractive chapel hidden behind it and, climbing the hill that rose beyond, a large modern gym and halls of accommodation set amongst imposing ornamental and native trees. Following a winding road, I passed the buildings and then a grassy meadow set in a narrow valley, pausing at the top to look back down the hill. A distinct defile could be seen looping up through what was once known as the Langley valley, a feature the bursar had told me to look for, and was all that remained of the old road that once led out of Wycombe, now replaced by the modern dual carriageway that ran arrow straight up Marlow Hill, the traffic roar of which I could hear fifty metres away behind the school?s walls. The road looped around close to the top of the coombe, the name given hereabouts of such dry valleys, passing into woods amongst which I came across another imposing and large manor house, Dawes Hill House, previously of which I had not the faintest clue of its existence. Somewhere, however, underneath this hill I did know there was a now disused deep bunker of the United States Navy, once controlling their nuclear submarines in the North Atlantic. 121 I followed a path back down the hill, passing the entrance to what I guessed was an old ice house set into the hill, but wondering whether it connected to the bunker or any of the tunnels that are rumoured to run under the hills in the area. Through the trees I caught glimpses of the town in the valley below, views that not only gave it almost the appearance of rural village, but also ones that I realised most of the town?s inhabitants would never see. I handed my pass back in at the Bursar?s office and left the school to cross the busy Marlow Hill road, picking up on a path that led through the grounds of Wycombe Hospital, clearly shown as a public right of way on the map. However, there were no fingerpost signs evident; it appeared that the authorities were reluctant to advertise the path?s existence. After a couple of hundred metres passing by parked cars and blocks of buildings, I exited the hospital grounds and turned up a path climbing steeply up past back gardens and onto a wide green sward known as Tom Burt?s Hill, named after a character who had many centuries ago supposedly found a cache of Roman treasure buried there. I explored the open green thoroughly, looking unsuccessfully for some ancient boundary stones there before following another path back down the hill, passing the grounds of a state school that in comparison to Wycombe Abbey School looked small, tatty, and ugly; an indictment of the gulf that exists between state provision of education to that of the private sector. The path led me into some quiet residential roads. Their names, such as Shelley Road and Wordsworth Road, and the style of houses suggested they were built in the early fifties during the imagined dawning of the ?new Elizabethan age?, a conceit of the times that in fact betrayed an opposite reality, of a looking back to a romanticised version of English history. On reaching the boundaries of the hospital again, I cut off west across the hill and entered the dark and humid confines of a designated nature reserve with dense, overgrown vegetation and ivy clad trees through which I passed along a narrow winding path. I came out onto rough open ground on a steep slope, West Wycombe church on a hill opposite unexpectedly close, and the rise of Desborough castle even closer, both once the sites of Iron Age forts that guarded the approaches to the valley below. The path ran down the hill and onto a quiet residential street that I followed, bringing me out onto the busy Desborough road, the blare of traffic rushing by swamping my senses with their noise and smell, a passing bus sucking me towards the kerb with its backwash. I hurried down the road and turned into an alley that I thought was possibly a remnant of a Roman road, or even older, that took me through to a road passing derelict factory buildings and onto Green street, which I was fairly sure was a drovers route, and had followed out of town on a previous walk at the beginning of the year. Despite planning this time to follow the old route in the other direction towards the town centre, first I wanted to visit the Iron Age fort of Desborough Castle just up the road. The road was narrow and choked with traffic, the houses set close to the pavement and interspersed with a few shops serving the predominantly Pakistani community; a curry caf? and sweetshop, a fabric shop with saris in the window, a jewellers and a cash and carry. I 122 turned up Upper Green Street by a closed and shuttered pub, once called the Saracens Head. Given that this was a somewhat insulting name for the surrounding Muslim community, I noticed that all evidence of the pub?s name had been removed; only the shadows of the words that once adorned the walls remaining on the red bricks. I followed the small road to reach Oakridge Road down which I turned to rejoin Green Street where I crossed the road and walked up Dashwood Avenue towards the St. Mary and St. George church. I reached the flight of steps running up to its entrance which I climbed and then skirted around the building, passed by its car park and a Nursery School to climb up a steep grassy slope by some allotments that brought me to an open grass area. Ahead were the remains of the ancient fort now called Desborough castle, a thick copse of mature beech trees growing on its banks and ditches that almost hid them from view. I crossed the open green, dropped down into a ditch and climbed up a slippery bank to enter the encircling embankment confines and the dark green shade of its trees. Following the top of the ramparts that were surprisingly distinct, I walked the perimeter of the fort, noticing the detritus of rubbish that was accumulating in the accompanying defensive ditch and the worn tracks from bikes that criss-crossed the interior. It was still remarkably well preserved, almost in as good a condition as the Iron Age forts I had seen along the Ridgeway that are jealously protected by English Heritage. Yet here this ancient monument, rather than being celebrated and protected as one of Wycombe?s earliest settlements, stood unmarked and neglected, almost enveloped on three sides by a grey and dismal housing estate, appreciated only as a convenient dump and BMX track, the trees providing convenient cover for sex, drink and drugs. The neglect of the site seemed almost wilful, as if because it was surrounded by urban sprawl it was less worthy of regard or attention. I began retracing my steps, attempting to shake off the temporary gloom that had descended on me by picking up my pace and hurrying down another footway that brought me back onto Dashwood Avenue. Now I would follow the old drove route back into town. The evidence as to whether this was an ancient route was based in the main upon observation, conversations with local inhabitants, and a few snippets of information gleaned from local historical archives. The route ran off a ridge that connected with other old drove routes, and ran straight into the town towards the old common water meadows and springs via a continuous linear right of way in the form of paths, alleys, tracks and streets, significantly passing just below the ancient hill fort. Road names on it and close by suggested it was at least a drover?s route, and a survey conducted in 1970 concluded that a Roman road had run through the vicinity. All of these elements gathered together seemed to me to provide a fairly convincing case that this route was ancient, probably pre-Roman, and therefore in walking it one was following at least an approximation of a route walked for thousands of years. The county archaeological office could not confirm my deductions when I rang them to enquire, but neither did they rubbish them; it was ?a possibility? as they put it. 123 As I walked back along Dashwood Avenue, a number of elderly folk from the local Caribbean community were out enjoying the afternoon sun and talking to their neighbours, reminding me that this was one of the original areas where immigrants from the West Indies settled in the town after the Second World War. I passed onto Green Street again and then down Leigh Street passing under the walkway and by the abandoned factories into a narrow alley way enclosed by high brick walls to either side. At the end was a colourful piece of graffiti art, quite unlike the usual scribbled motifs or handles, with a poem at its centre that had echoes of classical literature: Dont let the dealerz herd u like cattle, Your not in the war yet this is your battle, If drugs get to one then it gets 2 All, Together we stand, Divided we Fall The alley way came out onto Desborough Street which I crossed via a handy pedestrian crossing, and then continued along a rutted track, shabby back gardens to my right and at first the back of more old factories and then modern flats and their car parks to my left. The track narrowed a little towards the end and brought me out onto Rutland Street that ran around the back of a modern brick building, once the local Job Centre but now closed. I walked a hundred metres or so along what I presumed would have been the old drove route to where the road turned right sharply. Ahead of me was a pair of chained metal railing gates through which I peered. Inside was the recently levelled site of the old gasworks, and where all sign of my ancient Way was lost under the demolished site and the University buildings beyond. The next point any evidence of the ancient route reappearing was in the shape of the Roman road, which apparently could still be seen as a raised causeway or agger in the grounds of Wycombe Abbey school. Something to seek out on a future walk, I thought. I cut down through the unkempt grounds of the old Job Centre to come out onto Lilys Walk, a road that ran behind the towering new edifice of the Eden shopping centre being built there, stamping the authority of mindless consumption for the town?s future; a corruption conspiring to finish off the job of destroying the soul of the town, a process started by previous hideous and ill-advised developments of the sixties. A hard-hated builder shouted at me as I emerged by the development calling me over. I approached him expecting a confrontation, but he was friendly enough, explaining in a thick Polish accent that the road was temporarily closed not only to traffic but also to pedestrians. Trying to follow even an approximation of the old route was now impossible, any memory of it buried under concrete and tarmac, so I cut around the massive building site into the new Bus Station and headed for home. As I made my way up through my rapidly changing town centre, I mused on my experience of the old route and what I had divined from it. Maybe that is what defines a path, I thought, a memory of past people?s movement in time and space; a construction made almost arbitrarily or by accident and then, through time, taking on meanings of a legal right of passage, of identity and belonging to place. Once it had been a 124 dominant feature rising up from the valley and its magical springs and rivers onto the ridge line of the hills beyond, and despite now it being almost lost amongst the modern buildings and roads, it still remained. The memory was still there to be found, lingering on along half forgotten alleyways, anonymous streets, and disregarded earthworks. 125 An Analysis The three preceding narratives reflect the internal ?conversation? of thoughts and observations arising from a phenomenological process derived from an embodied engagement of walking around a local, urbanised environment. The first, ?A Drift and an Algorithmic D?rive? was a description of a day purposefully experimenting with some approaches of psychogeography with a group of undergraduate students. By engaging with some specific practices such as a constrained drift and conducting an algorithmic d?rive, the intention was to see if the experience of moving through one?s locale might be subtly changed or even subverted. Both of these approaches or practices demonstrated their capacity as a form of cognitive mapping that might challenge previously held perceptions of the places visited. Using water features to identify and then to follow was a simple method to initially employ as an attempt to make the students? reconsider how they engage with an environment they are familiar with. It also gave an opportunity to engage with historical aspects of the local environment and connections to the broader landscape. However, most significantly, as the morning?s session progressed, aspects of play developed in the students? behaviour that was intimately connected to the environment. How the dousing rods were used, playing pooh-sticks, jumping flower- beds in the museum grounds, these were all improvisations of engagement with the surroundings that are often over-looked as a fundamental way to experience place, particularly for younger people. The afternoon?s d?rive, at least in the group I accompanied, was possibly the most rewarding activity. In following the instructions it was as if we were following a route that was both ordered but yet random. The algorithm of ?second right, second right, first left? soon took us to places previously unvisited and also hidden surprises. To some extent because we were following the instructions the need to get from ?A? to ?B? was replaced with a willingness to look about us, absorbing the insignificant and random that previously may have been ignored, and at odds to the dominance of ?the tourist gaze? (Urry, 2002) that tends to focus on striking buildings and monuments. It was the smaller details that seemed to catch our attention. Again there was playfulness to the experience, but also it felt like we were encountering secret places previously hidden to us through a symbiosis of chance and logic. 126 The other two walks, a ?Through A Townscape and Beyond? and ?Another Local Wander? were both conducted solo. An old route or path featured in both that held a particular attraction for me, maybe because it had been largely forgotten, obscured or lost, but also because it provided a strong physical link to those people who had previously walked it. Sinclair (cited in Pinder, 2001), a contemporary psycho- geographer, describes how by walking a path that has been trodden before by previous generations is like coming into contact with their ghosts: Whenever there are two people walking down a road there?s always a third present, and the solitary walker soon gathers with him a commonality of other walkers behind, all whispering and talking in his ear, and trying to seduce him to turn right into this mystery or turn left into that building, go up that church tower. You?re aware of them, and I don?t think you can do that any other way than by walking (Pinder, 2001:12). It was in a similar way that the ancient Way, whether it was a drovers? route, a Roman Road, or a Neolithic track had a profound influence on my subjective experience of it; the past and those who used it seemed to be as an integral part to it as the shops and traffic of the present were. These two walks I made might be understood as a type of self-made heritage walk, but with two important and key differences to those officially sponsored and marked heritage trails sometimes encountered in cities and towns. Firstly, whilst both a self-made and an official heritage walk may raise awareness of ?almost forgotten histories, encouraging a meaningful sense of place, and marking localities as different in the face of homogenising trends? (Markwell, Stevenson, and Rowe, 2004:458), the self-made walk is less concerned with the primacy given to the authorised and sanctioned version of local heritage that often carry enduring cultural and political hegemonies that are highly selective (Plate, 2006), and engages more with myth, stories and what catches the eye of the individual. Secondly, heritage walks prioritise the particular sites visited whilst the walking between these sites and as an activity and experience is almost totally ignored (Curtis, 2008), whereas the self-made walk tends not to go from designated site to site, but is rather a continuum of experiences that may occur every few paces. What emerges from these three narratives is not only my specific experience of exploring a place on foot that I have an intimate knowledge of, or the broader 127 experience of the walker in the urban environment, but also the significance of the approach utilised associated with contemporary strains of psychogeography; that of an explorer of what is hidden or obscured under the fabric of an urbanised environment. What follows is an attempt to evaluate the role psychogeography might have as a conceptual approach that may challenge some traditional values and prejudices surrounding walking and place. 128 Walking Urban Place The relation between walking and urban environments has been argued as essential to not only how we identify with and make sense of such places, but also to the robust and sound functioning of them. Jane Jacobs? seminal work on the history of town planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, 1961) was one of the earliest texts that linked urban decay and the corresponding high levels of crime and alienation to the ascendancy of the car and traffic flow at the expense of the pedestrian. Her contention was it was not the car per se that was at fault, but rather the inability of town planners to recognise the role the pedestrian has in making the city or town?s neighbourhoods vital, safe and prosperous with a sense of community. Indeed, as Amato (2004:274) observes, the central thrust of her argument was, in effect, ?an unwalked city is a dead city; arguably it is no city at all.? Furthermore, walking both as a source of pleasure and as a means of transportation, ?which together were for a long time at the root of a strong and deep sense of place? (Adams, 2001:187), is now increasingly rare in an urban context. The urban pedestrian is becoming increasingly marginalised not only their practical engagement with such environments, but also ideologically as their numbers decline and such activity becomes to be seen as inappropriate, even eccentric. Jacobs (1961:56) makes the point in regards to simple social contact provided by the regular usage of sidewalks as being fundamental to engendering feelings of safety for the inhabitants of city streets: The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop. That the above now appears to be of a bygone age suggests that the social contact that Jacobs considered so necessary in the healthy functioning of a city or urban conurbation has now largely been lost. The interaction of communities through the medium of walking the neighbourhood was noticeably absent on my pedestrian excursions. What shops that remained on the peripheries of the town centre were struggling to survive in the face of proliferating shopping mall developments and car 129 parks, all supposedly for the shopper?s convenience but at the expense of the pedestrian. Increasingly, therefore, walking in town and city is becoming more difficult, whether because of an increased antipathy to walking as a mode of transportation, a fear of personal safety because of increased traffic levels or the perceived threats of being ?on the street? and vulnerable to violence, or because of distanciation (Adams, 2001) where anywhere one needs to get to is often simply too far to walk or takes too much time. This distanciation appears to be a deliberate planning policy; shops are no longer ?local? or ?on the corner?, and neither are a host of other amenities. Retail parks are built out of town with sole access by motor vehicles, as are cinema complexes and sport developments. With walking disappearing from urban environments, apart from that short plod between car and shop, this not only impacts upon the individual as a significant loss of their sense of place, but also on the environment itself since with the flow of pedestrian bodies a place is perceived as and is safer than it would be if they were absent. As Solnit (2001:250) describes: Walking still covers the ground between cars and buildings and the short distances within the latter, but walking as a cultural activity, as a pleasure, as travel, as a way of getting around, is fading, and with it goes an ancient and profound relationship between body, world and imagination. Perhaps walking is best imagined as an ?indicator species?, to use an ecologist?s term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. The disappearing of walking in towns and cities therefore has implications not only for us as individuals but also for society. Whilst some lessons have been learnt, such as increasing pedestrian only zones in town centres, these tend to be only for the convenience of the shopping experience, rather than social and community well-being. Beyond these centres of consumption, the experience of walking becomes ever more difficult with proliferating pedestrian crossings where the car is given priority, discontinuous pavements, and diversity of functions in streets has been replaced by single zones usage of residential, industrial, office, or retail that has become the norm. The walker is rapidly becomes an isolated figure amongst these zones, a short step to being perceived as vulnerable. In 130 describing similar changes that have occurred in American cities much earlier, Paul Adams (2001:202) in his article Peripatetic Imagery and Peripatetic Sense of Place comments: ?Aesthetically, the urban landscape became monotonous and intimidating; socially, it became threatening, as pedestrians were too sparse to render the streets safe by regular and continual presence?. However, his main proposition is that walking as recreation and transportation produces a deep sense of place (which he terms peripatetic) and that: The disappearance of walks ? the walk to work, the walk to the store, the walk to the park, and the pleasure walk ? directly contributes to the often observed thinning out of the meaning of place frequently associated with modernity and the reduction of sensory involvement in one?s surroundings, as well as weakening place-based forms of community (Adams, 2002:187). Adams identifies three general components that have contributed to this loss of peripatetic sense of place: ?urbanization; increasing spatial flows of commodities, people information and capital; a growing spatial interdependence that manifests itself through distanciation ? the stretching out of human interactions and projects across space? (Adams, 2002:189-190). Within the context of an American experience it is to be expected that such distanciation might be attributed to a society developed from a tradition of long distance travel and particularly dependant on the automobile. However, maybe surprisingly, Adams asserts that ideologies rather than technologies have brought this ?socio-spatial evolution? into being, and that principle amongst these is peripatetic imagery in literature: ?The loss of a peripatetic sense of place is related most directly to peripatetic imagery situating the walker outside the social fabric? (Adams, 2002:188). He contends this imagery consists of two polarised but complimentary visions of walking, and which he terms light peripatetic and dark peripatetic, and that the preponderance of literature on walking shows the walker as anti-social. Light peripatetic casts the walker as a discoverer, presenting bucolic, romanticised images of a rural idyll and nature, and so implicitly questioning the validity of human society, it is ?in short optimistic but alienated? (Adams, 2002:196). Dark peripatetic is where literature uses the walker, often alone, or the gait of a walker as a metaphor for alienation or being outcast. 131 His conclusion that literature has contributed so much to the walker as being a social outcast may seem somewhat extreme, but despite it being written from an American perspective, it may well go some way in explaining the growing marginalisation of walking and the walker in this country. Amongst his concluding remarks, which includes advocating ?neo-traditional? or ?new urbanism? approaches to urban planning, Adams proposes that to regain a peripatetic sense of place and overturn the notion that the walker is some kind of outcast then there is a requirement for a re- engagement of both walking and its literature that challenges the conventions that surround both. Certain aspects of psychogeography would appear to challenge both of these conventions that Adams identifies. As previously discussed, it is obtuse in its choice of environment to walk in, as is its approach in describing it through a variety of approaches that range from polemical discourses to performance art. It is also a rebuttal to a pervading ideology where the pedestrian figure in the urban context is overlooked for its potential to bring identity to place (Cresswell, 2004). Without walking both local and unfamiliar urban environments they remain alienated and unknown to their inhabitants, the cultural capital as described by Bourdieu (Moore, 2008) of an urban landscape and the meanings ascribed to it cannot be accessed; the character, history, stories and sensory experience of place, along with the effect they have on our psyche, become lost. My continued reference to the shopping mall being built as being a retrograde step was not just a personal antipathy towards the growth of consumerism; it was also in part a lament for the lost cultural capital of the past that was being built over. Walkers would eventually follow the form of the old streets encapsulated under arched roofs and glass shop fronts, but any hint of the town?s past inheritance would be gone, along with any sense of place. You could literally be anywhere in the world. It is this supposedly alienating environment of the city that psychogeography appears to feed upon, sometimes to relish, often to rage against, and in doing so usurps and rejects established convention and reclaims the city or town not just for the pedestrian, but also for society. By walking through these urban streets and sprawl and engaging with the minutiae of its experience, is to rediscover a different genre or text of landscape and thereby reclaiming a sense of place. 132 Therefore, whilst some contemporary elements of psychogeography do appear to offer possible approaches in the context of reclaiming a sense of place with urban environments, it is also problematical in that as a genre it identifies with the rhetoric of alienation, the very effect attempting to be overcome, and has a tendency to indulge in self-absorbed polemical tirades to the point of being deliberately obtuse and incoherent. Furthermore, and to return to Adams (2001) contention regarding the contribution literary imagery of the light and dark peripatetic has made to the condition of the walker becoming a disenfranchised figure in society, much of contemporary psycho-geographic text might reinforce and even celebrate this marginalizing of the urban pedestrian. It seems we are faced with a dichotomy; on the one hand psychogeography appears to offer a possible approach in reclaiming a sense of place in the city and urban environment via a pedestrian engagement, on the other it also has a capacity to alienate through the imagery it employs. Therefore, whilst its practice appears a positive experience of engagement, how it is represented might be problematical. In other words, it is through the embodied action of the engaging participant that a sense of place is produced for that individual; the imagery produced describing it may entertain and illuminate, but inevitably fails to adequately reproduce that experience, or even alienate one from it. This primacy of the experience of walking in the urban context, rather than its representation, might be best summed up by Ben Jacks (2004:5) who asserts that: In the face of modern alienation and postmodern absence, walking is a subversive act that enables us to contemplate bodily connections within the built environment. Walking restores a sense of connection; the act of walking penetrates the supremacy of abstraction and theory that has been compounded through interdisciplinary translation. The rejection by Jacks of theoretical abstracts regarding the built environment in favour of making bodily connections with it is expanded into the action being a simple creative act in itself: ?the idea of walking as a subversive activity obscures its ordinariness. The everyday persistence of walking recognizes that breathing and walking give access to something tangible and deflates the importance of abstraction. The 133 bodily experience of moving, by challenging the objectivist account of the world, opens a space for a theory of imagination (Jacks, 2004:5). Sinclair (1997), an exponent in describing this imaginative world produced by walking , and who might be considered as one of the central figures in a developing contemporary and London-centric perspective of psychogeography, proposes in his book Lights Out for the Territory that the contemporary fl?neur interests are in everything whilst: Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode... in alert reverie... Alignments of telephone kiosks, maps made from moss on the slopes of Victorian sepulchres, collections of prostitutes? cards, torn and defaced promotional bills for cancelled events at York Hall, visits to the homes of dead writers, bronze casts on war memorials, plaster dogs, beer mats, concentrations of used condoms, the crystalline patterns of glass shards surrounding an imploded BMW quarter-light window? Walking, moving across a retreating townscape, stitches it all together: the illicit cocktail of bodily exhaustion and a raging carbon monoxide high (Sinclair, 1997:4). This might be regarded as his personal manifesto as to what psychogeography means for him (Grimble, 2003), but also seems to be a celebration of the ambiguities of city life; the bizarre, the seedy, the disregarded, and the cultures as represented in miniature tableaux. I can also recognise similar elements arising in my own narratives such as the anti-drug stanza of graffiti art on the alley-way wall, the detritus in the streams and the litter in gardens, the closed pubs, and the decaying factories; these are an expected part of experiencing the fabric which makes up urban conurbations. However, in deftly identifying that experience, Sinclair has become a victim of his own success. He has become the doyen of yet another supposedly counter-culture movement that has become appropriated by an intellectual establishment and commoditised. As Coverley (2006:123) points out: Psychogeography, at least as far as it is applied to London, increasingly comes to resemble an institution with Sinclair at its head and this has inevitably blunted its impact, as what was once a marginal and underground activity is now afforded mainstream recognition. Sinclair (2004) is aware of this, talking about Psychogeography in an interview: 134 Now it?s become the name of a column by Will Self, in which he seems to walk about the South Downs with a pipe, which has got absolutely nothing to do with psychogeography. There?s this awful sense that you?ve created a monster. In a way I?ve allowed myself to become this London brand. I?ve become a hack on my own mythology, which fascinates me. From there on in you can either go with it or subvert it. However, there is no doubting that Sinclair has himself been involved in the further, and possibly inevitable developments of recent psycho-geographical texts that has been the straying from city and town environments into suburbia and their marginal hinterlands (for example Ballard, 1973; Sinclair, 2003; Rogers 2006; Self 2007), again all concerned with London, or even its surrounding countryside (Rogers, 2006; Self, 2007). Whilst the stamping ground for psychogeography has always been rooted in the built environment, it is odd that its practice has remained so stubbornly attached to such a specific landscape. The following of imagined lines of confluence, of routes that trace other linear features, or that link types of places together can just as readily be practiced in landscapes beyond the urban, in what is described as the countryside or the rural, as demonstrated in my following of the ancient route out of town as described in the two preceding narratives. Even Sinclair?s own brand of the urban walker being a coalescence of ?local historian, avant-garde activist and political polemicist? (Coverley, 2006:122) seems highly applicable to the culturally and socially constructed rural landscape. The antipathy to rural walking as psychogeography practice expressed by some of its contemporary and past practitioners might be seen as remnants of the elitism and a certain intellectual snobbery that has always haunted it, and a reflection of the city- centric attitudes of many of its self-declared advocates. After all, how can you be recognised as a ?radical? walker, subverting conventions of walking, when you are in the countryside and your practice is undistinguishable from all those other walkers to be encountered there? Indeed, many of the aspects of psychogeography that seem strange and bizarre in the urban context are not so odd when in a rural one. My following water features above and below ground in my narratives may have appeared as slightly odd within an urban context, but less so in a rural one. Is it possible that the only difference between psychogeography and more traditional forms of walking journeys are the 135 environments they are performed in and how these landscapes have been and are socially constructed? Most of the land described as countryside in Britain has been thoroughly modified and adapted to suit human purposes and activities, yet is regarded as being a reflection of nature or the natural in a way that urban landscape is not. The urban and the rural are often considered as being diametrically opposed rather than actually sharing very similar characteristics. Those recent texts (for example Sinclair, 2003; Rogers, 2006; Self, 2007) broadly described as psychogeography that have started to breach this imaginary frontier between urban and rural, and the countryside environments explored have often attempted to utilise aspects of a d?rive or constrained walk by adopting an arbitrary process that dictates the route to be followed. This might be following a particular line or linking places together with a historical, topographical, or imagined connection. In the case of Sinclair it was by following the M25. However, since these walks seem to be little different to those done by others who would never conceive of them as being the practice of psychogeography; is the manifesto of the psycho- geographer really as radical and original as its proponents suggest? It would appear that they are doing no more than what others have long been practicing except in they have chosen the city over the rural as their stamping grounds, and have couched it in the language of a radical, polemical engagement. One possible rebuttal to this is that psychogeography might be considered as being increasingly concerned with representing alternative expressions of environments of whatever type, be they urban or rural, often by subverting the normal conventions as to how they are considered. Is it this quality of deviant representation and presentation of exploration that gives it a specific peculiarity? To elaborate, if in the urban context the deviancy or alternative representation might be the disenfranchised nature of a wandering pedestrian, so in a rural or wild context the deviancy might be in the constrained methodology of approach and representation. For example the British artists Richard Long and Hamish Fulton undertake multiple walking journeys in rural and wild landscapes as a performance and form of art, as in when Long presented a ten mile walk on Exmoor as a line drawn on an ordnance survey map (England, 2003), or as photographic records of artistic forms and sculptures he made whilst on a variety of walking journeys, often accompanied by symbolic acts of duration, distance or repetition (Long, 2005). However, neither of them considers 136 themselves as related to the exponents of psychogeography; they are artists whose medium is walking and subject the landscape, ?less a cultural legacy than a creative reassessment? (Solnit, 2001:272). Another, possibly contentious, reason why psychogeography is straying into environments beyond the urban is maybe that its time has come; the long distance walker is becoming a rarity even in the countryside and society is possibly even more alienated by it. The mainstream popularity of walking the countryside may not be as it seems; the honey-pots for walkers increasingly being centred on the availability of car parks and topographical sites of consumption (Urry, 1995, 2002). This may be considered a somewhat extreme position to take, but considering how the city is increasingly straying into the rural domain, maybe it is inevitable that the politics of the urban walker should follow. In conclusion, whilst contemporary psychogeography may offer some alternate perspectives regarding the activity of walking not only in urban environments but also in those areas known as countryside, it should also be recognised that to some extent it has become an intellectual brand-name for an activity that has a long tradition, that of the pedestrian who has a critical regard for the landscape. In his introduction to Hoskin?s The Making of the English Landscape, Keith Thomas describes the author as considering the landscape as a: Palimpsest, a parchment on which successive generations had inscribed their way of life, while half-erasing that of their predecessor. It was not enough to appreciate it pictorially, as mere ?scenery?, in the way so many aesthetes had done. It had to be deciphered, so that its hidden significance could be revealed (Thomas, 2005: xvii). Whilst psychogeography may provide an interesting perspective regarding urban pedestrianism both in an historical and contemporary context, its exponents may not be as alternative or as radical as they initially appear. In investigating walking the urban landscape and the processes of psychogeography, I took myself from the town centre to its outskirts, flirting with that space known as countryside, a landscape that carries a resonance as being quintessentially ?English?, particularly in the south. For centuries countryside has gradually been adapted, formed and re-formed not only to suit how best it might be exploited commercially, but also to serve the interests of the landowners and the Crown. In this process it has 137 also become regarded as being something much more, becoming an idealised form of ?nature?, of national characteristics, of unchanging values, and of scenic beauty; it has become nothing short of a cultural icon (Schama, 1995). Therefore in the following chapter I shall seek to further explore some of these notions surrounding the concept of countryside, and then give particular consideration as to how the gradual process of homogenisation between the urban and rural is occurring within it. As an example of this I make use of another narrative piece regarding a hilltop I pass across whilst on a circular walk I regularly make that illustrates how a form of urban or suburban sensibilities continues to diminish a rural environment. 138 Chapter Six Walking in the English Countryside ?God made the country, and man made the town? (William Cowper, 1785) An Introduction As Tuan (1974) has observed, whenever urban civilisations are in the ascendant so a preference for the countryside or a rural idyll seems to be professed. Amongst many urban populations there is a tendency of nostalgia for an imagined countryside that is connected to the perception of a simpler and more wholesome way of life. The term countryside is somewhat ambiguous and first came into wide usage in 18th century England. However, despite its enigmatic qualities, it is a space that appears to continue to have, at least amongst the English, little disagreement as to what it means: ?the aesthetic and amenity qualities of a universally domesticated rural landscape, and especially to the landscape of agricultural enclosure? (Bunce, 1994:4). With this adoption of the term there also has become a sentimental attachment with countryside that has acquired an almost mythological status regarding an English view of the world and, in particular of England itself, as well as also being increasingly valued as an alternative to the ever-expanding urban lifestyle (Bunce, 1994). The development of the countryside as a specific space in 18th century England was a result of several developments that occurred in a more or less parallel pattern. These included the early growth of London and the northern industrial towns and the enclosure of rural land, both of which resulted in the de-population of rural areas by landless labourers. In addition, there was an increasing power of the large landowning class to be able to shape the countryside, sometimes quite literally, by producing new practices such as landscaping parks and landscape gardening (Short, 1991), and also introducing new forms of leisure activities, particularly hunting, shooting, and fishing (Bunce, 1994) and by occupying seats in the House of Lords. Furthermore, central to this transformation was the emerging discourse surrounding landscape and its association with the pictorial and the picturesque that further 139 emphasised artificial modes of the representation of countryside (Andrews, 1989). One example of this is the Claude glass that was used by turning one?s back on a good view to see it represented in the slightly convex mirror ?as if it were a framed picture? (Wallace, 1993:46). This idealising of countryside developed concordantly with a beginning of perceiving the English industrial town with a pathological dread, a place where nature had been outcast to its margins. It also marked the beginning of regarding countryside and nature as being synonymous with each other. So while the countryside came increasingly to be desired because of its visual qualities mediated through the representation of space via the notion of landscape, the industrial town was seen as thoroughly polluted, as unnaturally invading all the human orifices (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998:174). As Bunce (1994) proposes, countryside is thus a product of some three centuries of change and gradual transformation that has accentuated its separation from the urban and so redefined human relationships with land, nature and community. Furthermore, he reasons that it is a ?cultural construct and a social ideal, forged by the historical processes of a metropolitan-dominated society? (Bunce, 1994:2). The popular image and concept of countryside, therefore, resides within a collective imagination rather than as a reality, just as so much of notions regarding landscape do. Significantly the beginning of this process producing such a distinctive set of spaces that the countryside and the urban occupy occurred at the same time as mass industrialisation was taking place, yet as Wiener (1981:204) asks: ?Why did hostility to industrial advance persist and even strengthen in the world?s first industrial society? Why did hostility so often take the form of rural myth making?? This is a significant and pertinent question, since during these three centuries there was a steady growth in the valorisation of a particular form of countryside that was especially to be found in southern England, and has become engrained in British culture as having a particular resonance. Cosgrove (1993:299) considers this landscape as being a mythical one, describing it as ... an ordered and domestic scene of country house, cosy cottage and herbaceous border. Its small-scale lanes and hedged fields with their half- hidden villages and sentimentally ?wild? life have to be protected from the ravages of scientific farming and urban encroachment. Significantly, the group 140 most directly concerned with its conservation is the Society for the Protection of Rural England, the fragile middle landscape of mythical harmony between society and nature, frequently projected as the authentic landscape of all Britain. Macnaghten and Urry (1998) suggest that in order to explain this peculiar resonance with this mythologised landscape, there are four processes to emphasise. First and most obviously, English Romanticism had an early role to play in this making of countryside as a national icon, in particular Wordsworth who combined a visual delight of the irregular, fleeting and modest found within the picturesque, with the emotions of awe and reverence of nature found within the sublime. In addition, however, consideration must also be made how a pedestrian perspective, often of the labouring classes, began to be applied by the Romantics to denote a replacing of cultivation as the central motif of countryside. This was due in part to the rapidly increasing process of enclosure that: ?revealed walking as an instrument of reappropriation of common lands and perspectives that simultaneously stabilized old local forms and opened those forms to extra-local use and interpretation? (Wallace, 1993:67). Enclosure was bringing into prominence the political nature of the network of paths along which the local working classes travelled. They in themselves were not only a form of resistance to the privatisation of the land by maintaining access to it, but also enabled the outsider to share in this access and resistance, and to make revisionist constructions of it. Whilst enclosure attempted to deny rights of access to land, British law enabled this resistance to disrupt the process since there had long been an acceptance that not only was there a right of access to the commons, but there existed ancient rights of way that even though they were not written into the local by-laws, they would be deemed as legal public paths if they could be demonstrated as having been in general use for a period of twenty years or more. This law continues to exist even to this day, and demonstrates that it is the usage of paths by walking that preserved and continues to preserve ?the unenclosed character of the countryside? (Wallace, 1993:116), despite its privatisation. Second, Macnaghten and Urry (1998) make the point that with the Romantics idealisation of nature developed a more widespread appeal of the countryside precisely because it had undergone such extensive transformation by the end of the 141 18th century that increasingly reflected the emergent elites sensibilities of a managed landscape that adhered to notions of the picturesque and civility. Because of this, these elites could not wholly disparage the peasantries values and practices as being simply barbaric or idiotic as was the case in much of the rest of Europe (Mcnaghten and Urry, 1998), particularly as the Romantic movement championed these very same values. Third, whilst Romanticism emerged on the outer margins of England and Scotland, its beliefs and practices became to be gradually applied to the southern English countryside by the new elites residing in London, and because of its dominance in all affairs legitimised the imposition of these values upon the rest of Britain. As Bunce (1994:40) describes: While Wordsworth stimulated enthusiasm for the wilder landscapes of the Lake District, it was the cosier version of nature set in the domestic landscapes of lowland England with which his generally genteel readership more often identified. Macnaghten and Urry (1998:178) argue that this appropriation of nature in a southern landscape and the dominance of London has brought about ?two major dichotomies at the heart of English culture: town and country, and the south and the north?. The southern countryside has become known as the ?home counties? and have a symbiotic relationship with London where good transportation systems enabled a cultural homogeneity to be established. Furthermore, the south?s dominant notions of what constitutes the ?natural? English countryside has to some extent appropriated certain tracts of northern landscape as being an aspect of southern sensibilities, such as the Lake District (Urry, 1995), because the prevailing image of the north is primarily of an industrialised landscape. The dominance of London and the south has brought about a powerful distinction of the north (as, for example, reflected in the popular idiom ?its grim up north?) that has established it as ?other? and so peripheralised it economically, politically and culturally (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998). The fourth and final process as to why the countryside of the south has become synonymous with a form of English identity, despite much of the originating spatial practices having long disappeared in encroaching suburbanisation, urbanisation and industrialisation, is that it continues to sustain and bolster such a place (Macnaughten 142 and Urry, 1998) partly through a maintenance of its scenic quality that is often dependant on a viewpoint or a vista, but also as to continued reference to it both pictorially and in literature as holding particular qualities of Englishness. Nowhere else is landscape so freighted as legacy. Nowhere else does the very term suggest not simply scenery and genres de vie, but quintessential national virtues? rural England is endlessly lauded as a wonder of the world (Lowenthal, 1991:213). However, this notion of the countryside as a shared landscape of national identity could not have arisen just through a regard for its artistic representation. To a great extent it was also reliant as a space that was available to be experienced from within rather than just viewed from without. Despite the countryside being enclosed, the anomalies of English law and with the improvement of transport systems brought about the growth in walking as a leisure activity, which was considered ?as a cultivating experience capable of refreshing both the individual and society? (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998:202), and allowed access to be maintained to a large extent throughout much of the southern landscape. In addition, through the appropriation of the burgeoning middle classes and elites of this countryside as being emblematic of England and an egalitarian form of freedom, so it became considered that by ?roving the countryside on foot, one practiced a kind of ?landscape patriotism?? (Amato, 2004:121) that gave legitimism to their resisting attempts to restrict their passage in the countryside. Walking clubs proliferated in the 19th century that championed trespass as a method of protest against those landowners who tried to obstruct access to land or paths deemed as being previously open to the public (Solnit, 2001). Access to the landscape in the north was more problematic, however, particularly in the mountains and moorlands that had become the preserve of upper class landowners for the pursuit of shooting. In addition, northern landscapes were marginalised by not representing the egalitarian position displayed by southern countryside, but rather one of strict class differentials in its use. Whereas there were a broad mix of classes actively demanding right of access to the countryside in the south, it was largely the working classes demanding the same rights of access in the north (Stephenson, 1989), and correspondingly were accorded with little regard. Gamekeepers and walkers were involved in sometimes violent confrontations 143 involving mass trespasses by walking groups that culminated in the 1932 trespass on Kinder Scout that led to six leaders being jailed for riotous assembly and assault (Stephenson, 1989; Solnit, 2001). It was not until 1949 when the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act began a slow process of change that began to open up the moors and mountains and give definitive legal status to rights of way by requiring county councils to map all paths in their jurisdiction (Stephenson, 1989). Through over 100 years of continuing opposition to enclosure and the denial of access to countryside, an attitude was built in Britain that regarded trespass as a legitimate expression of a freedom of movement that is inherent in that landscape: ?If walking sews together the land that ownership tears apart, then trespassing does so as a political statement? (Solnit, 2001:163) A culture had arisen that regarded the countryside as being a space that everyone had a right of access to, since it embodied notions of national identity and inherent freedoms that superseded absolutist approaches towards private land, and walking was an embodied expression of that right. Therefore, through the 20th century, the Victorian notion of England as a ?Green and Pleasant Land? rather than ?Workshop of the World? increasingly took hold in the cultural imagination, where industrialism and modernism was regarded with suspicion and a vague sense of being somehow un-English (Wiener, 1981). Before the First World War poets such as Rupert Brooke and Walter de la Mare helped further develop this ideology of ruralism, and it was also a common theme amongst the War poets such as Edward Thomas and Siegfried Sassoon. By the nineteen twenties and thirties the iconic status of the southern English landscape as being symbolic of the nation was well established, as was the notion that to explore it was best achieved on foot. Graham (1927:228) declares that ?England is more in Sussex and Surrey than it is in the mountains? in his book The Gentle Art of Tramping, a celebration of walking as an artistic approach ?to Nature, to your fellow-man, to a nation, to a foreign nation, to beauty, to life itself, (Graham, 1927:4). In a very similar vein, Mais (1927:15) suggests that ?The real England is only to be seen by a way-ward cross-country tramp? and this ?real? England he describes county by county is all in the south. This myth of England perhaps reached its height during the Second World War where representations of England on propaganda posters presented scenes of 144 southern English rural idylls and it was for these that the troops were fighting for, despite the reality for most that where they were from was something entirely different (Schama, 1995). Nevertheless, this conceit was largely accepted as representing some kind of inherent truth. In the same way while ?Nazi Germany was being portrayed as an industrial society run amok, England was seen as the opposite: humanely old-fashioned and essentially rural? (Wiener, 1981:77). Through the processes over the centuries of at first enclosure and then of gentrification, the southern English landscape of the countryside has become increasingly valued as much for ?aesthetic and leisure enjoyment... as agricultural productivity and rural trade? (Bunce, 1994:34). From the position of ?agricultural exceptionalism? (Newby, 1987:216) in the nineteen forties that made agriculture almost exempt from the planning controls imposed on other industries, there has been a gradual erosion of farming?s hegemonic place in the countryside. With the growth of environmental concerns regarding farming practices, the reduction of subsidies, and increasing in-migration of commuting communities, a countryside is emerging that might be considered as post-productivist where: ?previous local ?structured coherences? underpinned by agricultural relations are being replaced by a more fragmented pattern reflecting the diverse ways in which rural space is currently being commodified? (Cloke and Little, 1997:72). It is an irony that as the predominance of consumption interests over production interests in the countryside becomes increasingly apparent, so it is also becoming a repository of nostalgia for traditional rural life that in the most part has already disappeared in the southern Home Counties, leaving only the appearance left to be protected. Despite the wish to maintain this status-quo of an idealised countryside, the pressures upon it are steadily mounting with increasing demands upon it for transport infrastructure, housing, recreational facilities and new businesses (Forthergill et al., 1985; Urry, 1995). Regarding its future, even the preservation of the last of its qualities, its scenic appeal, is now also under threat according to the introduction in the report ?Your Countryside, Your Choice? by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) as it forewarns: It?s 2035, and the countryside is all but over? there is no longer any distinction between town and country. ?Town? does not end; ?countryside? does 145 not begin. The landscape is spattered and blotched with housing and large sheds of all colours while what remains of open land is riddled with fairways, paddocks and shimmering polythene. The varicose network of roads pervades all, ceaselessly coursing with traffic, from fat grey arteries to the writhing filigree of the cul-de-sac? An out-of-town state of retail parks, meandering housing estates, ring roads, the backs of gardens, streetlights, signs and masts. By accident rather than design, much of England has become an anywhere- place, unloved and unloving ? a homogenous exurbia, in which everywhere looks the same as everywhere else (Kingsnorth, 2005:2-3). Macfarlane (2005) suggests this dystopian vision for the future of rural England is uncannily similar to those of psycho-geographers describing the marginal wastelands surrounding London, as discussed in the previous chapter. Whilst it is based upon a certain amount of conjecture, the CPRE report suggests a process of homogeneity has been occurring in the last few decades and is steadily accelerating, eroding the presumed strict demarcations between urban and rural. It foresees a future for the rural idyll of countryside, mythic as it is in many ways, fast becoming just another reflection of the urban and the industrial, the spaces remaining becoming designated recreational areas to be designed, managed and controlled that increasingly resemble the rationales of a city park. This is but one perspective, however. Another proposition as to the future is where, as previously mentioned, new patterns of consumption in the countryside arise through the continuing process of counterurbanisation where there is increasing levels of migration from cities and towns by the relatively wealthy out to the countryside seeking that imagined ?rural idyll?, and in doing so producing a new form of contemporary rural space (Cloke and Little, 1997). Whether the future holds a homogenisation of rural with urban, or through new forms of consumption an appearance of ruralism is maintained, with both comes an increasingly urban or suburban perspective where rural space is considered as an amenity. To illustrate an element of this creeping urban sensibility that is being imposed on the tradition of countryside, what follows is a narrative that provides an example of a gradual process of homogenisation or amenity consumption occurring on a particular hill visited on a walk I regularly make, set amongst a landscape that is typical of southern English countryside. Because I have taken this walk on a regular basis, the 146 narrative takes a slightly different form from others in that rather than being a record of just one day?s walk, it is an account of a series of events I have witnessed on the hill occurring over a number of years. The narrative is one that also reflects my very personal relationship with the place and the emotional connection I feel with it, an important aspect within the genre of auto-ethnography (Sparkes, 2002). As Holstein and Gubrum (1994) suggest, when considering social or cultural meanings it is human consciousness that constitutes the objects of experience, and therefore the subjective stance becomes paramount. It also might be argued that the narrative has some polemical aspects within it, but this is sometimes a necessary part of auto-ethnography in that it connects the personal to the cultural; that by focusing on social and cultural aspects of personal experience, a ?vulnurable self? is exposed that is ?moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations? (Ellis and Bochner, 2000:739). In light of my narrative, what follows is a discussion surrounding the contested nature of countryside and how a process of counterurbanisation is generating an urban sensibility and a homogenising of rural space with that of suburbia. In addition the use of countryside as an amenity with a particular emphasis on its scenic quality is discussed, and also considered from a dwelling perspective, or taskscape (Ingold, 2000), with a particular regard given to both of these elements from the walker?s perspective. 147 White Leaf Hill White Leaf Hill is a distinctive and prominent rise in the high western escarpment of the Chilterns. It overlooks Princes Risborough and the wide vale beyond that bisects the range of hills between the town and Bledlow village to run ever narrowing up to West Wycombe and my hometown of High Wycombe. I consider it part of my ?home-patch?, an area that I have increasingly traipsed on foot over the years, and makes up a short part of a ten mile circular route I have repeatedly followed over the last five years or so. The route I follow begins at the Hamden Estate, famed as a frequent location in Hammer Horror films, first following the tree-lined and banked remains of the enigmatic Grim?s Ditch, a long linear feature dating from the 4 th Century BC that crops up throughout Bucks and surrounding Counties but of which little is known. It is conjectured that it used to mark the frontier of an Iron Age tribe based at Sinodun Hillfort north of Wallingford, but the design of the bank appears not to be defensive, so it may also have been an early attempt to enclose semi-domesticated stock on what appeared to have been at the time a open range landscape rather than the heavily wooded one it is today. My route follows the bank set between open fields and dark woods, then picks up on one of the many old drove roads that run in holloways around the area that thankfully remain un-surfaced with restrictive access for motor vehicles, before reaching the ?Pink and Lily? Pub which was a favourite haunt of the poet Rupert Brooke who also used to walk the surrounding hills. I then follow the escarpment ridge line on a path amongst thick high beeches through which occasional glimpses are gained of the vale beyond. After more woods and a short section of walking along a road, the car-park for White Leaf hill is reached, and after a short stretch following a track through birch trees, suddenly there appears an unexpectedly high and exposed view of the wide flat Vale of Aylesbury, peppered with hamlets and villages amongst the meadows and fields bordered by hedgerows and copses, stretching all the way out to the outskirts of Oxford, the city hidden just beyond behind some low, hazy hills. My walk then continues following the escarpment northeast, dipping into coombes and climbing the springy turf of first Cymbeline?s Hill and its hill-fort, then around Beacon Hill to pass the hamlet of Ellesborough, and finally up to the top of Coombe Hill with its large monument to the Boer War. Crossing some open gorse-land the open views across the countryside are then left behind as my path enters deep woods again and turns east passing close to the Prime Minister?s weekend residence Chequers hidden in the valley below. The path becomes a lane that passes through the hamlet of Dunsmore and then a stile is climbed to take a path that runs over some meadows as it descends into more thick woods. Gradually, the route turns southwards and passes through another hamlet and then through a scattering of woods and fields, before finally climbing a long hill across pasture to finish back at the Hampden Estate. White Leaf Hill has a particular significance in this walk for a number of reasons. The obvious one is the sudden, almost unexpected view it provides after several miles of enclosed woodland walking. A panorama that encompasses almost a full 180 degrees; to the 148 south west the successive waves of the crests on the Chiltern escarpment, hills known and familiar, advance to the hidden gap of the Thames that splits it from the continuing chalk highland of the Berkshire and Wiltshire Downs. To the west and north-west the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire plain stretches away in a familiar mosaic of fields and copses intermingled with the dark smudges of villages and the occasional spire; remote low hills and ridges provide a few reference points that identify distant landmarks in an expanse that disappears to the hazy horizon. The effect of its sudden appearance is all the more dramatic after the limiting views of being amongst the cover of woods and high banks. However, it is not just the view that makes it special. The hill also represents a long continuing human relationship of regarding it as special, as an iconic place, even a place of spiritual significance. An Iron Age barrow sits upon its summit, testimony to a time when the hill had a symbolic, even sacred relevance for the local inhabitants. In addition, the chalk escarpment that White Leaf Hill is part of also once formed a major highway across the land; the ancient Ridgeway, possibly the oldest route in the country that continues to be in use. It is probable that successive cultures used the high escarpment as a relatively easily and navigable way to colonise the land, even including the very first hunter-gatherer humans who came to populate the land after the last ice-age. The Ridgeway long distance path, a very recent interpretation of this ancient track, crosses the hill in just the same way. For millennia, the barrow and the beaten path were the only signs of human occupation upon this exposed hill overlooking the weald below. Eventually at some indistinct point in the past, another man-made feature came into being; a large white cross carved into the chalk in the side of the hill which can be clearly seen from the plain below and from the range of hills to the south overlooking the dividing Risborough Gap. When it was made is unknown, it was first recorded in the 17 th Century, but could date back earlier, some even claiming that it was a way-finding mark for prehistoric or iron-age travellers seeking the Risborough Gap and the route it afforded through the hills to the Thames, before being converted to its present cross shape in the medieval period. So this hill, this place, became a significant element of the entire walk. Not just for the view, but also as a place that has remained essentially the same now as it was for those first early people who identified it as suitable for the burial of or memorial to their ancestors, thereby making claim to it. Apart from the barrow, and the cross that cannot be seen from the hill?s summit, there is little evidence of the place having changed very much in millennia. It is true that a little way down from the barrow is another mound that is thought to be the remains of the foundations of a windmill that once stood there in the 17 th Century, and a hundred metres or so in the other direction are the grassed over remains of trenches dug for training during the First World War. But these enigmatic traces do not intrude, are almost indistinguishable in the land, and the knowledge that they are there only gives this place for me a greater resonance of its own unique identity. The significance of the place as being special has not been lost on others; it has a regular stream of visitors, and no doubt its special attraction led the district council to provide some 149 time ago the gravelled parking area a little under half a mile away, with seats and tables for picnics and a small information board being added later. However, in 2003 things began to change. The path from car park to the hill was resurfaced with chippings providing a hard, durable surface that could be used by wheelchairs and prams. I happened to walk the area with a Rights of Way Officer for the council once who explained that the hard, white surface would soon ?weather in? whilst still retaining its quality as a wheel friendly surface and so, along with the provision of new wide opening gates with easy action latches, access for the less-able would be improved, All well and good, but the works continued, intermittently, for the next few years. More paths were introduced, along with more gates and then a plethora of signs. The barrow was excavated by archaeologists that produced heaps of spoil and fences were erected with signs warning people to keep clear. These changes were observed with some misgivings and unease, but eventually accepted as I passed through on my regular visits, until the culmination of the ?conservation? works appeared on the scene. One Saturday afternoon, I broke out of the birch trees and walked past the barrow (now surrounded with temporary stakes and plastic fencing to allow the turf to re-establish itself after the archaeological dig) to find an addition to the hill. The steel framework of a twenty-five metre bench had been concreted into the ground just below the crest of the hill and immediately above the chalk cross. A framework existed for information panels on the back of the bench, and at its centre was a wooden plinth, topped by the brass plaque of a ?toposcope?, engraved with arrows identifying features in the landscape. I noticed that the arrows did not in fact line-up with the features described. I was angry. Here, I felt, was a clear a case of municipal vandalism at its worst. This special, unique place had been despoiled; a new, alien structure dug into the ground that had been untouched for centuries, even millennia. The lack of respect for what the place symbolised seemed to me to be of breath-taking arrogance. Somehow the ancient artefacts of the barrow and the cross seemed to but subtly emphasise the natural topography and beauty of the place through their spiritual dimensions. These brash additions violated this accord. My mind even strayed to ideas of direct action to effect the removal of this ugly intrusion. Over succeeding weeks I continued to walk the circular walk, and saw the panels being filled with information boards described as a ?timeline?, plotting the history of the site from the Neolithic through to the present day with the prerequisite artistic impressions and simplistic commentary. I would observe how people would come now to read the panels? sanitised version of this history, rather than sitting on the grass on the hill?s brow and contemplating the view as they used to. All interpretation of the view and of the place was now dictated by this structure and the accompanying timeline, the untouched atmosphere of the place now diminished, and an officially approved version of the hill?s identity was now being imposed. It seemed to epitomise how the urban sensibilities of control and provision of amenities usurped any consideration for the maintenance of a natural environment. The ethics of urban 150 planning and order had been transposed onto a landscape once previously free of these blights, but now subject to modification and codification into an approved recreational space. The placing of the timeline and the seat seem to be indicative of a desire to manipulate landscape into an approved mould, that there has to be ?facilities? for those who make the short walk from the car to the hill. A legitimism for the construction came under the guise of providing education through the information panels, and providing a place for people to sit off of the ground (sitting on the grass is of course beyond the pale for respectable folk). There were dissenters who also felt that the nature of the place had been compromised, including the Chiltern Society and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. I spoke to the Secretary of the Historic Buildings and Landscape Group of the Chiltern Society who was attempting a protest at its AGM. There had apparently been little consultation regarding the seat?s construction, and no planning permission had been required. The funds for the ?improvement? works in the area had been unexpectedly generous, and so the decision to spend the extra money on the seat had been made by just a few people. Some months later an article appeared in the local newspaper with the headline ?Best View in the South East Ruined?, but all these objections were to no avail, the council refused to even contemplate its removal. However, returning regularly to the hill through the year, one of the consequences of building the structure the authorities had not foreseen was of theft and vandalism. First the brass Braille strip was stripped from above the timeline row, and later an attempt to burn some of the wooden seat slats was made. Upon my latest visit to date, the heavy brass toposcope had been stolen, the information boards defaced, and the wooden seat slats had begun to be broken. A sign from the Council had been posted on a fence close to the hill that requested any information from members of the public regarding the ?appalling vandalism? that had occurred, and announcing that they planned to replace the toposcope with a brick- built structure this time and to permanently remove the timeline (but not the seat) because of the ?lack of money? to replace it. Again with breathtaking arrogance and a lack of sensitivity to the site, their answer to the vandalism (or possibly someone?s direct action of protest) was to construct something larger and more permanent. The seat and information boards was always an ugly intrusion, but with its unthinking construction it has transposed the blight of vandalism from the town to the hill, and as a consequence has commenced the gradual ruination of what was originally meant to be preserved. Whiteleaf Hill might be seen as an example of a process that is gradually transforming landscape into a homogenous identity; manipulating it so it might be a better resource for recreation, the quality of which measured by factors such as ease of access, approved educational outcomes, and facilities provided. The irony is that for all this effort, the outcome has been to despoil and make ugly what was there before. Leaving such natural, one could even say wild, places for people?s own interpretation and reflection is increasingly deemed by some of the authorities responsible for their care as insufficient and ?not making the most benefit? out of them, and that through their intervention 151 they can improve on what was already there. The conceit regarding landscape that began during the 18 th and 19 th centuries where the tamed countryside was considered as being somehow more respectable and so desirable than the untouched heath or moorland, appears to be continuing in the present with an increasingly urban sensibility being transposed onto the rural. 152 Homogenisation and Counterurbanisation in the Southern Countryside The preceding narrative reflects a process that I see as indicative not only how rural space is increasingly defined in terms of being an amenity, but also how the amenity that is being used or consumed is increasingly prescribed by agencies external to that space. The urban ideology of countryside as being considered as recreational space has a long history, but the manifestation of this ideology in a physical form as described in the narrative is arguably to the detriment of the very environment it seeks to enhance. Furthermore, it also serves as an example as to ?the inevitability that different representations of culturally constructed countrysides will be mutually contesting in one way or another? (Cloke and Little, 1997:1). The implication is that countryside, especially the southern English variety, is a particularly contested space that not only carries ideological representations but is also considered as a place where appropriate and obvious spacialisations of nature might be realised, such as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a Nature Reserve or land owned by the National Trust for its cultural or historical significance, enabling a wider contextualisation of themes to occur (Cloke and Little, 1997:2). These proliferating demarcations along with sustaining the urban ideological myth of rurality, in conjunction with rapidly occurring economic and social change, is resulting in competing ideologies as to how the countryside should be used and maintained. The production of prescribed recreational spaces arises from an urban sensibility in regards to nature and the rural, and might be conjectured in having its origins in the town public park where movement, activity and attractions were attempted to be designed and managed (Jacobs, 1961). A reflected aspect of this tendency to regulate and supervise nature and amenity is now being increasingly transmitted onto rural spaces. The reasons for this proliferating urban ideology into the rural are numerous and complex, but one of the major factors that contribute to it in the southern countryside is the continuing high demand for housing that has been attempted to be met by the growth in scope of suburbia, including Garden Cities and Garden Suburbs. Bunce (1994) contends that these developments reflected a bourgeois search for a residential separation from the city that was not a desire for country living, but rather 153 a redefinition of an urban residential landscape through the images and symbols of rurality and nature. Furthermore, he asserts that: In the garden suburb and its derivatives ? the suburbia, that is, of the detached, single-family house set in its own private garden amidst leafy surroundings in an exclusively residential community imbued with quasi-village atmosphere ? we can recognise the symbolic confusion of city and country? it is also a confusion that reveals the depth and persistence of countryside myths in urban society (Bunce, 1994:154). It has been estimated that the equivalent of 84 towns the size of Milton Keynes have been built in the last three decades, close on half of them on green-field sites (Kingsnorth, 2005), many within 100 miles of London where the housing demand is at its highest. The effect of this on the counties of the south-east has been dramatic, where the growth of the commuter belt around the city has steadily crept ever wider along with its accompanying suburban sprawl. These suburban estates tend to cluster around the old market towns and close to motorway corridors that offer fast connections between them and larger towns and the cities. The old suburban model developed first in the late 18th century when pious upper- middle classes began to consider London as being an immoral place to live and wished to separate family life from work (Solnit, 2001). Incidentally, at the same time the idea of the home as a space to retreat to where the wife and/or mother was tied began to be incorporated into a set of shared values of probity and respectability. At the same time, improvements in transport networks, especially around London, enabled this expansion of the suburbs to continue at an expediential pace, and as working class people also began to commute, so the continued drift of the middle classes to the ever widening peripheries continued (Thorns, 1972). The purpose built suburbs around London were left behind, first for the outer garden suburbs, and then for the commuter villages in the surrounding countryside, leading to a blurring in the demarcations between the two. This suburbanisation process has manifested itself not only in the gradual urbanisation of rural communities, but also in the development of an urban sensibility that has begun to dominate and even dictate policy in rural communities that are finding themselves as being increasingly in the minority. 154 Johnston (1983) recognises three ways of referring to urbanisation, as a demographic phenomenon where an increasing proportion of the population is concentrated in urban areas whilst there is continuing diasporas from rural to urban, as a social and economic phenomenon which is an inherent part of capitalist industrialisation, and as a behavioural phenomenon in which the urban and particularly large cities act as centres of social change, transmitting this change not only throughout the urban centre but also possibly beyond. Other factors that might also be considered are technological change, the role of public policy and how all of the above are also related to social and economic structures (Robinson, 1990). However, whilst the demographic and economic phenomena Johnston refers to would appear to be open to question since the diasporas to the urban are increasingly from overseas and the industrial economy is becoming increasingly a service economy, the counterurbanisation process (Halfacree, 1997) of migration of the classes with wealth from urban to rural has contributed to an increasing transmission of an urban orientated sensibility into the countryside. This may be pertinent as to explaining not only the issues referred to in my narrative concerning Whiteleaf Hill regarding the initiatives implemented in the name of recreational facilities, but also how the rural has become inhabited by an urban psyche because of the ?suburbanisation? of communities around towns and cities, described as metropolitan or commuter villages by Robinson (1990), the majority of which whilst dwelling in a rural area are really part of the urban system in that it is in the larger towns and cities where they work. It is an irony that because these rural hamlets and villages are now predominately occupied by the wealthy middle classes as opposed to agricultural workers, they have managed to exercise their considerable power and resist any encroaching development on their countryside retreats. As Kingsnorth (2005:4-5) comments: Where there is money or influence, sometimes there is character still. Some villages, particularly within commuting distance of London, Bristol, York, Norwich, Chester, Oxford or Exeter and other major centres, retain their Olde Worlde charm thanks to the power and effectiveness of their residents. It has been long recognised by policymakers that people are prepared to pay for character. 155 However, it should also be noted that whilst new houses are rare in these communities, so the local pubs, shops and community facilities are being gradually closed. The values of the close-knit community where everyone knew everyone else, where work and social engagements took place in that locale, are increasingly being replaced by different values that seek peace and tranquillity away from the urban throng; values that are uncannily consistent with those early suburbanites in the late 18th century who saw the city as increasingly violent and vulgar. In addition, the sounds that used to be seen as part of the character of the English countryside have also largely disappeared. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin?s evocation of the ?true? England in 1926 was ?the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the countryside smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone? (cited in Bunce, 1994:33), and is indicative of the long-lost sound-scape of countryside. The character of countryside is now described overwhelmingly as a visual entity. Therefore, whilst the ever-increasing encroachment of the urban as a physical manifestation may be held back for some time yet because of the increasing political power of its inhabitants, it might be argued that its original character, its ?sense of place? as a specific entity tied to traditions and ancestral ties, its sights and sounds, has already largely been lost. Fees (1996) articulates these changes to traditional rural perspectives by identifying what he terms as ?resident tourists?, largely those people who have second homes or have retired to picturesque villages and towns in the countryside, and gradually usurped the original inhabitants? control over the economic, social and political sources of authority there. As he contends: These leisured immigrants, for whom leisure is the primary function of the locale, present a challenge to the rest of the population which can be characterized in the questions: who and what is the place for? Is it for people from outside, who wish to experience its beauty (for example)? Or is it for people who live and work there and whose children muddy grassy banks with their bikes? (Fees, 1996:121). These questions expose the dichotomy that exists in many rural populations, where incomers with an urban or suburban sensibility that consider countryside primarily as something to be preserved for a visual aesthetic, increasingly have the political power to impose that perspective on those whose families have always resided there, 156 and see other considerations such as jobs and facilities as having at least an equal priority. Such an urban or suburban psyche now holds sway over vast tracts of land that are now part of a post-productivist economy (Halfacree, 1997) where it is consumed as an amenity, and through this process leading to a homogenisation of place where difference is a superficial visual experience. It is therefore perhaps apt that the controversial amenity of the timeline and seat I describe in the narrative is a reflection of the prioritisation given to the taking in of a view. For the authorities, all aspects of the hill were subordinate to a visual appreciation of the scenery from a specific vantage point, a perspective that is reminiscent of Gilpin?s principles of picturesque beauty (cited in Crane, 2007) where landscape is esteemed for its pictorial composition along idealised lines. The provision of a seat upon which to sit in order to admire the view, along with a timeline of information boards that interprets that view for the viewer serves to reflect how the hegemony of vision, or dominance of the eye has come to dominate western thought and culture over the last few centuries (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998). Furthermore, the presumption is that in order adequately to see one has to sit; a culturally derived embodied position that is synonymous with passivity, and the antithesis of an active engagement with the environment. All that is left is to view, even how to interpret that view being provided by the sanitised and ?bite sized? pictures and text of the timeline. The site is subtly transformed from being a largely natural hill top to an amenity and a site of visual consumption (Urry, 1995), the visitor is metamorphosed into a consumer of a product that has been mediated and presented by the authorities. From the perspective of a walker, such a passive and visually prioritised engagement with the environment that appears rooted in an urban sensibility seems not only inadequate, but also feels to be an aberration in regards in having any real understanding of its sense of place, and yet at first it would appear difficult to explain why this is so. If the countryside is a culturally constructed space where hegemony of vision is culturally prioritised, is it not inevitable that it should be rationally considered within these paradigms? In order to dispute this and provide an explanation as to why the process of walking may be a way of making an alternate understanding of landscape, it is helpful to consider it from the perspective of dwelling in landscape and, in particular, Ingold?s 157 (2000) notion of landscape as taskscape and how embodied activity within it redefines our relationship with it. Ingold draws on this dwelling perspective from Heidegger?s (1962) consideration between the relationship between building and dwelling where he concludes that there must be more to dwelling than the mere act of occupation. Dwelling encompasses the whole manner in which one lives one?s life on the earth. What it means is that the forms people build, whether in the imagination or on the ground, arise within the current of their involved activity, in the specific relational contexts of their practical engagement with their surroundings? Only because they already dwell therein can they think the thoughts they do (Ingold, 2000:186). It is through this perspective that orthodox perspectives of evolution, history, biology and culture are no longer considered as dichotomies but as part of an overall dwelling perspective where they are inextricably linked and inter-dependant, and part of a process that is on-going. In applying this perspective, landscape can neither be considered as a neutral and naturalistic backdrop to human activities, or a particular cultural or symbolic ordering of space. Rather it is the enduring record and testimony to the lives, works and activities of the past generations who have dwelt there, and in so doing have left there something of themselves (Ingold, 2000:189). This standpoint of landscape as being a record of past lives has echoes of the landscape historian Hoskins? (1955) description of the English landscape as being a palimpsest, (as mentioned in the preceding chapter) in that he regarded it as like a parchment on which successive generations had inscribed their way of life that had to be deciphered so that its hidden significance could be revealed. Furthermore, he contended that: One needs the fourth dimension of time to give depth to a scene: one wants to know as much as possible about the past life of a place, about its human associations, and to feel the long continuity of human life on that spot before it can make its full impression on the mind (cited in Thomas, 2005:xvii). Ingold rejects the notion that a ?landscape is a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing or symbolising surroundings? (Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988:1), considering this as ?the division between inner and outer worlds ? respectively of mind and matter, meaning and substance ? upon which such a distinction rests? 158 (Ingold, 2000:191) and in doing so deconstructs the notion that we are separate or somehow removed from that landscape; we are in fact part of it. Furthermore, in being part of this landscape we also occupy it in a particular nexus that embodies the whole but also has a symbolic differentiation, this union being described as place. A place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who spend time there ? to its sights, sounds and indeed smells that constitute its specific ambience. And these, in turn, depend on the kinds of activities in which its inhabitants engage. It is from this relational context of people?s engagement with the world, in the business of dwelling, that each place draws its unique significance (Ingold, 2000:192). From this position of an embodied engagement, Ingold argues that places might be considered as centres that have no boundaries, since any boundaries ascribed to them (rivers, escarpments, fences or walls) are not conditional as to the constitution of the places either side of them. Boundaries can only be recognised by the people (or animals) that recognise or experience them as such in relation to their activities therein. Therefore, landscape needs to be considered as the world that is known to those who dwell in it, and that it arises from their inhabitation of its places and those who ?journey along the paths connecting them? (Ingold, 2000:193). This is to suggest that, at a very fundamental level, to experience and make sense of landscape one needs to move through its places and along the paths that connect them ? to walk the landscape. Furthermore, in doing so assists in considering it as not only as an array of related features, but also as an array of related activities, or a taskscape, that you are also participating in. With such an emphasis, landscape becomes contextualised as a variety of spatial and temporal activities that are embodied involving a variety of senses, and in walking is to be found a methodology that encapsulates all of these elements. Furthermore it dispels the hegemony of vision ascribed to the appreciation of landscape (Urry, 2002) and the possible accusation that paths are just but another form of amenity. Paths are the sedimented activity of past and present generations of communities. As Ingold declares ?it is the taskscape made visible? (cited in Macnaghten and Urry, 1998:168) and represents a connection to those past communities by being able to not only follow the same route as they had done, but also to be part of a continuum of 159 action that adds to the layers of memory associated with it. Through walking these paths one is part of that taskscape and engaging in a cultural practice that has a deep resonance with both creating and understanding a sense of place within it. People feel that sedimentation of forms of life through glacial time; they imagine themselves treading the same paths as countless earlier generations. Simply redirecting a path, let alone eliminating it, will often be viewed as an ?act of vandalism? against that sedimented taskscape, that community and their memories (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998:168). The above possibly explains my sense of anger at the placing of the seat and timeline on Whiteleaf Hill, in that it disturbed the sedimented taskscape that I was instinctively aware of through my engagement as a walker of that landscape. Furthermore, since I was making repeated visits to this site whilst walking the circular walk over the years, a deep awareness of, and attachment to, the character of the walk and the places passed through (which may be considered as being one and the same) has developed, and so I am highly sensitive to any changes occurring there. It is through this continued engagement that I became aware and then critical of the cultural, economic and social pressures that are being applied to this particular space and changing it, these manifesting in what I describe as an urban or suburban sensibility being imposed on the countryside. In conclusion, the landscape of rural countryside, as well as the hills and moorlands, rather than being distinct places of locale that reflect the generations of communities that dwelt within it temporarily and spatially and who took the responsibility for its use and development, are now increasingly being controlled by centralised authorities under the auspices of conservation, heritage, and amenity. Certain landscapes, as epitomised by Whiteleaf Hill, are therefore becoming not only places of consumption through tourist recreation, but are also being changed by a process of hybridisation into places increasingly displaying the same homogenous characteristics. It is also suggested that the walker in these landscapes may to some extent usurp and resist these notional representations through an embodied engagement with the sedimentated characteristics of a taskscape and its inter- generational footpaths. However, what if the path being followed is not an ancient right of way, but a recently established entity purely for the purposes of amenity? 160 Does this radically change the experience for the walker and their position from one of resistance to the notional representations of landscape to one of reinforcing them? These issues are further explored in the next chapter by examining a number of narratives I made that describe my walking through another type of landscape found in the far north of England very different to the countryside of the southern counties. The method of some of the walking undertaken was also very different in that I followed not only circular routes of one day?s duration with correspondingly little to carry apart from a day pack, but also longitudinal ones made over several days where I was backpacking with a tent, sleeping gear and cooking equipment. It is this form of walking that I increasingly engaged in whilst researching landscapes further afield. The reason I did so is because the multi-day, longitudinal walk gives a very different perspective of landscape that I believe is of fundamental importance when considering the relationship between experiencing landscape and walking. A circular route is by its nature always somewhat contrived; one is always returning to the point started from within a limited geographical perspective and so as to its purpose as a mode of travel is nonsensical. Walking a multi-day longitudinal route is very different since one is travelling across the land, and so landscape becomes understood as something that is an embodied continuum. In other words, one is engaged in a journey of meaningful length that is taking you from one point in the landscape to another, whilst experiencing all the places in-between. It is this perspective that makes a fundamental difference, and is characteristic of wayfaring. In order to consider this phenomenon of making a walking journey, or wayfaring, I followed the route of Hadrian?s Wall Path that runs from coast to coast through Cumbria and Northumberland, a long distance route that, rather than being ancient of itself, is rather a very new creation by the tourist and heritage industries following the designated ancient monument of the Roman Wall. 161 Chapter Seven Walking the Wall Eastwards ?To see the Wall you must walk? (Collingwood, A Guide to the Roman Wall, 1932) An Introduction The designated National Trail Hadrian?s Wall Path was opened in May 2003 and can be walked to or from either Bowness on Solway on the western coast of Cumbria, or Newcastle on the eastern coast of Northumberland. The route closely follows the line of the Roman Wall, a World Heritage Site, throughout its 84 mile length apart for the section that runs through Newcastle along the busy A69 road, the few isolated sections remaining along it fenced off and discordantly set amongst an urban backdrop of housing estates and parades of shops. Where the line of the Wall leaves the River Tyne in the city centre, the long distance path instead continues to follow the northern bank of the river to reach the countryside before re-joining it at Haddon- on-the-Wall. I chose to walk the route because of a number of reasons. Following a long distance trail and carrying tent, sleeping and cooking gear so as to be relatively self-reliant enables one to become fully immersed in both the activity and the landscape; the journey takes on a greater significance, not only because of the physical demands it requires, but also because of its nature of an intimate and extended engagement. In addition, I was interested in following a trail that was undoubtedly popular having only just recently been officially opened, and was also representative of one specifically created for walkers; the rights of way along it being contrived for the recreational tourist rather than being an historically established pedestrian route. However, the main reason was that the path followed traces of the ancient remains of the Roman Wall as it crossed from one coast to the other, and it was these historical elements in the landscape that I thought may hold particular interest in regards as to how they were interpreted whilst walking along them. After some indecision, I eventually decided to split the route into two sections, thereby being able to walk from both the eastern and western coasts to the mid-way 162 point of the walk on the high moors at the end of the Pennine Hills where the majority of what remains of the Wall is to be found. I decided on this approach for a number of reasons, one being that I would be walking from the two peripheries of the long distance path towards the central ?honey pot? that attracts the most attention and visitors, and the area that I was going to base myself for over a week to further explore the surrounding landscape in a series of walks both solo and with others at a walking festival occurring there. Furthermore, I wanted to experience walking an unfamiliar trail with and without maps or guidebooks. Therefore, I intentionally avoided researching anything about the Hadrian?s Wall Path prior to departing to walk the first half from the western coast eastwards, and used no maps or guidebooks. When exploring the central section on the day walks and for the second section of the trail walking from the eastern coast westwards, however, I made use of a variety of sources including guidebooks and maps. Finally, I wanted to usurp in some small way the conventions that surround walking a long distance path, to make a personal gesture or nod of recognition towards the walking artist Richard Long (1997, 2005) and, in particular, Marina Abramovi? and her collaborator Ulay who in 1988 walked towards each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet at its centre (Solnit, 2001). Following are four narratives that record this research period split into two chapters. The first chapter comprises of two narratives; one describes walking a section of the Hadrian?s Wall Path from the west coast eastwards to its centre point, a journey that took three days, and the other is a day walk from a the town of Haltwhistle up to and then along the Wall. The next chapter comprises of the remaining two narratives; the first being of another day walk visiting the Wall and some Roman forts, and the final narrative is of my walking the second section over three days of the Hadrian?s Wall Path from the east coast at Newcastle westwards back to its central point. Each of the two narratives that describe walking the long distance path are of over three days and so are considerably longer than those describing day walks. It was necessary to include full accounts of each day to be faithful to an auto-ethnographical process that reflects the sequential and emergent experience of walking a long distance path. The narratives reflect a certain critical or ambiguous response within me towards some elements of the designated long distance path, the Roman Wall, the authorities responsible for their development and exploitation, and those people who visit and 163 walk it. These four narratives are presented in the chronological order they occurred, however it should be noted the walking festival I participated in at the centre point of the Hadrian?s Wall Path I have decided to discuss in the following chapter since the themes arising from these group walks are of a different nature deserving of separate consideration. Furthermore, the story of my experience at the Backpackers Club AGM that I mention in some of the narratives is not included because it did not fit into the remit of being a walking journey, and because I had ethical concerns regarding the maintenance of anonymity for other participating club members. Following on from these narratives, the next chapter is an analysis regarding a number of related themes regarding the consumption of iconic landscape, heritage monuments and representations of their authenticity that arose during this period of exploring the Wall on foot that were unexpected in their development, and a discussion regarding some specific qualities of engagement and experience identified when walking a long distance route, involving a number of subjective perspectives through which one may move interchangeably. What immediately follows is the first of the narratives describing walking from the west coast in Cumbria to the high moors at the central section. 164 Walking the Wall Eastwards ? Bowness on Solway to Steelrig The Evening Prior to the Walk I found the campsite in Port Carlisle, and booked in at Kirkland House, a beef farm run by an elderly couple who, rather than planning for any form of retirement, explained their plans for expanding the tourist side of their business to add a bunkhouse and an information point at the start (or end, depending how you look at it) of the Hadrian?s Wall Path. After having a brief chat about my plans, I set my tent up in the small site they owned next to a Chapel set by the coast road, appropriately called Sidechapel Campsite, cooked a quick meal, and lay half in, half out of the tent looking up at a darkening blue sky as the day began to draw to a close. It had been warm and sunny all day, but it promised to be cold that night, and I drew my sleeping bag over me. This landscape was new to me, and had an unexpected feel to it. It was largely level, the Solway estuary to the north, the lakes and mountains away to the south. Quiet hamlets and hidden farms nestled among the small fields and copses, the occasional brook meandering through a forgotten corner. I wondered if they saw many tourists here apart from the walkers starting or finishing ?the Way? or the birdwatchers for the wildfowl at the nature reserve. When I was driving in, slightly lost, the fields reminded me of Cornwall; generally of only a few acres, sheltered and divided by dense tattered hedges and twisted trees or broken down dry stone walls, the stones softened by lichens, mosses and ferns, slowly melding into the land. It felt as if this was a place hidden from the outside world, a place of secrets. The sun had now dropped behind the trees, and some wispy high clouds that had previously been invisible appeared as they gleamed briefly golden in its reddening light. I felt the cold starting to seep in around me and became aware of the growing evening chorus of birds ? the distant scream of gulls, the caw of rooks and crows, the chatter of blackbirds, thrushes and tits, and the less familiar sounds that reminded me I was somewhere else far from home; the fluting cry of lapwings, the warble of the curlew. The curlew?s call seemed to me synonymous with the sense of mystery contained in these rough fields, and also a welcome back to these northern lands of moor. Day 1 It was a cold night. I kept waking and realised the ?minus 6? rating for my bag was obviously wishful thinking on behalf of its manufacturers; or maybe based on tests where the guinea- pig was a hardened mountaineer acclimatised to sleeping in the snow. As I packed my gear, the farmer called round to visit. He pointed out a barely discernable dip by a hedge just a field away and explained it was the Vallum, a defensive mound and ditch that ran to the rear of the Roman wall, the route of which ran through his land. Of the wall itself, he said, there was no trace hereabouts. I mentioned some broken walls of dressed stone I came across the previous evening when wandering along by the tidal high point on the shoreline. 165 ?That?s the canal they built in 1823? he said. ?Ships could go from here all the way to Carlisle?s centre?. The significance of the place-name Port Carlisle registered for the first time and I felt slightly foolish for not wondering about it before. ?Not that it was very successful? he continued. ?It only ran for a few years before the railway took it over. They built it on the bed of the canal, but that wasn?t much of a success either and that closed within a few tens of years?. The farmer moved on and I finished packing apart from the tent that was soaked with dew, so I left it to dry in the sun whilst I walked to Bowness a mile and a half to the west and the official start (or end) of Hadrian?s Way. The village was sat on a slight rise in the land by the estuary, a wise location in a place where the high tides regularly covered the roads approaching it. It had the feel of an almost forgotten backwater, a place only relatively recently discovered by outsiders. The working farms and crumbling stone buildings were juxtaposed with bungalows from the sixties and seventies along with a rash of new-builds, and renovations were underway on some of the old properties. The village was being gradually transformed by money that was being spent here by the incoming commuters to Carlisle or those seeking retirement or holiday homes. The backwater was being brought into the mainstream of villages throughout the country where the inhabitants are no longer exclusively concerned with the traditional occupations of the place. I walked through the main street (one pub but no shop), past a small primary school and found I was back out by the tidal flats of the estuary, a sign on the bank opposite informing that above was the site of a Roman fort. A group of middle-aged walkers were getting ready to depart from a small car-park adjacent to it, and one explained to me that they too were setting off on ?the Way?, having done the first section east to west from Wallsend to Heddon, where they happened to live. I noticed they had very small rucksacks with them, and wondered whether they were doing just a day walk or were having their gear transported ahead of them. I walked back through the village, and took a path with a ?Hadrian?s Wall Path? fingerpost pointing down it. This took me to an area known as ?the Banks?, a Victorian promenade that had been restored and now served as the start/finish point of the long distance path. A wooden pergola had been built on the upper board walk that circled around a wind-swept garden. A sign over it read: Wallsend 84 miles. Good luck go with you. SEGEDVNO MP LXXXIIII. FORTVNA VOBIS ADSIT. The image of a crenulated wall with the head of what I took to be Hadrian was above the message and to one side was the acorn symbol of a National Trail. I walked back the way I had come along the road by grassy tidal flood flats, passing signs that gave the maximum depth of water at high tide (either one or two feet) when it reached that point. Fortunately, high tides of that sort were not due for a while yet. Over the estuary I 166 could see Scotland, a faint blue-green strip with hazy outlines of occasional buildings, and with low mountains beyond. A power station with four large cooling towers sat as if in miniature by the coast and I vaguely recalled reading that once amongst the sand dunes along the coast I was looking at, now seemingly deserted, there was one of the largest munitions factories the world has ever seen, employing tens of thousands of people during the First World War. I passed what I took to be was the entrance point for the old canal from the estuary and in the water beyond was a stone fort like structure that was slowly being consumed by the action of the waves and passage of time. I reached the campsite and as I took the dried tent down a sudden squall arrived from the sea that gave everything a quick drenching, as if to remind me that the fine weather was on the turn. I parked the car as arranged at Kirkland House, shouldered my rucksack of some 15 or so kilos despite all my best efforts to keep as light-weight as possible, and picked up on The Way following a gorse lined path close to the shoreline, the flowers brilliant splashes of yellow. I had no maps or guides with me, my intention being that initially I wanted to avoid any external interpretations or explanations regarding the route and the ?things to see? along the way. Since I was interested in how one experiences a long walk along a national trail, I wished to approach it with some naivety and limited preconceptions, relying on a personal interpretation based on phenomenological perspectives, not on an interpretation of someone else?s, which is what a guide or even a map is. So the route ahead was unknown, and I relied to find my way upon the wayside direction markers in the shape of finger posts and arrows marked with ?Hadrian?s Wall Path?, or the National Trail symbol of an acorn. The Way turned off from the coast to pass a static caravan park and picked up on a rough farm track. Cattle with calves and sheep with lambs were in the fields, and I passed the occasional pile of rubble or dumped, rusting machinery that adorned random patches of ground. This landscape had not been ?prettified? for the tourist yet, tidied up so it conforms with a suburbanites vision of a rural idyll; the land was still a working environment with the detritus of discarded building materials, farming equipment and the perpetual heaps of rotting tyres, left to slowly melt back into the ground. I passed through the small village of Glasson and then across a sequence of fields to come to another village, the name of which I was unsure of, relying on the fingerboards to find my way. I spied a sign advertising teas and followed it to a newly built wooden building next to a farm where there was a kettle so one could make tea and coffee, various snacks to purchase, and an ?honesty box? to put your money in since it was un-staffed. I met a couple there doing ?the Way? and had a brief chat and could not resist sneaking a look at the map in their guide book to see what was ahead for the day, and in particular if there was anywhere to camp. Already my intentions to avoid such sources of information were being compromised. Carrying on through the village, at its edge I passed what looked like a 167 fortified house that caught my eye, and then rejoined the Solway at another stretch of tidal grassland with sand and mudflats beyond. For three miles I followed an arrow straight road, a raised bank to my right (possibly remains of the canal, the railway, or even the Vallum, but probably a defensive dyke against the encroaching tide), and the tidal flats and estuary to my left, the narrow band of land that was Scotland beyond that. What was dominant in this view, however, were gradually forming columns of white, grey, and black clouds that towered above the flat landscape and the broad expanse of the estuary, suggesting that more showers were likely. Half way along the road a driver of a beat up Vauxhall leaned on the horn as he passed making me jump; I glimpsed the contorted face of a skinny young man at the wheel who for some reason found the sight of a laden walker amusing. Once I would have responded in some way, now I ignored him as he continued to beep on the horn as he passed. Maybe he wanted a reaction from me so he had an excuse to stop and make trouble I mused as I continued on my way, imagining the confrontation. The former blue skies had now been entirely replaced by the dark clouds that scudded over the flat landscape, the wind now soughing through the trees that were just coming into leaf or blossom. Periodically I passed signs reading: WARNING BATHING IS DANGEROUS OWING TO FAST RUNNING TIDES, CURRENTS, AND TREACHEROUS SANDS. IT IS UNSAFE TO VENTURE OUT AT LOW TIDE. It must have been the same when the Romans built the wall, I thought, and imagined the difficulties an invading force would have had to face crossing these waters. The stories of how treacherous they were must stretch back as long as people had lived there, just as there must have always been a few amongst them who knew when and where it was relatively safe to cross or navigate. At last the end of the long straight section of road was reached and I then followed a succession of tracks, paths through fields, and lanes deserted apart from the occasional passing tractor. I crossed a field following a line of large deciduous trees yet to come into leaf, the hedge that once was amongst them now just a series of grassy mounds, and come across posts with C to C on them ? a Cumbrian coast to coast walk? With no map or guidebook came no explanations as to what they may be, just as around every corner and beyond every rise was terra incognita; land and future un-divined. On the one hand I quite enjoyed not knowing what was ahead, on the other it gave me nothing to aim for. A track was joined, unusually wide that ran between the fields of livestock and I wondered if it was an old drove road. A short distance on I passed a sign for ?The Drover?s Rest? in Monkshill, leant upon an old plough, which seemed a confirmation of my earlier surmise, and briefly a scene came to mind of bellowing cattle being slowly urged forwards to some distant market by a bevy of scrawny dogs and a couple of weather-beaten men, their clothes stained dark with sweat and oil. 168 I walked through a village, climbed a stile and was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted by a broad river flowing smooth and silent. I picked up on a path that followed the bank at first and then realised that I had come off the official route and was probably following a ?desire path?, one that is made by the passage of people?s footsteps and exists only as a mark on the ground and probably not on any map, although without one I could not be sure. I scrambled up a steep incline to rejoin the marked route and continued along the path that climbed and dipped along the raised bank and which eventually branched away from the river. The bank appeared at times to be made by human hands, but at others I was not so certain. Was it evidence of the Vallum, or of the railway or canal? Or was it even part of the geological ridge that I knew was hereabouts that signifies the junction between the landmasses of England and Scotland? The path went through more fields, and the slightly higher elevation provided a view to the south. In the distance electricity pylons stood sentry, brooding over the land, and beyond were the mountains of the Lake District; I guessed Skiddaw and Blencathra. The Way then dropped to a farm and then out into a quiet hamlet where I asked some ladies chatting together over a gate whether the campsite that I had glimpsed on the couples? map I had met earlier was close. One of the group confirmed it was up the lane just off the Way, and with some relief I made for it as I was starting to feel the fatigue from the first day?s walking creeping over me, the weight of the rucksack becoming ever more of a load. Just prior to the campsite I crossed over a bridge with no sign beneath of what it was built to pass over, and I surmised it was the route of the old canal and railway. I set up my tent in the empty site, and was given a cup of tea by the owner before I had a shower and shave and then walked down the road to the Vallum Hotel where I was given extra large helpings of food as I mentioned that I was staying at the campsite. Apparently, the owners of the site and hotel had a reciprocal arrangement where they each recommended each other?s facilities to passing walkers. I reflected on the day?s walk. Compared to some of the places close by, the landscape I had passed through could not be described as particularly significant or spectacular for walking, but maybe that is one of the points about following a long distance route; it takes you to places that are often overlooked or even half forgotten. The pace of a walk decrees that each village, lane, field or tree are all given an equality of contemplation and regard. The seemingly mundane or ordinary is afforded the same opportunity of consideration as is the curious or exceptional. The scrappy field is given its chance of attention as is the view of a premier landscape, and both might offer their individual rewards and idiosyncrasies. Day Two It was a cold night again, and I kept waking up until at around 7.00 a.m. I poked my head out of the tent flap to be greeted by a blanket of frost sparkling in the early morning sun just rising above the hills in the distance. As I waited for the sun to dry the tent, I went over the ?map? I had been drawing in a sketchbook as a record of my route. It had been difficult to 169 keep periodically stopping, getting the book from my rucksack and trying to recall all the features passed, so instead I decided to continue the map in a small notebook that I could carry in a pocket. As I left the site I encountered the owner again who recommended the Centurion Inn for my next stop, and was only some eleven miles down the Way. I was hoping to get further along the path today than that, but at least I now had a place to aim for. I went back down the road to Grinsdale, and then through some fields still wet from the night?s frost to reach the river I presumed I had followed for a short time the day before. A path took me down to the bank, and I realised that I again had strayed onto another ?desire path?, the way proper running higher above on an embankment. I scrambled up a very steep and eroded slope to regain the signs for Hadrian?s Wall Way. Two streams were crossed by way of footbridges, and then some warehouses came into view and were passed, the roar of machinery coming from one. More rows of buildings appeared, some of them derelict and crumbling, a barbed wire fence separating them from the path which had become broader and was now dressed with chippings. A distant hum of traffic was now more insistent, and high on the opposite bank I could see a busy road. The path ran into the car-park of a ?Sport for England? complex where I crossed a tributary of the river by a bridge to find myself in parkland with Carlisle Castle unexpectedly appearing from behind some trees. I was suddenly aware that somehow I had come to be in the middle of the city; there was the wail of sirens, the smell of fumes in the air, and people hurrying through the park. Passing ornamental gardens and catching glimpses of city streets through the trees, I went under a pedestrian tunnel passing a sign well above my head marking where a flood level had reached in 2003, and just beyond was a large caf? where I stopped for another breakfast. I resumed walking along by the river, passing a golf course and then a school, the children out on a break playing football and running about screaming in excitement. The river was crossed by an elegant suspension bridge, and the path began to slowly move away from it, still in parkland, a large war memorial in the distance dominating the surrounding lawns and trees. Crossing a small brook I encountered three walkers coming the other way, two men and a woman, and we stopped to briefly chat. The woman was an American who was friendly and talkative, explaining that they were also walking ?the Way?, and that the first section through Newcastle had not been a good start. ?Too much tarmac, and all day!? she said, pulling a face. As we parted company she warned me off a pub on the Way, saying: ?It?s unfriendly to walkers. I tried to use the ladies room but the landlady said that I had to buy something there first.? Her tone expressed mild outrage at this, but as I carried on I thought I could see the landlady?s point if people were continually expecting that they could use her facilities for free. I passed a mysterious, hexagonal tower set in a field of long grass and then Tower Farm, named not after the tower in the field but probably because of a small, broken down tower to 170 its rear. The Way meandered on, sometimes following a pedestrian and cycle track marked as Route 72, sometimes a quiet lane, until a distant muted roar became louder and insistent, and it crossed over the M6 via a road bridge where I stopped and looked at the passing traffic, pondering as to where the Roman Wall crossed, and whether much excavation was done of it before the bulldozers ripped it all up. I passed through the village of Linstock and onto a farm track, pausing to wait the passing of a herd of cows going to be milked, and then into open fields to follow the river again briefly before turning away to enter Low Crosby via Green Lane, another indicator that I was probably following another drove road. I came to a busy road and passed the pub I had been warned about earlier and then the old building of an Infants school, the children playing in the playground behind new high chain-link fencing. I carried on along the busy road past a church with an ornate tower, unsure as to whether I was still on the right route. Eventually a fingerpost came into view that led me away from the road to come across another ?honesty? caf? where I stopped for a much needed cup of tea in a building that resembled a small garden shed set close to a farm. After my break I carried on to enter a field with a ?Beware of the Bull? sign on the gate, and then picked up on a sandy track that led past another farm, and then onto a concrete track passing a flattened mole at its centre to come out onto an open field with the first definite signs of the wall in it. Distinct mounds and ditches could be seen that were the remains of the Vallum, the defensive feature that ran behind the Wall to guard against attack from the rear, and the ditch that ran in front of it. I passed through a succession of wooden kissing gates, crossing through fields with sheep and cattle in them, and then past two cottages with the names ?Roman Way Oldwall? and ?Oldwall Cottage? and made the inspired guess that the name of the hamlet was Oldwall. I passed through another kissing gate and onto a track sunken between fields with views to the south of high fells and mountains, went past a row of houses, and then back into the fields again. For some time I had been looking for the Centurion Inn, since I was sure I had done more than eleven miles by now, and eventually concluded that I must have somehow missed it. The field on the hill opposite was in the process of having its surface stripped away by bulldozers and I stood to watch for a while, trying to work out what they were doing it for, eventually settling on that they were laying out the ground for a new camp or caravan site. I crossed another busy road and passed some farm buildings, then descended a steep slope via some stone steps, went through a farmyard, and then down some more steps to reach a small river running through a gorge thick with trees and bushes, and with a small footbridge crossing it. Stone steps took me up the other side, a waterfall coming into view behind as I ascended to eventually reach a large fallen tree where I stopped for a break, by now feeling tired from the day?s walk. A farmer and his son were slowly walking around the field, in the man?s hand hung what I took to be mole traps, and in his other he carried a small spade. Periodically they stopped and knelt down, presumably checking the traps, and I 171 wondered why moles were such a problem for farmers, a few mounds of earth being put up each night could surely be lived with? I trudged on and just before a copse of trees I saw a sign reading ?Bunkhouse? with an arrow pointing towards a farm just off the Way. I needed no further prompting, and walked down to a farmyard that had dogs and, incongruously, two calves playing chase around it. A man driving a tractor in the yard came across and upon being asked about the possibility of using the bunkhouse took me through a gate into another yard surrounded by a collection of stone buildings to find the farmer?s wife, a jolly sort with an accent that betrayed her as being part of the ?gentry? of the area. She gave me a quick tour of the large and recently completed conversion of some stables into a bunkhouse and then invited me into the farm for a cup of tea. ?You don?t want a dog, I suppose? she said as we crossed the threshold passing two sleepy looking black Labradors in a basket, a puppy and its mother, and then into a kitchen that looked as if all the contents of the cupboards and dressers that lined its walls had been taken out and piled onto any available flat surface. In the centre of the room was a large table covered with crockery, packets and tins of food, papers, books and other bits and pieces, and in a corner was a young girl of indeterminate age crouched over a computer screen. I took a seat by the table as the woman fussed at an Aga cooker, and gradually became aware of a powerful odour that pervaded the room. Looking behind me, I located the source of the smell; an old black Labrador was asleep in a basket. The furniture and decoration of the room had seen better days, a fine film of dust and dirt lingered over most of the surfaces and a riding hat and crop were hung by the door. I think that you could not get a better example of what a genuine working farmhouse kitchen looks like. ?So, how old is this house?? I asked, noticing some black hooks hanging from the wavy, cracked ceiling that appeared to be very old. ?Well, the front part of the house we know is at least 17 th century, and other bits have been added over the years.? She replied, handing me a large mug of tea. ?It could be a lot older, I know our neighbour?s farm is in the Domesday book, and I?ve always meant to research whether this place is mentioned.? The young girl who up to this point had been silent suddenly looked up in interest. ?What? We could be in the Domesday Book? I never knew that? she said. ?Well, you could research it for your school project, it?ll probably be all on that? her mother replied, indicating at the computer. The girl got up and came over to where her mother was sitting at the table with a pop-eyed and grubby Jack Russell on her lap, and stood a little awkwardly with her arms around her mother?s neck as she listened to our conversation. The girl and the way she stood gave me a deja-vu moment, suddenly remembering another farmhouse where I once had tea when walking the Pennine Way over twenty years ago, and where there had been another slightly shy daughter who had struck a similar pose with her mother as we had talked. 172 I chatted a little more before finishing my tea, and going out into the yard where I realised that the Labrador bitch had only three legs but was still gamely hobbling around. The puppy was playing mock fights with a Jack Russell and I was momentarily tempted; after all my girlfriend and I had been talking about getting a dog, and I have always liked black Labradors? I was on my own in the bunkhouse, so I could spread out my gear and get the best bunk. The sky had cleared again, and the temperature was starting to dip. The farmer came to check that I had enough wood for a fire, and warned ?the chill starts to be felt in these here buildings around about this time of the day?. After cooking a meal, I managed to fill my time until about 9.00 p.m. when I lit a fire in the small sitting room and settled into the sofa to listen to my radio. Day Three Despite being given some blankets I was again cold in the night, and I awoke with the usual reluctance to get up and face the chill of the morning. Eventually I got up at just gone 7.00 a.m., packed, and at around 8.30 went over to the farmhouse for a cooked breakfast. The farmer?s wife showed me through the kitchen and into the old part of the house where the dining room was that had a faded grandeur about it, with family portraits on the walls. The military background of the family, suggested by a collection of old steel helmets in the bunkhouse, was confirmed by the amount of military uniforms on show in the portraits. One in particular caught my eye, and initially I presumed it was a painting of the farmer I had met yesterday. I looked at the inscription below the grey haired colonel from the Royal Artillery in his dress uniform and realised that it must be of the farmer?s father, since it is dated 1945 when he was mentioned in dispatches. The likeness was uncanny. Other portraits were of the current family, and of presumably past generations dressed in their finery. The house, its faded contents, and the portraits suggested that the farm had been in the family for some time, but with the realities of farming today with profit continually being squeezed I guessed that those days of relative wealth had long gone. I had my ?full English? sat on my own under the gaze of these past members of the family, and then said my goodbyes and left wearing a fleece and waterproof trousers since rain was forecast. I crossed a field and reached a village where I passed the Centurion Inn ? I had obviously not walked as far as I had thought the day before. The land was becoming increasingly hilly now, my pace slowing as I eased my way up each slope to its crest and then picking up again as gravity aided my descent the other side. I followed a lane that meandered downhill, and caught sight ahead of a man and his dog, both leaning on a bridge parapet looking intently down at what was below, the dog with its front paws up on the wall. It looked slightly comical, and I tried to get a photo, but the dog moved and they had disappeared when I rounded a bend to reach the bridge. I glanced over the parapet as I strode over to see what had captured their attention and stopped in surprise. Below were a small, winding burn and a line of small stone columns about eighteen inches 173 high and eight feet apart running from one bank diagonally across the water to the other, then along the shingle and entering the water again as the burn curved and disappearing beneath the bridge. This piece of landscape art was all the better for its unexpectedness. No explanations, no reasons, just a simple line of small stone columns, carefully balanced, marching across the water and shore. Their straight line was more imagined than seen as the eye linked each small tower of stones with the other. I found a small path that took me down to the burn, and I then noticed the man and his dog had reappeared just up-river from me, so I went over. ?So, do you know what this is all about?? I asked the man who was well into his sixties and wrapped up in scarf, jacket and flat cap. ?Well, the chap who owns this land, he says it?s the faeries who do it overnight, but he?s a bit strange, he is. He spends a lot of time hereabouts, as you can see? he indicated up stream to a shelter made out of plastic sheeting and wood. We talked for a short while, his dog listening attentively to our conversation as if it was going to add a comment any moment, and then I moved on. The lane now went uphill steeply, and then the Way rejoined the fields. There was a distinct change now to the lie of the land as the path ascended one steep hill, and then another with no corresponding descent to speak of, and I felt a sense of beginning to enter the high grounds of the northern Pennines. Occasionally the linear mounds and ditches of the Wall appeared and then disappeared as I crossed through the fields. I climbed a short but steep hill looking for somewhere to take a break when the welcome sight of a refreshments sign appeared, and I diverted off a short way to find another ?honesty? caf? where I had a couple of cups of tea, reading messages from grateful walkers in a comments book that was left out by the kettle. Most just recorded their thanks, quite a few making the point it was the first place they had found anywhere to get refreshments since Housesteads, which was a day?s walk away, and others were written in Latin in a pseudo Roman commentary. As I read I could hear the beginning pattering of raindrops on the roof. I carried on, now clad in full waterproofs and went on uphill to join a lane and then came across the first significant stretch of Wall I had seen; about thirty metres long and about four metres at its highest. A wire fence surrounded the site with an information board at either end explaining that this part of the Wall was once thought to be the highest surviving section until it was realised that it had been substantially rebuilt in the 19 th century. The tone seemed to be that this reconstruction somehow made the wall here less significant, and certainly less genuine. Despite the rain that was starting to drive in from the west, a man was cutting the grass around the ?scheduled ancient monument?, maintaining the effect of a trim lawn, the neat parallel strips more reminiscent of a stately home?s garden rather than a far flung frontier. It seemed to me a little incongruous. Moving on, a group of heavily laden backpackers passed me going the other way and we exchanged nods of greeting. Walking straight into the blustery breeze carrying the rain they 174 looked soaked compared to me whose front was relatively dry, the rucksack protecting me from the worse of it. I trudged on in the misty rain that blew at my back along the lane and then back up into fields. The Wall reappeared by a road, the foundations of which had been made from stones taken from it, and at one point it cut straight through the remains of a signal tower, only a corner of which remained. The Way followed the Wall, the path a few metres off of it, separated by a barbed wire fence and another freshly cut strip of grass. A familiar buzz was coming from up ahead. Around a milecastle set just off the road another man with a van parked close by was cutting the grass into those familiar green parallel strips. This regime seemed to indicate more than just maintenance, I thought. It also implied a prejudice against untidy nature spoiling the effect of a carefully preserved and conserved ancient monument. The trim lawns that had reminded me of the gardens of a stately home was no accident; they seemed to me symbolic as to how English Heritage or the National Trust approach the presentation of the land they are responsible for; even an attempt to couch it in the moir?s of a middle class which expects nature to resemble a garden, and an ancient artefact a folly. I passed through the hamlet of ?The Banks? and picked up on a road that followed a now well-defined ridge along which there were now more continuous sections of the Wall ? a low broad line of stone and mortar that undulated across successive fields. The Way now followed this linear mark across the landscape, first one side of it and then the other. Each preserved section had a low wire fence enclosing it and a narrow strip of grass, again cut so well that it resembled a lawn, which easily delineated where the path ran. I doubted that the Romans would have been concerned too much about the grass length around the wall in their day, having much more pragmatic concerns to worry about than the aesthetics of appearance. Was this a trend that detracted from the experience of the wall, I wondered? It certainly seemed a hangover from the presentation of stately homes and their gardens, where the weeds and untidy corners are banished, and nature and history is subordinated to some idealised version of it. I followed the ridgeline and the Wall, across one field after another, and through the occasional copse of trees, the rain coming and going in squally showers. I passed the museum at Birdoland but resisted going in, by now becoming increasingly resentful of the appropriation by the tourist industry of seemingly all aspects of the Wall and the corresponding demands for entrance fees. The path cut back down on itself off the ridge to reach a river below spanned by a modern and attractive footbridge, and I stopped for a break by its far bank before continuing on for a short distance to the massive foundation stones of the Roman bridge, the spans of which had once crossed high above the waters. Here I chatted to two men also on a break who were walking the wall east to west. I asked about the section through Newcastle, having heard it was not particularly good. 175 ?It was a great disappointment. Nothing but tarmac and it doesn?t even follow the course of the wall but just the river? one replied ?and the next day isn?t much better, miles of road with the traffic whizzing past, bloody horrible it was. I think it?s more about how they make money out of you as to the way you have to go. It?s all about economics and jobs now, I suppose?. Their opinion seemed to be that much of the walk was pretty pointless if you were expecting to see much of the Wall. ?Mind you, you?ve got the best bits coming up now? one said as I got up to go, and I carried on up the hill, concerned that the comments gathered so far regarding the section of the Way from Newcastle westwards were so negative, and also that there was apparently only one place actually on the Way from there to here where you could find fresh supplies. Not for the first time I felt the real disadvantage of not being able to consult a map to see for myself what lay ahead and check out possible re-supply points. Without a map I was dependant on this thin, signposted line running through the landscape; as soon as I left the path I would be adrift in it, reliant on guesswork and chance to find my way. I came to the village of Gilsland, the Wall now a fairly constant feature either by way of stones or the increasingly large mounds and ditches. Thinking that maybe I should get fresh supplies in the way of food for that evening, I left the Way and walked through the village to find that the only shop, a post office and tourist information point, was closed for the afternoon. Frustrated, I went back to some tearooms I had passed and had a late lunch, looking out at the wet empty street, and feeling a little miserable watching as the rain slowly grew heavier. I followed the road out through the village and regained the Way. I gave up on the map I had been drawing of my route, my hands too cold and wet to continue. Head down, I pressed on through the now heavy rain and reached the outskirts of Greenhead and came upon the Pennine Way that I was to join for some eight miles, the only section of Hadrian?s Wall I was previously familiar with having passed this way three times before over the years. Ironically, it was here that I got a little confused as to which sign to follow, and ended up taking by mistake the road into the village through which I passed, and then followed a combined cycle and walk way up a steep hill to reach the turn off for a Roman Museum situated by an old quarry now used as a car park and on the route of the Way. I wanted to call into the museum to make use of the shop there, but found it was only available for those who were prepared to pay the entrance fee. Annoyed and wet, I sheltered for a while in some public toilets at the car park from the rain that was now being carried by a gusting wind, and then carried on, the Way following the line of a ridge that was becoming increasingly craggy, the path dropping and rising like a roller-coaster ride. After a mile or so I asked a farmer on a quad bike if there were any campsites around, and he told me of two within the next couple of miles. I decided to go to the one I had stayed at before, and cut down to the road below the ridge and followed it to reach Winshields Farm and campsite, just short of the Twice Brewed Pub. 176 The site was windswept and deserted apart from a lone tent, but I saw that a bunkhouse had been added since I was last there. After finding the owner, I let myself into the recently converted barn that still had gaping holes in the wall, turned on a wall heater and started to dry my wet clothes, feeling cold and hungry. My food supplies were now sparse and unappealing, so with little difficulty I decided to head to the pub for food, beer and warmth. 177 Exploring the Wall Introduction Having reached the central section of the Hadrian?s Wall Path, my plan was to take the opportunity to pause and explore the area a little, participate in the ?The Haltwhistle Walking Festival?, a series of guided walks around the local area and also attend the AGM of the Backpackers Club which was occurring a day?s walk north of where I was now, in the town of Bellingham. I packed my gear, left the chilly bunkhouse, and walked a short way through misty rain down the road that ran parallel with the Wall to reach Twice Brewed and the National Park Tourist Information Centre. Inside were wall graphics, pictorial displays, books and gifts all pertaining to the Romans in Britain and specifically Hadrian?s Wall. I wandered round the displays and bookshelves, almost overwhelmed by the quantity of information and interpretations available after being on my self-enforced regime of no prior research regarding the Path or area. Eventually I purchased a clutch of books, and walked down to the town of Haltwhistle where I made further enquiries regarding the Walking Festival, then caught the train back to Carlisle, and then the bus to Bowness where I picked up the car to drive back. On my return, I found another campsite that was less exposed close to the Wall and not far from the town of Haltwhistle and began to explore the area. What follows is the narrative from one of the day walks I made whilst there. 178 Haltwhistle and an Excursion along the Wall It was early on a beautiful, sunny morning and I bought a roll and coffee from a caf? and sat outside by the main street of Haltwhistle, watching the world go by as I had my breakfast. It had been only two days since I had left here having completed the first half of Hadrian?s Way. Now I was back to attend the Backpackers? Club AGM at Bellingham some 15 miles away, which was starting the next day, before returning to participate in the Walking Festival at Haltwhistle, and then, finally, to complete the Hadrian?s Way Path from Wallsend back to here. I watched the locals pass. Everyone seemed to be of retirement age around here, with no sign of young people about. Various groups and individuals were slowly going about their business, seemingly knowing all who they passed, and greeting each other with a few words about ?how you?re gettin? on? and ?nice weather for a change?. The main street was quiet ? a few cars passing up and down every so often, irregular enough for people to wander out onto the road for a chat with barely a glance. The town still seemed to have the feel that a community lived here, in the sense that everyone appeared to know each other. Someone had told me earlier that Haltwhistle is known for two things: being at the centre of Britain geographically, and for having the least mobile population. The main street has shops trading that were common some thirty years ago in most towns, but have since all but disappeared apart from places like this. I counted three butchers along the road; a drapers; a second-hand bookshop; three hairdressers; a carpet shop; a hardware shop; bakers; estate agents; a handful of shops that were not so easy to define but sold ?alternative? type gifts; pubs, and a working men?s club and a separate working women?s club. Even the public toilets were open and clean. The place was full of quirky corners and cobbled alleys running off the main street; a town that had character but did not flaunt it. It had not been given over to the tourist; it was first and foremost a town that the locals obviously took pride in for its own sake. After breakfast, I settled down in an alley off the main street to sketch the back of a ?bastle? ? a fortified house from the times of the Reivers and border raids. Behind me the alley broadened where a row of traditional workers cottages had their doors thrown open wide onto the cobblestone front yard, with washing drying on a couple of lines in the warm weather that everyone was enjoying. A woman chatted at her doorway with a neighbour; another sat on her doorstep and was reading the morning paper as people passed on their way from the car park to the main street. A man stopped and came over to look at what I was sketching. He motioned at the house next to the one I was drawing. ?Used to live there. Bloody murder it was though on a Saturday night ? you wouldn?t believe it. I had to move out in the end because of the noise. Below was a fish and chip shop which didn?t help.? 179 I gathered from him that on Saturday night the character of the place changed somewhat as many people from the town and beyond went on an extended pub crawl, and petty local differences were settled or continued in the time honoured tradition (particularly there) of brawls along the main street. The man went on to tell me that he also used to live at Wallsend in Newcastle at one time, at the start of the Hadrian?s Wall Path in the east. He even helped with the excavations back in the Seventies when they discovered there was more of the Roman Fort still surviving than previously thought. As he put it, he was ?keen on history, like?, and the Wall had been a life-long companion in the different places he had lived. I checked my watch and realised that the community action shop which was organising the Walking Festival, due to start at the end of the coming weekend, was open. I quickly packed up and walked down the street and called in to book myself on three of the walks that seemed to offer a variety of experience, and then drove the two miles back to the campsite, left the car there by my tent and set off up the lane towards the Wall again. Having reached the Hadrian?s Wall Way at Steelrig, the point I had departed from it a few days before, I continued eastwards, revelling in the bright sunshine and crisp wind that roared through the still bare branches of a nearby copse of trees. At this high point of the Wall the landscape ahead and behind appeared as if lines of waves, frozen at the point of breaking and then made solid, with me on the tip of the highest looking over the bare moors and dark forests to the north. I followed the natural high ridge of Whin Sill, a particularly hard rock that was exposed here, and a particularly suitable place for the creation of a border, not only because of the building of the wall along it as the Romans had done, but also since it was the geological demarcation line between England, once part of mainland Europe, and Scotland, once part of North America, before the land masses collided into each other and became conjoined eons ago. The good weather had brought the tourists out, and the Path was busy with walkers scrambling up and down the steep slopes, and striding the high ridges, following the Wall that was at its best preserved in this eight to ten mile section. I noticed that when people stopped to admire the view, it was generally to the north they gazed. Even now the landscape reflected a similarity to that of the Romans when they had constructed the Wall. The road that ran parallel to it was still to the south, as were towns and villages; to the north the land still appeared empty in comparison, predominantly rough pasture, moorland and forest. I wondered if whether the people who were gazing northwards, as I had on many occasions, imagined themselves to be a Roman soldier stationed on the wall, looking north for any sign of the Picts. I supposed that they and I identifying ourselves with the invading Roman Army rather than one of the indigenous natives was not too surprising, given a past and continuing adoration for all things Roman that pervades historical accounts. 180 As I continued on my way I also ruminated on the thought that it was no accident that this cult of the Romans as representing everything to be admired of in a civilisation began to arise in the 19 th century. A glorification of the Roman Empire and its achievements of ?civilising? its savage neighbours was a convenient myth that provided a moral justification at the time for those intent on the continuing expansion and consolidation of the British Empire. A result of this was that now, despite both empires being gone, there remains a focus on the Roman invader and their artefacts that encourages identification with them, rather than identification with the original inhabitants of the land. These indigenous people?s way of life, culture, and beliefs have often been represented as inferior and less worthy of attention, and so have become marginalised, remembered only in the context as the barbarians and heathens who the ?civilised? Romans had to battle and subdue. All afternoon, military jets were flying fast and low around the surrounding hills; they passed over my head so frequently that I started to imagine that they could see me as a black dot atop of the hill and were making the screaming passes just above solely for my benefit. In the distance, the occasional boom could be heard from the presumable dropping of practise bombs on some target. I pondered the irony that now it is we, as part of an international coalition, fighting far from home against an enemy perceived to be vicious and uncivilised in the shape of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; an uncanny reflection of the Roman experience fighting the Picts nearly two thousand years ago. Some things, it would appear, do not change. My walk along the Wall brought me to Sycamore Gap, a cleft in the natural rock ridge and named after the large sycamore tree that grows there, that has been made famous by a scene in the Kevin Costner film of Robin Hood, and so now also known as ?Robin Hood Gap?. At the Information Centre just down the road both the tree and the Wall at this point were described in context to the film alone and seemed to overstate its iconic significance somewhat with pictures and lengthy descriptions. However, this also possibly reflected the changing motivations of some of the visitors to this spot; apparently a significant number now came to see Sycamore Gap for its associations with the movie alone, and have no interest in the Roman Wall other than as a backdrop to where the scene was filmed. Later I heard other, conflicting stories about the place; set a few yards back away from the Sycamore is a small circular wall protecting a feeble looking sapling. Some said it had been planted to replace the original because it was mistakenly thought to be dying, others said that during the filming the sapling had been damaged by fire and that was why it was so stunted; new myths of the landscape in the process of being created. I walked a little further on, then dropped off down the ridge to walk back along the path that followed the old Roman road to the campsite where I took down my tent and drove the fifteen miles to Bellingham for the Backpacker?s Club AGM that was starting the next day. 181 Chapter Eight Walking the Wall Westwards ?A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do? (Solnit, 2001). Return to the Wall Introduction I had spent an interesting weekend at the AGM meeting other backpackers, looking at new pieces of lightweight walking gear, and exploring a little around the town of Bellingham. This included attempting to follow the proposed walking route along a disused railway line towards Kielder Water that had the name proposed by the Northumberland Park Authorities of ?Hadrian?s Railway?, a self-evidently ridiculous title, I thought, in an attempt to market every amenity with the Hadrian brand. However, the path was continually blocked by barbed wire and other obstructions, and footpath signs were not in evidence. I returned to the campsite just outside Haltwhistle on the Sunday evening, the plan being to further explore the area, both individually and with others on the walking festival. What immediately follows is a narrative of one of the day walks I made on my own during this period, visiting the site of a Roman fort a few miles south of the Wall that was still being excavated and had a museum and reconstructions that was privately owned, and the area around another fort on the Wall jointly owned by The National trust, English Heritage, and Northumberland National Park. 182 Vindolanda and Housesteads On the following morning the sharp blue skies had returned with a chill easterly wind, and now with a map and guidebook to hand I left the campsite and set off along a path that led onto a lane called Cranberry Row atop of a low ridge leading to the fort of Vindolanda that was still being excavated. From the lane I passed onto the old route known as Stanegate, passing a stone by the roadside that looked like the base of a column. The fields beyond were full of bright yellow dandelions flashing in the breeze and lynchetts, the remains of ancient farming strips, could be plainly seen amongst them. As I arrived at Vindolanda Fort four coaches were disgorging their tourist passengers, and I had to queue to get in. After walking around the site of excavated foundations, walls and doorways I moved on to the museum where copies of the most important finds were on display. I noticed that a reconstruction of a wattle and daub dwelling from the period, supposedly typical of the native tribes at the time, was being used to highlight how much better the Roman buildings were. This was again displaying a peculiar disdain for the ancient indigenous culture that was just as complex and developed in many ways as Roman culture was. However, it is the Roman history that endures, due to some part because it reflects our modern notions of what components makes a civilised society, but mostly because they built in stone and very well, so some still survives. Close by there was a modern memorial to those Roman legions that had served on the frontier, with again no mention of the tribes that opposed them. The thought arose that the ancestors of a good many of the visitors to this museum, devoted to the telling of the Roman experience in Briton, must be turning in their graves. Their story was notably absent along the Wall, those people whose land it was that they were defending. I walked back up to the excavated section of the site and wandered around some more. By a newly opened trench a group of schoolchildren were clustered round, the archaeologist below them holding a mud smeared and misshapen object recovered that day, still recognisable as some form of shoe. After listening in for a while, I moved on to where reproductions of the Wall in turf and stone had been built showing its full height and each with a tower. The stone Wall had a crenellated top with a walkway although elsewhere I had read that it was unknown whether either of these features had been utilised on the original Wall. I left the site eventually and continued along the old Roman road of Stanegate, climbing up out of the valley and along a quiet lane, pausing to investigate a wide bottomed brick chimney that turned out to be Crindledykes limekiln, a reminder of what was once a common feature in the landscape because of the availability of seams of coal and limestone in close proximity of each other. As I climbed up to the ridge where the Wall ran, the view to the south opened up and I tried to picture it as the proto-industrial landscape it once was, with horse-drawn railway wagons linking up numerous quarries and the smoke-belching brick 183 kilns. The landscape was now returned to a largely pastoral scene, the only reminder of industrialisation a line of electricity pylons that marched out of the valley of the south Tyne and up over the far fells to the west. When I reached the Wall I bumped into an extravagantly bearded individual who I recognised from the Backpackers Club AGM. He had left the morning before, and had walked back to the wall, but on the way he was also searching out local geo-caches, a recently developed activity, and a modern version of post-boxing using GPS. The hidden caches? locations are given as a precise satellite location along with a few clues, and the finder is supposed to leave one random item and to take one already there. I knew it was a growing pursuit for those out walking, and it seems to reflect a continuing fascination for secret burial caches, and the fun of discovering them. I followed the switch-back of the Wall eastwards, entering a wood. Here there was the only section of the Wall where it was permissible to walk on top of it since that was where the public footpath had originally been placed. An alternative path had also been provided in an attempt to persuade visitors off of the Wall because of erosion concerns, but most chose to ignore it preferring the opportunity to walk up on the wall despite presumably knowing they were contributing to the damage of it. I came to the remains of a fort on the Wall, Housesteads, with wooden stakes and strands of wire barring onward access, and signs for entry pointing back down the hill to the inevitable ticket office and shop. Faintly annoyed with the demands for money for visiting what appeared to be just a square enclosure of walls, I bypassed the fort via the Path and a short way later struck up a conversation with someone who I thought initially was a farmer on his quad bike, but turned out to be a National Parks Ranger. I mentioned the high cost of these tickets to visit some of the best-preserved forts, and he was surprisingly forthright with his opinions. The prices for entry he described as ?extortionate?, explaining that English Heritage, the National Trust, and the National Parks all had designated responsibilities for these sites, and all were vying for the visitors? money. He plainly resented the use of these ancient sites to make profit out of tourists. He pointed to the people in the distance walking on the walls of the fort despite the signs asking them not to, so as to protect them from damage. ?How can I stop them doing it,? he said, ?when they?ve had to pay for parking, then for an information booklet, and then for entry only to find that there is not an awful lot to see when they get there? They want value for all the money they have spent, and if some of them are going to climb up onto the wall so as to appreciate the view, some feel that I don?t have the right to ask them not to, and I can?t say I really blame them.? Making the place part of a business transaction had also made it vulnerable to those who felt they had bought the right to climb all over it, thereby hastening its inevitable deterioration. I decided to turn back at this point, and walked westwards along the wall retracing my tracks. I stopped at a milecastle that was particularly well preserved, the beginning curve of the 184 arched gateway still standing, where I made a sketch of it, losing myself in the detail of the stones; an hour passing without me hardly noticing it. I walked on and after a mile or so I came across a small remembrance day cross with paper poppy inexplicably set amongst the stones of the Wall, and I wondered about the story behind it, and what significance the place held for it to be planted there, a mute testament of grief and loss. After another mile or so I came to the deep cleft of Sycamore Gap, and just past a trig point prior to dropping down back to the campsite I stopped to take in the view. The visibility was clear and sharp, and I could make out far in the distance the glint of the Solway Firth in between a gap in the saw tooth ridgeline that had become a familiar feature in the landscape. Beyond the glittering strip of water was a mountain, and to its right the four white cooling towers that had so dominated the Scottish side of the estuary of my first day on the Hadrian?s Wall Path. I sat taking in the far distant views for a long time, before eventually leaving the exposed ridge and dropping down to a lane that would take me back to where I was camped. 185 Walking the Wall Westwards Introduction Nearly two weeks previously I had completed one half of the Hadrian?s Wall Way, walking west to east to a central point, now the plan was to complete it by travelling east to west, the usual route for walkers to follow according to the guide-books that I now carried. For the first section of the long distance path I had approached it with no research, attempting to experience a phenomenological perspective of the walk rather one influenced by the external perspectives and interpretations of guidebooks and maps. For this second section I was to use a couple of guidebooks and maps to inform me with information about the route and points of interest. Having attended the AGM of the Backpackers Club at Bellingham and participated in a walking festival at Haltwhistle the previous week that had allowed me to investigate both more of the surrounding landscape and the different walking groups encountered at these events, I was now keen to return to the Hadrian?s Wall Path to complete the whole route. What follows is the narrative of walking this final section of the Wall from the East coast back towards the central sector of the long distance path. 186 Walking the Wall Westwards ? Wallsend to Steelrig Day One The train arrived at Newcastle Central and I disembarked with a throng of commuters hurrying off to their jobs in the city. I followed the signs for the Metro, and got some advice from a policeman clad in stab vest and assorted equipment as to the best train to take me to Wallsend, my second starting point on the Hadrian?s Wall Path. The Metro train delivered me to the station at Wallsend, the name an obvious reference to the ancient feature I was going to follow over the next three days, and underlining the significance the Wall must have held in the landscape for the place to be so named. I walked out of the station onto a slightly down at heel residential street, dominated by the cranes and hanger-like buildings of the Swan Hunter Shipyard down at one end and the start point of the Path. However, before setting out, I visited remains of Segedunum, a Roman fort that had been uncovered during the slum clearances after the war. At the recently opened museum I took the tour of artefacts found and climbed up the very new viewing tower to look down at the remains of the foundations of the fort and get a perspective on its layout. It also afforded a view of the shipyard that seemed idle at the time, and probably destined to become a museum itself before long, I thought, the only remaining memory of the many ships built here over hundreds of years. After touring a reconstruction of the Roman Baths, I chatted to a museum guide there, who explained that the museum had opened around the same time as the Hadrian?s Way Path, but that after an initial busy period in the first two years, numbers were now down visiting the museum, and staff had been laid off. The hope had been that the attraction of the museum for the fort and the start point of the Path would be the beginnings for the regeneration of the area blighted by unemployment, but the museum guide did not seem optimistic ? it was long- term jobs that were needed, and the tourist attractions of the Path and museum did not appear to be able to provide them. I went back to the start point of Hadrian?s Wall Path, and set off along the tarmac path that was once a railway, following the edge of the River Tyne in bright sunshine, and heading for the centre of Newcastle, passing a rebuilt lump of the old Wall set with three commemorative stones, the largest reading: THIS STONE MARKS THE SOUTH EASTERN EXTREMITY OF THE ROMAN WALL WHICH HERE TURNED SOUTHWARDS TO THE RIVER TYNE. A ROMAN CAMP BELIEVED TO BE THAT OF SEGEDENUM HERE JOINED THE WALL AND EXTENDED FOR ABOUT FOUR ACRES TO THE NORTH WEST OF THIS POINT. THE INHABITANTS OF WALLSEND ARE REQUESTED TO CO-OPERATE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THIS INTERESTING MEMORIAL OF ANTIQUITY FROM WHICH THEIR TOWN DERIVED ITS NAME. 187 THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY THE OWNER OF THIS PROPERTY FRANK BUDDLE ATKINSON. DEC. 1895. The day was getting warmer, and I settled into a brisk pace following the Path, occasionally crossing a road, passing old warehouses and new developments of apartments, some of them gated. The whiff of regeneration was in the air, with the Path as the element linking the new housing complexes and high tech industrial estates. At regular intervals I passed a new piece of sculpture or seating and just as regularly, pieces of accompanying vandalism or graffiti and burnt areas where fires had been set. By the river the bones of a wooden ship sunk in black, oil-streaked mud were passed, amongst old tyres and seaweed strewn on mud flats. Young kids flew past on skateboards, swerving round me and other pedestrians out walking the dog or jogging. A hum of machinery came from across the river somewhere upstream and there was a whiff of chemicals in the breeze. More up-market apartment blocks were passed, one called The Ropery (where someone had made the ?p? into a ?b? with a marker pen), another called Chandler?s Quay, the names now the only evidence of the seafaring past that once thrived here. The Path moved into a more industrial area and past a company manufacturing underwater cables that I could see through a chain link fence being wound onto huge drums. I passed down a road, one side of which was an engineering factory, the doors flung open onto the pavement affording glimpses inside of lathes and drill presses, a small remnant of the heavy industry that used to define the area. Men in overalls were standing outside, sucking on cigarettes and enjoying the spring sunshine, or overseeing the loading of pallets onto the back of trucks. The old Phoenix Mill grain silo, once the largest flour mill in the world when built in 1931, with a monolithic presence about it was passed and I crossed a car park next to the river deserted apart from some fishermen who sat with rods dangling under a large art mural of fish, to continue along its access road. I came across a few wilting bunches of flowers wrapped in cellophane tied to a lamppost, with some rain-soaked letters and a photograph of a young man with his scooter attached; a poignant memorial to a life cut short and of a family?s grief marking the spot where the death occurred. I pondered upon the significance of wishing to mark the point where the accident had occurred, as if the place retained some memory of that person. I turned a corner of the river to be presented with the iconic image of Newcastle; the Tyne Bridge and Gateshead Millennium Bridge arching across the Tyne, the new concert hall looking like some metallic armadillo, and the towering edifice of the Baltic art gallery close by, converted from another redundant flour silo. Hung on its side was a large banner proclaiming: ?You cannot help looking at this?. It was right, you couldn?t. It was lunchtime as I drew level with these imposing buildings, and office workers were out enjoying the warm weather, eating their sandwiches and drinking their coffees on an open 188 pedestrian plaza set by the river. After having a tea from one of the vendors, and watching the fishermen on the far bank cast and re-cast their lines that flashed in the light as if they were spider?s threads caught in the breeze above the brown water, I made a detour into the streets running away from the river to seek a re-supply of gas for my cooker. That bought, I stopped off at a sandwich shop where the sales assistant explained that this was Newcastle, and it was Gateshead a few hundred yards away on the other side of the river across the bridge. I was surprised when she talked of those from Gateshead as being ?a bit strange?, and that ?it was smelly over that side?. She may have had her tongue in her cheek, but there was no doubt of the rivalry that existed between the inhabitants of what I had initially thought was basically the same city. I carried on along by the river, aware that it was at this point the original line of the Roman Wall departed from Pons Aelius Fort on the river bank to the north and to run parallel with it. The official route took me past where the Blaydon Races used to be held, the Path now climbing up from the Tyne and passing older estates of housing. Below was the Armstrong Vickers factory on the banks of the river, still manufacturing tanks that I glimpsed through the surrounding trees and fences, parked up and waiting for delivery. I was briefly tempted by the guidebook to make a detour here to visit a section of Wall, but decided to forego it, a decision I later regretted. I crossed a busy dual carriageway via a footbridge and skirted playing fields before once again being amongst housing estates and picking up on a nature trail following another old railway track. The thrum of the city was now starting to fade a little, and the chatter of birds amongst the trees became more predominant. I spied a Wellington boot incongruously placed on the top of a high pole that looked like an old air raid siren, a piece of street humour that seemed particularly significant to me and appropriate in its honouring of the boot. Slowly the city was being left behind, and more fields encountered, at first football pitches and play areas, but then increasingly planted with crops or being grazed by cattle. I passed a memorial to an English Civil War action, the Battle of Newburn Ford in 1640, and then along a long cinder path by open fields with electricity pylons marching across them. Just past an old milestone I stopped for a break until I realised the surrounding grass was full of dog turds and toilet paper, so I moved on, the Path now overhung by trees, and moving into countryside. A little further on I stopped to talk with an old man walking two Labradors with the hollow cheeks of one who had forgone their false teeth, his thick Geordie accent almost impenetrable, and who had been watching seals in the river just five minutes earlier. He reckoned they were after salmon and mentioned that as soon as the fish had returned to the river after it began to be cleaned up, everyone started claiming fishing rights on it, when before no one cared whether people fished there or not. Where the Way left the river it crossed the Wylam Waggonway, an old railway that initially used horses. However, Stephenson?s birthplace was just down the road, and it was he who had introduced the locomotives Wylam Dilly and Puffing Billy to it. 189 The Path cut through a golf course and climbed steadily up from the Tyne by a track partly laid with cobblestones onto the ridge of a hill and into the village of Heddon-on-the-Wall. I passed a cul-de-sac named Trajan Walk and leading to Mithras gardens, Campus Martius, Aquilla Drive, Remus Avenue, and Killiebrigs. I was obviously back with the Roman Wall. For the entire day I had been following the River Tyne, however the true route of the Roman Wall follows the A69 out of Newcastle. When the route of the Path was being planned, it was obviously decided that walkers would not be attracted by the prospect of tramping pavements lined with shops and by a busy main road (a couple of weeks later I took the bus along the route, and was surprised to see that there were occasional remnants of the wall to be found, incongruously preserved amongst fading shops and tough looking housing estates). Instead, the Tyne Path that already existed and went past the wall only a couple of miles from Heddon on the way to Corbridge, was decided as the best route for the long distance path. Having dropped into the Swan Pub to enquire if there was anywhere to camp in the area, the landlady offered the use of the beer garden at the back for free if I had a meal there. She also commented that it was rare to meet someone walking ?with all the gear?, and even rarer for someone to be doing it on their own. It was here that I met up again with Mick and Mike, two men in their early sixties, who I had encountered earlier in the day and had walked half a mile or so with until they had stopped off for a pint. Both had impressive girths and carried tiny rucksacks, and were also following the Hadrian?s Wall Path, although they were using a courier service to transport their baggage from one B&B to the next. Their ?Country House and Restaurant? they were booked in with a mile and a half away had turned out not to have food available, so they joined me for a meal at the pub. As they tucked into enormous helpings of food and beer, they explained that they considered completing the walk in six days (the recommended duration in all the guide books) as being an important aspect of the whole venture, as well as maintaining a steady consumption of beer. Most of their conversation, however, was regarding how disappointed they were either with the route so far or the accommodation they had booked; as they put it, they had invested a lot of money using the courier service for their luggage and booking accommodation, and they expected a certain level of service. This apparently also included the tourist authorities to somehow ensure that the walk itself was sufficiently rewarding. Our meal finished, they caught a cab back to their accommodation and I returned to my tent. Later that evening sat in the doorway of my tent looking back down at the Tyne valley and the gathering twinkle of the lights of Newcastle as it grew dark, I mused on the intentions of those who had created the Hadrian?s Wall Path. I felt there was an element of it being conceived as much to provide business opportunities for the local tourist industry, as it were to provide the opportunity for walkers to explore the length of the Wall and the surrounding landscape. This was to be expected, I supposed. But there seemed to be a hint of desperation in the branding of the landscape for its associations with the Romans, the 190 Reivers, and the early burgeoning of the industrial revolution. These histories had been claimed for the region, and the dissemination of them to the tourist was now the enveloping future industry, packaged into neatly consumable entities; be they a tea house, a pub, a museum, an ancient monument, or the landscape itself: they were all to be promoted as with the favoured branding of ?Hadrian?s Wall Country?. This branding, I was beginning to think however, was contributing to the slow reduction of the spirit of the place to that of a theme park. Day Two The following morning I walked up through the village and found why it was named Heddon- on-the Wall. By the main road there was a substantial stretch of the Wall that ran for several hundred metres, with only a small brass plaque explaining what it was and why it was there, and retaining a sense of it still being half forgotten about. Apparently, it was the only section of the ?broad? (three metre) wall left in good condition. As usual I could not resist touching the markings left by a chisel on the surface of some of the stones, seeking a connection to the hand that made them two thousand or so years ago. I carried on the Path, following the regular signs for it as now the A69 left its route and the B6318, General Wade?s military road, followed its course instead. A local I chatted to reckoned that Wade had built the road here over the Wall to protect it, although the most common theory was because of the availability of good, dressed stone it afforded. I carried on along a narrow pavement, noticing first a discarded Lesley Garrett CD and then Disco?s Greatest Hits, cars and trucks whizzing by close to my shoulder. As the morning wore on I began to resent first this busy road that followed the line of the wall, and then the inexplicable diversions away from it, one following the three sides of a box around fields of cattle and sheep eventually to bring me back to the road only a few hundred metres from where I had left it. The reason for the diversion, I suspected, was it took the walker past two hotels that set back off the road. The day?s walk was becoming a slog alongside this strip of straight tarmac with speeding traffic, and seemed to have few redeeming distractions; an old well hidden in a wall moss lined and dripping, an ancient milestone amongst weeds and brambles, an otter?s spraint left on a stone passing close to Whittle Dene reservoir. These were details in the landscape that relieved the monotony of tramping along by the verge of the road battered by the slipstream of the passing traffic, breathing their noxious gases. At one point I noticed that the grass of the path set a little way back from the road had been recently cut, and another large and presumably ancient milestone there had been gauged by the mower. Along the path I encountered signs from the National Trail Office pinned to a fence or gate asking: ?Help us protect the archaeology. Please do not walk in single file. Avoid walking in worn lines in the grass? 191 Unusual advice, since the Countryside Code usually gave the opposite instructions and an indication as to the problems faced when setting up a long distance path through a World Heritage Site; maybe encouraging a form of mass tourism along a thin linear line following an ancient monument needing protection from disturbance was not such a great idea. The Wall began to make more regular appearances in the shape of the occasional stretch of a shallow ditch feature, and as the day and I progressed, joined by linear mounds that became more defined as the ditch became deeper. Bushes of gorse in full flower often followed the ditch line in the fields, a bright slash of yellow amongst the browns and greens of the rough pasture. The path followed a ditch for a while and then crossed some low stonewalls of a turret that was marked on the map. They were uncared for and being worn away by the passage of boots, and I began to wonder whether the erosion control signs hereabouts were more about preserving farmers land rather than the archaeology. Two runners approached me, one in full camouflage the other in a bright yellow top. ?Going all the way?? I called out. ?Aye, well, 20 miles? one called back as they pounded past and disappeared around a bend in the road. A public house came slowly into view at East Wallhouses; the Robin Hood, a reminder of Sycamore Gap that I had come across on the first leg of the Hadrian?s Wall Path where they had filmed a famous scene in a movie of the same name. I asked inside as to the relevance of the name chosen for the pub, only to be told there was none ? the original owner had just liked the name and it held no significance for the area. I wondered, however, how many people had passed the pub and knew of the film, and had come to the conclusion that this was beyond coincidence and that the myth of Robin Hood must be connected to this landscape. The ditch had been a constant companion to the path for some time, and now was getting deeper with a small wood growing along it at this point, and at its end rubbish had been tipped into it. A little further on an enterprising soul had tacked on a finger post a card for the local taxi service close to the entrance of a golf club that had a regular flow of expensive cars coming and going. I paused for a break by a broken stonewall and watched a farmer with two dogs round up a flock of sheep and lambs and corral them into a pen by the road. Some started to escape through a gap close to me, and in a flash one of the dogs dodged past me, ignoring my presence and totally immersed in its task, to block their exit as if I was no more than the inanimate wall that I was sat next to. I carried on, passing through a dark plantation forest, and through pasture and meadows with sheep and cattle in them. Slowly the flavour of the land was beginning to change. The pastoral sensibility of the farms and fields began to almost imperceptibly alter as gradually the Path gained height climbing up into the Pennines, the land becoming more marginal, with fewer trees and crops in the fields and giving way to rough moorland with the calls of 192 skylarks and curlews replacing the chatter of finches and blackbirds. As I gained height, so the views widened. To the north there were misty rolling hills, dotted with the yellow splashes of rapeseed fields and dark clumps of woods, and three wind turbines standing on a distant ridge, only one of which appeared to be working. I came to a small tearoom late in the afternoon where I had some lemon meringue pie and tea and shortly afterwards ran into Mike and Mick again who must have made an early start and walked with them for a while. They told me a story that they had heard the night before about a girl who had booked up all the accommodation and courier service to do the walk only to break her ankle four weeks before she was due to start, and so she had done the entire route on crutches. We walked the last couple of miles to the village of Wall together, pausing to look at Heaven Field church at the end of another long distance walk, St.Oswald?s Way, that finished there, and was the site of a major battle where early Christians defeated the Pagans and brought about the Establishment of the Church, or that is how the myth goes. The truth is not so clear-cut; less about Christians defeating Pagans, and more about a power struggle between competing clans, one of which the Christian Church happened to support. Inside the church there was a Roman alter with a small plaque describing it as originally ?heathen?, but it was now alright because it had been ?sanctified? by the Church. Bloody cheek I thought. I left Mike and Mick where they turned off for Corbridge and their accommodation for the night. I carried on, now coming across stone remains of the Wall in the shape of the occasional milecastle or turret, or a stretch of broken stones poking clear of the ground. On the outskirts of the village of Chollerford by the North Tyne River I found a small, one field campsite that was deserted. The owner in the bungalow by it and a filling station told me that the site was for walkers only now, since they had too much trouble from people coming out of the city to camp overnight and party. I set up my tent and took advantage of the newly built bathroom block for a shower. When I came out two guys were setting up a tiny tent and I went over for a chat. They had set off from Wallsend early that morning, walking in one day what I had taken two to complete, and were aiming to finish the entire walk in only three days. One was ex army, and I asked him why they were doing it so quickly. ?It?s about just doing it? he explained as he pegged out the tent ?It?s a break, you get away and just march, and I?m not a sado-masochist but it hurts and the aches and pains? that?s part of it. And it?s like it relaxes you, like, at the end of the day. Like athletes, y?know, it?s the same thing.? ?What about missing stuff, though, because you?re going so fast?? I asked. ?Up to now, well I?m not being funny, but there?s been nowt to see, like. We should have read the book I suppose, but we were expecting castles and forts and there?s been nothing after the first bit of wall for 25 miles.? 193 We chatted a little more, them mentioning that they had done Wainwright?s Coast to Coast walk last year and were planning to do the Pennine Way next, and then we parted company as they hurried off for food and beer at the local hotel. That evening I thought about how different their approach, and that of Mike?s and Mick?s, was to the walk compared to mine. The only similarities between us, it seemed, were that we were walking the same linear line. As to our motivations, our practice, and our experience of it, all appeared to be very different. We represented three differing approaches to a long distance walk, each born out of differing contexts that reflected contesting cultures of walking. A penny dropped. In attempting to explore the significance of the cultural landscape, I realised that it is reflected in many different cultures of walking, each with their own specific embodied practices, motivations, and concerns. Did these cultural ways of walking reflect the cultural landscape? Or was it vice-versa? Were both the reflections of each other? Day Three I got up early, but the two other campers had already gone. I set off along the road, passing some stately stables now crumbling and needing urgent renovation, with horses and some young foals in the fields, the bright sunshine fast chasing away the chill in the air. A short way on was Chesters Museum and Cilurnum Fort, so I turned off and walked across a deserted car park to a gift shop that was just opening. The man inside explained that they were not fully open until 10.00 a.m. I decided not to wait; the Way was calling me, and I wanted to get moving and get some distance under my belt. Upon regaining the road I came across Mike and Mick for the last time; they were going to wait for the museum to open. The Way left the pavement by the road and rejoined the fields, the Wall now becoming a more constant companion in the form of grassy mounds and ditches, the path following them on one side or the other. The trees were now getting sparser, their branches flattened out by the prevailing winds, and the fields that were gorse lined becoming larger until merging into open moorland. The B6318 was still following the line of the Wall, which was now marked by increasingly continuous stretches of stone, but now was generally about 100 metres or so distant, so the noise of the traffic was not as intrusive. At the crest of each of the rolling hills the Way, Wall, and road could be seen as three switch-backing lines, one a meandering worn green strip, one ragged and in places indistinct, and one black and sharp, all gradually getting ever higher until they disappeared over the horizon. I carried on, the sun having now disappeared into a hazy sky with a cool breeze developing. I met a man walking fast in the other direction who was on a training walk for an attempt to complete the entire Path of 84 miles in just two days later on that month. Again, his motivation appeared to be so that he could test himself against the challenge, and again he was ex-military. After we parted I thought about this concept of trying to complete a walk as quickly as possible, with no time to pause and to explore, to immerse oneself in the 194 experience of that landscape. Those elements seemed as alien to these speed walkers as their desire to test themselves against the demands of a prolonged march was to me; their practice a reflection of that peculiar militaristic tradition that pervades many aspects of the long distance hiker. I passed another long section of wall, and turret 29a where, in the slab at the entrance, slots and a worn groove marked where a door used to swing. A little further on I reached Limestone Corner, a misnomer since it is a Roman quarry of unforgiving Whinstone that was abandoned presumably because of the hardness of the rock. After another mile or so the Path reached a car park for Brocolitia fort, a square of high grassy banks which I explored whilst cars turned up and parked, their inhabitants briefly wandering up a bank and reading the information plinth before returning to the car and roaring off down the road. Beyond the fort were the low stone remains of the Mithreum temple which had an unexpectedly intimate and still presence, a memory hinting of its revered and worshipped past. On the low alter that still remained were fresh offerings of flowers by people presumably still attracted to paganism. A little further on I passed rushes marking a spring that was once also held as sacred, and had been found to contain an enormous hoard of offerings when excavated. I carried on along the Way that passed through a belt of Sycamore trees behind the appropriately named Carraw Farm, since in the branches above was a presumably ancient rookery and the air was rent by the birds? raucous calls. At last I could see ahead the road that had been my companion for the last day and a half was veering away south from the high line of the Wall, and as I passed another turret, the regular swish and whine of the passing traffic began to fade. More walkers were now about, most just for a few miles wander along the line of the Wall in one direction or another, drawn by the upland views and the enigmatic stone remains that encapsulated the contested border identity that pervades this landscape. Usually we all nodded a brief greeting to each other as we passed, expressing a mutual etiquette in recognition of a fleeting shared moment and a shared practice. Sewingshields Farm came into view, where a couple of weeks or so earlier I had been on a day walk with a small group just north of the Wall. Now the ancient monument had become an almost unbroken line interspersed with turrets, and the Way followed close by its side. At an Ordinance Survey pillar on a high crag, Broomlee Lough came into view shimmering below the line of wave after wave of scarp hills, and to the north I could see the dark line of Wark Forest. I was now getting tired, and the rolling escarpment was getting steeper and more demanding. The familiar shape of Housesteads or Vercovicium fort appeared ahead and I passed below its walls and the swinging legs of tourists sat upon them who were blithely unaware or uncaring that they were eroding the ancient monument. In providing access for the public to appreciate the remains, so that hastens the demise of those remains ? a conflict between recreation and preservation. 195 Now I was on a part of the Wall walked and explored previously, and I dropped down onto the track of the old Roman military road that runs behind the Wall to follow it for a mile or so through rough meadow and pasture, passing below the notch in the escarpment of Sycamore?s Gap, before climbing up to the ridge to follow a final stretch of the Wall. For half a mile or so I traced the familiar switch back of sinuous curves that rose and dipped along the line of the scarp, before cutting off and heading down the lane that led to my campsite. 196 Chapter Nine Walking the Wall ?To be a pilgrim is to pray with your feet? (The Confraternity of St. James, 2008). An Analysis The above four narratives describing my explorations along the Roman Wall are significantly different to the narratives in the two preceding chapters; not only do I travel through landscape that is largely unknown and new to me, but also in doing so I engaged in multiple day journeys. The walk following the Wall was therefore a very different entity to the circular and familiar ?rambles? made over a few hours described previously; not only was the landscape unfamiliar and encountered by following a linear line towards a destination, but it was also a true journey covering a considerable distance, and this activity of walking, or wayfaring, was therefore not done just as recreation but also as a method of travel through the landscape, to get from a point of departure to a point of destination, and to gain an embodied experience of it as a whole. In a consideration of the preceding four narratives, some recurring issues were identified that appeared to emerge from the walking experience of my following the Hadrian?s Wall Way and exploring the surrounding area, all of which might be categorised into four themes for discussion but also contain elements that re-occur throughout. This first theme is associated with contemporary discourses surrounding heritage sites and tourism, the consumption and hybridisation of landscape, and issues regarding the authenticity of representation and the experience of them. The second theme following is a consideration of the history of tourism and walking the Wall through an examination in the main of two 19th century narratives of walking the Wall that reflect contemporary and, arguably, complimentary approaches. The third theme considers the specific qualities of following a long distance path and how people approach it in different ways and with different agendas; as a challenge 197 route aiming to complete the distance in as short a time as possible, or to follow the recommended timetable as prescribed by the guidebooks, or to follow the route at one?s own pace. The fourth theme is concerned with the walk itself. By following a long distance route through the landscape, an appreciation of both the entire linear route along the monument and the corresponding changes of landscape were gained along with an embodied perspective that were not afforded to the visitor who went to just the ?honey-pot? sites where the best preserved sections of the Wall were to be found. Furthermore, the tourist as a form of pilgrim is considered which also has certain resemblances to particular representations attributed to a long distance walker that is also discussed. 198 Tourism, Consumption and Authenticity of Representation The Consumption of Heritage Tourist sites are places of consumption in a variety of ways that Watson (2010) suggests creates tensions between heritage, such as buildings, museums and archaeology, and the visual modes of interpretation, representation and marketing that is central to the demands of the tourism industry. Urry (1995:1-2) makes four claims regarding time and space in the consumption of place: a) Places are increasingly being restructured as centres for consumption, providing the context within which goods and services are compared, evaluated, purchased and used. b) Places themselves are also themselves consumed in a certain sense, particularly visually, an important area in this being the provision of consumer services, both for locals and visitors. c) Places can be literally consumed, and what people might find significant about a place, such as history, buildings, literature or environment, may over time become taken up, depleted, and then exhausted by use. d) Places can become all-consuming places where localities consume identity of the local, the visitor, or both. Furthermore, Urry (1995) suggests, as economics, politics and culture came to be central to the structuring and understanding of place, increasing attention regarding conceptual understandings of place have arisen in two areas. First how a sense of place is not a given but culturally constructed, and second the economic bases of such constructions that has led to study of the ?so-called? culture industries, one of which is tourism, and how these have led to the cultural transformations of places. Considerations regarding Hadrian?s Wall and the surrounding landscape as a tourist site or spectacle and the authenticity or not of its representation were recurring themes during my walking explorations. For example, the issue regarding mowing the grass around the Wall that seemed ?a prejudice against untidy nature spoiling the effect of a carefully preserved and conserved ancient monument? (p.163) and ?where the weeds and untidy corners are banished, nature and history subordinated to an idealised version offered instead? gradually grew until I was ?increasingly resentful 199 of the appropriation of the tourist industry of all aspects of the Wall? (p.163), eventually leading me to conclude that the history of the landscape had been ?packaged into neatly consumable entities... all to be promoted as with the favoured branding of ?Hadrian?s Wall Country... contributing to the slow reduction of the spirit of the place to that of a theme park? (p.179). Furthermore, there appeared to be a particular privileging of landscape occurring where empathy and sympathy with a Roman perspective is encouraged, reflecting a wider social stratification regarding those who belong and those who do not in the cultural landscape; this notion of who belongs, or the ?landscaped citizenship? depends on its opposite, the vulgar ?other? (Matless, 1998:62). Within the tourism pamphlets and discourses of encountering the Wall, the visitor has moral duties; visitors to the Wall are encouraged to evoke a dream of Roman rule, and to engage with a particular sensibility of the civilized Roman order (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009:374). The authoritative stewards of the Wall, the National Trust, English Heritage and Northumberland National Park, regulate public access and engagement with the monument by a process of certain representations, reproductions and brandings. As Fees (1996:122) notes: ?Authenticity is not a quality of objects in themselves but is something ascribed to them... objects are authentic because someone with the authority to do so says they are?. It is this representation of a place taking on a particular authenticity of meaning that shifts its status from land to ?landscape?, as argued by Urry, (2005:81), transforming historical site into an iconic one. Such iconic sites often become regarded as heritage sites, and the relationship between what is considered history and what is considered heritage is not as interchangeable as may be initially thought. Whilst history might be recognised as having always been subject to alteration to suit an ever-changing present (Lowenthal, 1985), Voase (2010:111) observes ?At the heart of heritage, as with celebrity culture, is recognition? and furthermore ?what a particular, and dominant, class of people is prepared to pay for, whether through taxation or entry fees?. Heritage is therefore part of an industry that supplies a product to be consumed (Urry, 1995), and whilst it may be argued that heritage makes history more accessible and democratic and historians more accountable, so softening distinctions between the two (Selwyn, 1996), representations of the past are increasingly reliant 200 on a steady flow of customers who have certain cultural and social expectations that they require to be met. One of these expectations is the creation or maintenance of a notion of historical inheritance since heritage is closely related to ideas surrounding cultural identity and ?feelings of belonging? (Crouch, 2010:52). This is a fundamental rationale of heritage tourism, suggests Palmer (2003:428), because it is primarily concerned with ?the selection, preservation, and display of nationally significant sites and artefacts designed to promote an idea of nation?. It is about promoting an ideological notion of national identity, and as Selwyn (1996:23) proposes: ?Tourist sites have always been crucibles for nationalist constructions?. Logically, Hadrian?s Wall, a monument constructed by a foreign, occupying power, would appear to challenge this notion of heritage necessarily being somewhere tourists have a sense of belonging and where ?people sense and regard... as linked to their own personal heritage? and feel ?belongs more to their heritage than to other?s heritage? (Poria, 2010:219). However, it was quite apparent, as described in my narratives, that people identified, empathised and sympathised with the Roman experience at the Wall rather than the indigenous population?s. As Witcher (2010b:6) observes: visitors walk along the monument on the edge of the crags, both protected by the stone curtain wall and empowered by its elevated vantage point. They move through a Roman space, defined by the Wall in opposition to a Barbarian space beyond... Being on, and viewing out from, the Wall elides visitors with Roman soldiers and sets them in opposition to the Barbarian beyond. This identification has been brought about by a process of representing the Romans as being the first ?moderns? and so like us, a particularly prevalent notion in Western society (Wilkinson, 2001). Ironically, it is the indigenous population who are regarded as the alien ?other?, whilst the beginnings of our modern society is imagined to be traced back to the Roman Empire, despite this being largely a fiction since British society was influenced far more by the Anglo-Saxons and Normans than ever by the Romans (Pryor, 2005). This identification with the Romans began in the 19th century with the expansion of the British Empire and a corresponding rise of an ideology surrounding Empire that began to shape British attitudes to Roman Britain and to some extent, as seen, still does (Russell and Laycock, 2010). 201 Many Britons came to see close parallels between the Roman Empire and Victoria?s empire. Nineteenth-century Britons didn?t just want to feel good about their empire being the most powerful in the world, they also wanted to feel that it was a force for good in the world, that it had moral as well as military and commercial power... With this interpretation of history, many Britons of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found it much easier to sympathise with the Roman authorities controlling Britain, than they did with Britons unenthusiastic about Rome and Roman culture. To them, it was the imperial administrators who seemed worthy, not the rebellious locals... (Russell and Laycock, 2010:229). This is an example as to how landscape, heritage and a selective reading of history may serve a powerful function in the justification of certain nationalistic and political stances. In this way a collective memory of an imagined past is constructed in an image of the landscape so that it may be exploited by the present to suit a certain political imperatives. As Said (2002:245) notes: People now look to this refashioned memory, especially in its collective forms, to give themselves a coherent identity, a national narrative, a place in the world, though... the processes of memory are frequently, if not always, manipulated and intervened in for sometimes urgent purposes in the present. This identification with the Romans as being a civilisation to be admired and empathised with are themes that continue to hold sway in the national consciousness, maybe being an echo to justify a colonial past, so it is these that are promoted by the heritage industry so as to meet these expectations of the visitor at a heritage site. The obvious consequence is that this particular story of heritage tends to be promoted ?at the expense of alternative understandings of heritage? (Waterton, 2010:159), such as those of indigenous tribes in the surrounding area whose story is at best marginalised and barely mentioned, or at worse represented as barbaric. The representations and story of Hadrian?s Wall that are made by the various custodians of it rarely, if ever, contextualise the monument as being an oppressive element in the landscape, or the Roman legionnaires a ruthless military force that subjugated the indigenous inhabitants, which would be a reasonable alternative understanding. Such a narrative would not fit with the singular hegemonic discourse presented where one is invited to admire the Roman achievements and empathise with them. 202 In his journey along Dere street towards the Roman Wall, Copeland (2010:237) notices the same privileging of the Roman context at excavations, and in particular the Roman legionnaires: ?Again, it is the military that is focussed on and not the important civilian settlement or the Neolithic/early Bronze Age henge on the same site?. Other histories, whether contemporary to the Roman occupation of Britain or much earlier or later, are rarely mentioned or evoked. This situation of providing a single narrative to be presented to (or consumed by) the visitor at a heritage location is not unusual. Since it is suggested that in the context of cultural heritage ?Tourists seek out specific cultural markers, the signs and symbols that signify typical cultures and histories in a language familiar and desirable to different groups of place consumers? (Selby, 2010:40), any attempt to provide multiple narratives that are necessarily confusing and possibly contradictory would lack the consistent discourse of representations that is expected by the tourist. Furthermore, it is these signs and representations of authenticity that are consumed by the tourist to the extent that the landscape is only read for signifiers derived from various discourses of tourism (Urry, 1991). These discourses are assumed to be natural and objective, but can be seen as culturally and socially specific. The result is that through my explorations of the landscape around Hadrian?s Wall I began to see signs of it becoming similar to a theme park, where the visitor is encouraged to suspend reality and engage in the representation and reproduction of a prescribed past that appears to some extent to be contrived. As Selby (2010:41) observes: This process of rendering innocent, or naturalizing, the representations and landscapes of cultural heritage tourism can be witnessed at cultural shows around the world, where staged authenticity is eagerly consumed by a compliant audience. It might be contested that the custodians of the Roman Wall and the surrounding landscape such as English Heritage, the National Trust and Northumberland National Park are transposing global tourist perspectives on to them in a process of hybridisation, this being ?the ways in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practices? (Rowe and Schelling, 1991:231). Roman history becomes adapted and mixed with the concerns of tourism 203 so that it is a vehicle for particular nationalistic and cultural interpretations, becoming a tourist spectacle or pseudo-event. From this perspective even the Hadrian?s Wall Path is part of this contrived landscape, an artificial construction that is presented as an authentic way to experience the Wall, and as such in walking the route I am not only participating in this pseudo-event, but also contributing to eroding the historical landscape that is supposed to be protected rather than exploited. Furthermore, as a World Heritage Site the internationally recognised cultural signifiers, the expression carrying the message such as a Roman artefact, and the signified, the concept it represents such as a Roman fort or history (Selby, 2010), that tourists seek as authoritative representations are made available for them to consume in a manner that they recognise and fulfils expectations (Urry, 1991). In these representations, Roman history becomes a globally recognised product, a fashionable brand that is promoted in ever-increasing ways so that a singular perspective is imposed on the landscape, an example of a ?global valorization of particular identities? (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009:32) at the expense of the other historical and contemporary identities that may be discovered there. Whilst this visual manipulation of the heritage landscape may not be quite an example of ?McDisneyization?, Ritzer and Liska?s (1997) description of the search for the perfect simulation, I would suggest that there are elements of this occurring. However, arising from this and central to any consideration of the above critical perspectives as to how these heritage sites are represented, is the authenticity of tourist experience and its representation. As this analysis will discuss, in walking the Wall I might be regarded as inhabiting a number of different cultural or social roles, one of these being a tourist visiting a heritage site. Therefore, the conceptual approaches regarding authenticity and tourism appear to provide a viable means of analysis as how the Roman Wall, the landscape and the long distance walk are represented by the custodians of them, and also how the tourist consumes them. What follows is a consideration of this contested concept in relation to my walking the Roman Wall. 204 The Representation of Authenticity The discourses surrounding authenticity have been debated to a considerable extent in regards to its conceptual and theoretical analysis, and subject to much controversy as to what it actually meant because it has so many different interpretations (Cohen, 2007). Wang (1999) suggests that these interpretations fall into three broad conceptual approaches: a) Objective authenticity, object related and based on the cognition of the authenticity of originals as directed by authoritative epistemology. b) Constructive authenticity, again object related and a projection of various versions of authenticity onto the authenticity of experience and authenticity of the toured objects and so understood as being symbolic. c) Existential authenticity, which is in contrast to the preceding two approaches insofar as it relates to the potentiality of achieving a state of ?Being? in a liminal sense through tourist activities. These concepts surrounding authenticity are so contested that it has been variously suggested that it should be replaced by other less pretentious terms such as genuine or real (Reisinger and Steiner, 2006) although these are also capable of being given alternative meanings. Others contend that it should be discarded altogether because it cannot explain contemporary tourism because it is too simplistic in its framework (Urry, 1991) or because it has been so thoroughly re-worked by post-modern appraisals that it might be regarded as a fallacy (Olsen, 2007). One example of such an appraisal is Ritzer and Liska?s (1997) contention that rather than the notion that the tourist is on a quest searching for authenticity, they are in fact on a quest for inauthenticity, of an experience that is wholly artificial and contrived. However, Wang (1999:358) refutes this prior to introducing the case for existential authenticity and observes: For postmodernists, gone is the ?authenticity of the original?. Thus, it is no wonder that they abandon the concept of authenticity altogether. Moreover they justify the inauthenticity in tourist space. However, a postmodernist deconstruction of the authenticity of the original implicitly paves the way to define existential authenticity as an alternative experience in tourism, despite that postmodernists themselves refuse to explore this possibility. 205 Despite these controversies and contested meanings, the discourse surrounding authenticity continues to develop, and Cohen (2007:81) comments ?Contemporary tourism may appear to be moving into the ?post-authentic? age, but authenticity is lurking beneath the surfaces of post-modern attractions, though in an inverted, and in the eyes of some, perverted guise?. It was MacCannell (1973, 1976) who introduced the discourse of authenticity into sociological studies of tourist motivations and experiences (Cohen, 2007) with his objectivist approach that proposed modern man is alienated from his own environment and in seeking authenticity elsewhere so becomes a tourist. This tourist is considered as being a pilgrim of the contemporary secular world, paying homage to attractions which are the symbols of modernity (MacCannell, 1973). These tourists are motivated by a desire to recover in a mythological sense those elements of wholeness and structure that is increasingly absent from the modern world. This notion of seeking a mythological sense is where ?myths are treated as stories which may serve the intellectual and emotional function of taking up the personal and social conundra of living in such a way that these appear resolved at an intellectual and emotional level? (Selwyn, 1996:3). They act as a method of concealment or forgetfulness about a destination or place in favour of a mythologized version of it that is preoccupied with ?harmonious social relations, ideas about community, notions of the whole? (Selwyn, 1996:3). The presentation of Hadrian?s Wall in the guise of a heritage site is that of a homogenous unity of purpose, of order and of a specific community that might be considered as reflecting such preoccupations, and provides both emotional and intellectual satisfactions to the visiting tourist. However, Cohen (1988a) critiques MacCannell?s notion of the tourist by pointing out that there is no such person, but rather many different types of them, and his characterisation of the tourist is too global to be realistic. Furthermore, the assumption that all tourists are seeking structure in an alienated world is open to question (Schudson, 1979), with an opposing view that they are but indoctrinated entirely into the post-modern world of systematic and organised consumption (Baudrillard, 1988). Visiting (and walking) the Roman Wall applying Baudrillard?s contention may then be considered as merely part of a process where the tourist consumes and collects various points of interest identified in the established and formalised itinerary provided. That walking the Wall was so popular immediately 206 after its opening suggests that long distance walks are subject to being collected in a form of consumption. Whilst Cohen (1988:35-36) agrees with MacCannell?s basic conceptual position regarding the tourist being on a quest for authenticity, he hypothesises that not all tourists are equally alienated and so ?they also will not seek authenticity with equal intensity. Rather these two variables will be directly related: the greater the alienation of the tourist, the greater the search for authenticity?. Cohen (1988) adopts a constructivist approach regarding authenticity as socially and culturally derived and develops the concept further into a five-fold typology of modes or desires of tourist experiences that utilises the concepts of the ?Centre?, and it?s opposite the ?Other?. The five modes of tourist experience include: a) Recreational experience (tourist is not alienated from their Centre of their own society and has little concern for authenticity of the Other). b) Existential experience (tourist is completely alienated from their Centre and seeks an alternative Other that might be embraced and identified with, becoming an elective centre, and so deeply concerned that it is authentic). c) Experiential experience (tourist who whilst alienated from their Centre does not seek to identify with the Other but rather observe it vicariously, occupying a middle position between the previous two). d) Diversionary experience (tourist alienated from their Centre but does not seek an authentic Other, located between the recreational and experiential types). e) Experimental experience (tourist seeking, but not yet found, an elective centre in the Other and much concerned with the authenticity of their experiences, located between the experiential and existential types). To explain it more simply, tourists seek two broad types of authenticity; authentic social relations and sociability (having an authentically good time) and/or authentic knowledge about the nature and society of the chosen destination (Selwyn, 1996). Regarding a heritage attraction such as Hadrian?s Wall as previously described, claims of what is or what is not authentic is problematical. Both Cohen (1988) and MacCannell (1973, 1976) recognise this in that whilst they make use of the term authenticity in one sense that encapsulates the above types, they also use it in another sense that is very different. 207 It is this second sense of the term authenticity that is of particular relevance regarding the representations made of Hadrian?s Wall and the surrounding landscape, and what MacCannell?s (1976) initial concern was regarding; not so much about authenticity, but rather ?staged authenticity?, the covert staging of sights, sites, objects and events in order to make them look genuine. This was a development of Boorstin?s (1964) condemnation of mass tourism as ?pseudo-events? brought about by cultural commoditisation and the standardisation and homogenisation of tourist experiences. Boorstin is principally concerned with the illusory nature of human experience in contemporary American life and uses tourism as a prime illustration of his argument. He makes a distinction between the traveller of old and the tourist of whom he is dismissive of, claiming that: ?the traveller... was working at something... was active: he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive, he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes sightseeing?. (Boorstin, 1964:114). Whilst Boorstin?s attitude can be considered as somewhat patrician and elitist (Brown, 1996), his description of the difference between the ?tourist? and the ?traveller? is not only very similar to more contemporary ideas of two types of authentic experience; that of the authentic self (tourist) and the quest for the authentic ?other? (traveller), but also of the tensions that exist between the two since they push in opposing directions. In searching for the authentic ?other?, MacCannell suggests that the tourist or traveller (the two terms are subjectively interchangeable) seeks a reality not in the ?front? of their destinations, but in the ?back? regions. However, as the right of these tourists to look into these ?back? regions become institutionalised (MacCannell, 1976) so they gradually become contrived by the locals or commercial interests as tourist spaces ?in which spurious attractions are decorated and presented as if they are ?real?. In other words, they ?stage authenticity? for touristic consumption? (Cohen, 1988:34). Staged authenticity is therefore a structural consequence of the development of tourism. The heritage site at Vindolanda close to Hadrian?s Wall, described in my third narrative serves as an example of what was once a ?back? region?, an archaeological site, gradually becoming a ?front? region and so increasingly a tourist site. The ruins themselves are presented as authentically real, and they are in the main based on a 208 visual understanding of them, yet often what is shown are the foundations of structures that would have been originally hidden to the Romans too and are often of different phases of construction that bear no relation to each other. As Copeland (2010:231-232) observes ?Such ruins are sterile after excavation... the rooms covered with gravel to inhibit the growth of weeds. In ruins, instead of pre-arranged spectacles, the visual scene beheld is usually composed of no evident focal point but simply an array of apparently unrelated things?. Furthermore, the reconstruction of the Walls at Vindolanda are presented as being an authentic representation, yet are at best educated guesses as to what they originally looked like. However, these reproductions are taken as being more real than the remains of the Wall, since they purport to show how it originally was; an example of Baudrillard?s (1994:2) hyper- reality, of ?substituting signs of the real for the real itself?. MacCannell (1976) argues that the tourist may at first collude with such staging because it helps in the understanding, but after a while the staging becomes only too obvious and contrived and reveals the attraction to be inauthentic and a pseudo- event. Brown (1996:37) comments that the outcome of this position is that when this occurs: Once again, the tourist has to look further afield for authenticity, and so on, into the ever-receding horizon. Authenticity and inauthenticity (the genuine and the fake) feed off each other in dialectical fashion, generating an ever- forward movement. It is in this manner that tourist sites are consumed until they are used up until they are caricatures of what once they used to be and it is the tourists fate never to be able to realise that search for authenticity but be entrapped in those tourist spaces (MacCannell, 1973). What is implied here is a conception of objective authenticity, that the experiences cannot be counted as authentic even if the tourist thinks they are. However, it should be recognised that for many tourists they willingly participate playfully in pretending a contrived product is authentic even if they are not convinced deep down that it is (Cohen, 1988). They are happy to go along with the illusion even though they are unsure of its authenticity simply because it is fun to do so. Furthermore, since authenticity is a dynamic and emergent phenomenon, inherently subjective and open to reinterpretation, so a staged attraction of today may become 209 an authentic one tomorrow (Greenwood, 1982). What is initially deemed as inauthentic or artificial may subsequently become emergent authenticity with the passage of time (Wang, 1999). Through simply engaging with a place in a popular manner imparts upon it a particular significance and becomes part of those individuals? cultural identity who engage with it and, in time, part of their heritage (Edensor, 2002). Authenticity therefore may be conceived as a ?projection of tourists? own beliefs, expectations, preferences, stereotyped images, and consciousness onto toured objects? (Wang, 1999:355). Furthermore, myth-making and heritage does not necessarily only come from a fixed historical background because they change and are adapted over time. As Giddens (1990:37) proposes: ?Tradition is not wholly static, because it has to be reinvented by each new generation as it takes over its cultural inheritance from those preceding it?. An example of this occurring in my narrative ?Haltwhistle and an Excursion along the Wall? is the associations Sycamore Gap on the Wall now has with Robin Hood. Despite Robin Hood being a fictional or at least a composite character, and it was a Hollywood film that placed him at the Wall for one short scene, tourists now make what resembles a pilgrimage to that place in order to experience it authentically, as real. It has become part of the experience of the Wall, a story or myth to be told and associated with it. It has what Selwyn (1996) suggests as ?hot authenticity?, the responses produced from the emotions, of stories of place, of myths, of the ?fabulous?; whereas ?cool authenticity? is reserved for sites empirically proven to have existed or occurred, are visible, are of antiquity, and so are ?factual?. ?Hot? authenticity is a version of what has been termed existential authenticity (Wang, 1999). Existential authenticity is not dependant on whether the toured objects are real, but rather in ?search of tourist experience which is existentially authentic, tourists are preoccupied with an existential state of Being activated by certain tourist activities? (Wang, 1999:359). Whilst Sycamore Gap may be considered as having Selwyn?s (1996) proposition of authenticity of either types, or at least a blending of the two, in that the hot authenticity of the myth of Robin Hood and its Hollywood portrayal is mixed with the cool authenticity of the Roman Wall, Wang (1999) considers that the authenticity of the site is immaterial, it is the activity of visiting it and the subjective consideration of it that creates an authenticity of experience. 210 This approach of existential authenticity has similarities with the ideas discussed earlier of people seeking authentic selves by focussing on earlier or different societies that they perceive as simpler or more authentic, as Wang (1999:360) proposes a form of nostalgia or romanticism that idealises them as being ?freer, more innocent, more spontaneous, purer, and truer to themselves as usual (such ways of life are usually supposed to exist in the past or in childhood)?. In this regard, such tourist activities become to resemble play. Therefore, the tourist seeks existential authenticity in pursuit of the above as opposition to increasing self-constraints of reason, rationality and their everyday roles in the modern world which enables them to keep a distance from, or transcend daily life. Examples of such activities, Wang (1999:360) proposes include: camping, picnicking, campfires, mountaineering, walk-about, wilderness solitude, or adventures. In these activities they do not literally concern themselves about the authenticity of toured objects at all. They are rather in search of their authentic selves with the aid of activities or toured objects. The tourists visiting Sycamore Gap are not concerned with any objective reality, or care that the image of Robin Hood is a hyper-reality, but rather how the ideas engendered by moving through and physically engaging with the space of that montage of hyper-reality, imagined history and myth creates feelings of an existential authenticity. It also raises the possibility that that heritage sites are spaces that presents the past in a fictionalised form and so persuade adults to suspend disbelief and encourage ?a receptivity to, and experimentation with, emotional experiences and collective memories closed off from experience. They encourage the adult to be childlike again, and allow the child to play with simulated ranges of adult experiences? (Featherstone, 1993:180). This also reflects the notion of hot authenticity which is about an engagement with the emotions brought on by the fabulous (or playfulness) and cool authenticity that this engagement is also with an historical site. Therefore, the tension that exists between seeking the two forms of authenticity as discussed previously, the quest for an authentic experience of self and the quest for authentic experience of the ?other?, and the inevitable resultant structural consequence of staged authenticity, may be reconciled by understanding authenticity in an existential context. Tourism and the concept of authenticity have been so 211 contested because being a tourist and engaging in any leisure activity is socially and culturally derived and is always evolving and subject to change. Furthermore, if leisure and the tourist experience are understood as existing as a form of play, engaging in simulated recreations or pseudo-events may be regarded as demonstrating a capacity to enjoy the myth or story of what is being represented whilst maintaining awareness that this exists in what has been described as the liminal (Turner, 1974), a region beyond the threshold of ordinary life which has components of ritualised activity and transformative potential. Considering the Hadrian?s Wall long distance path in this context, whilst it may be considered as an invented route, something merely to be consumed as a pseudo-event and exhibiting elements of having a staged authenticity, and a postmodern world example of systematic and organised consumption (Baudrillard, 1988), this would be a simplistic interpretation. It might be better considered as having existential authenticity in that not only is the landscape engaged with actively and so experiencing an existential state of Being (Wang, 1999), but also in that it has both ?hot? and ?cool? authenticity (Selwyn, 1996). Furthermore, simply with the passage of time or feet or both, the Hadrian?s Wall long distance path becomes heritage (Greenwood, 1982; Edensor, 2002) and takes on an authenticity through a history of use. The route takes on aspects of a postmodern pilgrimage because walkers ?are aware of walking in others? footsteps, whether ancient or more recent? (Witcher, 2010b:5), and because it is about a personal engagement in the ?qualifications and authentication of a certain place by engaging in mythologisation (legitimating storytelling), physical enrolment and personal investment in that place? (?stergaard and Christensen, 2010:241) The analogies between that of the tourist and the pilgrim are a recurring theme in regards to authenticity of experience, as are the analogies between long distance paths and pilgrimages, and both appear to have particular significance when making a consideration of the experience of a long distance walker. To discuss the relevance these discourses have regarding the authenticity of experience in a heritage landscape, pilgrimage and long distance walks it is necessary to move on to the second theme arising from my initial analysis to consider the cultural background of walking the Roman Wall and tourism to it. Two accounts of 212 walking the Roman Wall from the 19th century are recalled, since they serve as early examples of two approaches that reflect continuing cultural attitudes that inform how the Wall is experienced and approached to this day. 213 A History of Walking the Wall and Tourism It might be argued that the Roman Wall was a tourist attraction long before it became regarded as an ancient monument of interest to antiquarians. There is evidence that in the 2nd and 3rd centuries tourists came from southern England and France to visit it, even taking away with them gaudy enamel bowels marked with the names of the forts along the Wall (Morris, 2004). However, it is doubtful that many of these early recreational visitors to the Wall walked along its length, even if only for short distances. Indeed there is little evidence that anyone from the Roman period walked the length of the Wall, although some historians suggest that Hadrian may have paced it out in person since he was a soldier who liked to lead by example and ensure work was done to his exacting standard (Morris, 2004). Obviously, this first phase of tourism from the south did not last long with the withdrawal of Roman rule, but the Wall continued to be a well known monumental construction in the post-Roman period, significant not only for the scale of its construction, but also as being a physical boundary in the disputed border territory (Hingley, 2008). When the first topographical survey of the British Isles was undertaken by William Camden in the 16th century, he was inevitably drawn to the ruins of the Roman Wall (of which there were substantially more of at that time than there are now) and described its structure and history first through researching published documents and correspondence with local observers before visiting it himself in 1599 for the fourth edition of his book ?Britannia? (Witcher, 2010a). Despite his wealth, education and the empowerment of being an establishment figure, Camden was unable to explore the entire Wall and actively avoided certain notorious sections for fear of the Moss Troopers. These were bands of disbanded or deserted soldiers that roamed the ?debateable lands? of the borders and who had subjugated the Border Reivers, which had previously terrorised the land between the 13th and 16th centuries (MacDonald Fraser, 1995). It was Camden?s intention in his account to largely ignore any of the commonly told tales of the Wall by the local inhabitants, but rather concentrate on the facts as he saw them, and Witcher (2010a:1) suggests that this conceptual division of popular and scholarly accounts of the Pict?s ? or Hadrian?s ? Wall has endured over the subsequent four centuries. In particular, during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the emergence of the 214 discipline of archaeology formalized and rigorously enforced the division between professional and popular, fact and folklore. However, despite this separation of scientific fact and popular tales being retained in the interpretation of sites of antiquity up until relatively recently, as far back as 1801 William Hutton found this division unsatisfactory, commenting ?The description also of antiquities is not only the dullest of all descriptions, but is rendered more dull by abstruse terms? (Hutton, 1802:vi). Therefore, at the age of 78, he walked from his home in Birmingham to Carlisle, walked the length of the Wall and back again, and then walked back to Birmingham and stated that his aim in his book of his travels History of the Roman Wall was to: enliven truth with a smile, with the anecdote; and, while I travel the long and dreary Wall, would have you travel with me, though by your own fireside, to have you see, and feel, as I do: and make the journey influence your passions, as mine are influenced (Hutton, 1802:vi-vii). This considerable undertaking of walking some 600 miles was an embodied engagement with the changing landscape that is reflective of contemporary approaches regarding walking and landscape (for example Edensor, 2000; Wylie, 2005; Lorimer, 2011). Furthermore, the experience of walking the Wall had an emotional and affective impact upon him. For him: the Wall and its landscape were not simply stone and earth works, they embodied the spirit of their creators, so that the Wall became a temporal zone where Hutton felt he could meet with the past. Indeed, the company of these features, which he perceives as friends, seemed to help him endure the isolation of his walk (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009:379). However, whilst Hutton?s account has similarities with contemporary, post-modern discourses surrounding walking and landscape, his account is also reflective of attitudes that were contemporary to his day, in particular regarding the surrounding landscape in the uncultivated central sections, as opposed to the Wall itself which, although delighting at the views afforded from the Wall?s remains, he found desolate, and comments: ?A more dreary country in this in which I now am can scarcely be conceived. I do not wonder it shocked Camden. The country itself would frighten him, without the Troopers? (Hutton, 1802:229). 215 He also felt at some unease with some of the local inhabitants in these areas, often because they were suspicious that he was a government official, although their initial hostility often changed to hospitality once he had explained that he was but a stocking maker from Birmingham and assured them that his journey ?arose from the idle whim of an Antiquarian? (Hutton, 1802:261). Despite Hutton?s account, along with other attempts to document the Wall based on first-hand experience (Lucas, 2001), the Wall was relatively slow in becoming a tourist destination in Britain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries despite the burgeoning development of this leisure pursuit at the time. As Witcher (2010a:5) describes: ?The Romantic Movement did not find the same resonance in Hadrian?s Wall ? and the other monuments of Roman Britain ? as it found in prehistoric megaliths, medieval abbeys and Gothic castles.? Witcher (2010b) suggests that it was John Collingwood Bruce who really established the Wall as a tourist destination through lectures and publishing his illustrated Wallet book in 1863, later renamed Handbook. Bruce also considered that the Wall had to be encountered in an embodied manner, not only by physically surveying the ruins but also through walking along their length, because in so doing it enabled them not only to be better understood but also ?legitimized his authority to speak and write about the Wall (Witcher, 2010b:5). It was he who in 1849 started pilgrimages to the Wall, walking the wall east to west, in a manner ?forming a pilgrimage like that described by Chaucer, consisting of both ladies and gentlemen? (Burton, 1989:5), the tradition of which has continued every ten years to the present. Birley (1961:26) suggests that the word ?pilgrimage? here needs to be understood as ?a sociable gossiping affair? rather than having any sacred significance. However, it may be significant that tourism itself grew out of and in some ways resembles pilgrimages (Graburn, 1977), (to be discussed in a later section) and Bruce, as a religious minister, describes the Wall in its durability using a religious metaphor as it being an offspring of the ?Eternal City? (Breeze, 2003:9). Furthermore, archaeology also has aspects to it where sites of antiquity might be deemed as having a sacred quality (Tressider, 1999) and these: appear to be immanent in the landscape ? an energy waiting to be released... the resurrection of it by the archaeologist adds to the mystery because they are 216 trying to bring a place into time and space the religious/ritual ceremony of the guided tour or the missal of the guidebook (Copeland, 2010:242). Whilst it had been less than 50 years between Hutton?s and Bruce?s walking explorations of the Wall, in those years dramatic developments had occurred that had transformed attitudes regarding landscape, particularly those areas considered as wilderness or wild; the mountains, uplands and moors that once had been considered remote and visually perturbing and threatening to a visitor?s eye. During the mid 18th century, an intellectual doctrine was developed that began a revolution regarding the perception of wild landscapes and contemporary attitudes to fear that continues to influence modern and post-modern relationships with wilderness. This doctrine was known as the sublime, meaning lofty or elevated, and ?delighted in chaos, intensity, cataclysm, great size, irregularity? and the very opposite of the preceding age?s preoccupation with neo-classicism order (Macfarlane, 2003:74). In a British context, Edmund Burke was particularly responsible for providing an account of the passions evoked by the sublime sights he called ?terrible objects? such as a cliff-face or a flooding river as being a mixture of ?simultaneous terror and delight? (Macnaughten and Urry, 1998:114), whereas beauty was an appreciation of ?the visually regular, the proportioned, the predictable? (Macfarlane, 2003:74). Burke also emphasised that through ?strenuous action?, so the terrifying threat may be reduced (Macnaughten and Urry, 1998:114), thereby introducing the notion that whilst the sublime is predicated on a visual regard, an embodied response may heighten the pleasure. The sublime provided a new impulse for late 18th century tourism and in Britain ?seekers of the Sublime and of its tamer cousin, the Picturesque, were responsible for opening up the mountainous areas of the Lake District, North Wales and Scotland? (Macfarlane, 2003:77) By the mid 19th century, when Bruce was conducting his pilgrimages along the Wall, the popular imagination regarding not only the wild land but also the Wall had been radically altered from Hutton?s day. From such landscape being considered as threatening and desolate, it had been transformed into having qualities of the sublime, and the Wall was no longer regarded as a personal and emotional connection with the individuals who built it, but rather symbolic of power and empire. As Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly (2009:383) describe: 217 despite the physical similarities, and the relatively short period of time between Hutton?s journey and Bruce?s, the perception of both the Wall and its landscape, and the emotions that they stirred, had changed quite significantly. Where Hutton saw the fingerprints of individuals..., Bruce saw the footprint of empire, and the ?indomitable vigour? of Rome... While Hutton?s Wall was desolate, wild and lonely, the language Bruce uses to describe the same invokes a vision of empire, and he views the landscape through a romantic lens. Furthermore, whereas Hutton is dismayed when he found local inhabitants removing stones from the Wall for construction of new buildings (Hutton, 2010), Bruce records in his text as foremost this being an opportunity to acquire more finds (although he was in favour of preservation of the Wall), consistent with the archaeological attitude of the day where they ?gathered the potable materiality of the Wall, searching for artefacts which could be taken away from the landscape and placed in a new context, in which they became evidence of the intellectual pursuits of the antiquarian? (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009:375). Bruce?s pilgrimages not only reflected the renewed significance remains of Roman imperial power had in the country during a period of expansion of the British Empire, but also the perspectives of the romantic period that led to landscape taking on associations both with leisure, and as a symbolic and iconic place that held meanings of nationalism, identity and possible exclusion (Edensor, 2002). It was this period that Darby (2000:16) proposes the ?cultural commodification of landscape? began. However, whilst Bruce may have popularised the Wall to some extent as a tourist destination and promoted both an exploration on foot of its specific sites of antiquarian interest and the linear journey along its length, the Wall still remained as a relatively peripheral attraction through the 19th century compared to destinations offering medieval or ecclesiastical sites and the developing fascination for examples of Victorian engineering achievements (Witcher, 2010a). Despite the Lake District, one of the earliest sites for landscape tourism, being so close, the Roman Wall did not appear to attract much in the way of popular attention apart from antiquarians, and in particular John Clayton (1792-1890) whose family owned land surrounding Chesters Fort. Not satisfied with excavating much of this fort, from 1834 he began to 218 buy land in order to preserve the Wall, since at the time it was being quarried and the stone removed for reuse, and carried out considerable restoration along the central parts of the Wall. The wide-scale destruction of the Wall had begun the previous century with the building of a military road (now the B6318), much of it on top of the line of the Wall using it as foundations despite protests, and aroused antiquarian interest and the start of conservation efforts (Burton, 2003). However, without Clayton?s life-long dedication to preserving the Wall it is unlikely that much of it would now remain, along with the forts of Chesters, Housesteads and Vindolanda (Bibby, 2006). Despite that interest in visiting the Wall, apart from antiquarians, as a tourist attraction was relatively low up until the 1970s (Lourens, 2008) it remained as a potent symbol of the border in the national consciousness. As Nesbitt and Tolia- Kelly (2009:371) remark: In its localized (British) context, the Wall has often been viewed as the boundary between England and Scotland, although it does not mark the border, which is further north. It became an axis of a north-south divide, a metonym for the boundary between English and Scottish, Briton and Pict, an empire and wilderness, civility and barbarism. The potential the Wall held as a tourist attraction began to be realised in the 1960s, and visitor numbers steadily rose along with a developing recognition as to the landscape?s overall significance, culminating in its designation as a World Heritage Site in 1987 (Lourens, 2008). Whilst the establishment of a long distance trail along the Wall had been suggested since Clayton?s time in the mid 19th century, so that both scholars and later a more leisured society might ?sense and to see the monument in its entirety and in the fullness of its setting? (Richards, 2004:16), it was only in the mid 1990s that the Countryside Commission put forward proposals for its creation. There was some controversy surrounding these plans, with a number of archaeologists objecting to the idea of the establishment of a single trail on top of an ancient monument and designated World Heritage Site (Aldous, 1994). However eventually, in May 2003 the Hadrian?s Wall Path National trail was opened through a joint venture between the Countryside Agency, Hadrian?s Wall Tourism Partnership, English Heritage and Tynedale, Northumberland and Cumbria County 219 Councils (Lourens, 2008). In that summer it was estimated that the trail, excluding day trippers and other visitors, generated an estimated ?3.5 million of spend in the local economy (Countryside Agency, 2003). The long distance walk provided for the first time an officially sanctioned walking route along the entire length of the Wall (apart from the short stretch running out of the city of Newcastle), and therefore an opportunity to experience both monument and the surrounding landscape in an embodied and continuous encounter. It is of note that many of these contemporary encounters continue to reflect the two declared approaches of those early explorers of the Wall, Hutton and Bruce, either being a phenomenological journey seeking internal insight involving feelings, emotions and imagination, or a tourist?s journey seeking external sites and signs of significance that mirrors elements of being a pilgrim?s quest. This is a popular conceptual approach regarding tourists that they are, in effect, secular pilgrims (Cohen, 1988; Timothy, 2001; Santos, 2002). As Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly (2009:384) suggest, the pilgrim?s approach to touring the Wall is the closest to the modern experience of visiting various important sites and maybe walking a short stretch and that we might identify more closely to this method rather than Hutton?s, and yet it is Hutton?s approach they consider as being their ?theoretical ideal of a phenomenological encounter with the monument?. Aspects of both a phenomenological journey (the embodied and visceral experience of the walk) and making a secular pilgrimage (the significance of the route, the destination, and their symbolic associations) appear to be contained in the walks I made along and around Hadrian?s Wall, and are worthy of further consideration. This brings me to the third theme arising from my initial analysis, the specific experience of engaging in a long distance walk. 220 The Long Distance Walk MacNaughton and Urry (2001:1) observe there has been a neglect in the sociology of body literature regarding ?the various social practices that are involved in being in, or passing through, nature, the countryside, the outdoors, landscape or wilderness?. One of these social practices is of being in and passing through landscape is long distance walking or backpacking, and den Breejen?s (2006:1418) review of literature ?reveals that little or no detailed academic research has been undertaken? regarding such practice. Whilst this is the case, any study of long distance walking may consider it as a ?way of seeking relaxation and escapism? (den Breejen, 2006:1417), these elements being generic to most holiday-taking, despite the obvious differences it has with traditional holiday types of sun, sand and sea, and so may be considered as being part of tourism experience and the wider tourist industry and therefore applicable to some of the sociological discourses surrounding leisure. Coble, Selin and Erickson (2003:7) identify benefits associated with backpacking or hiking to include ?exercise stress relief, personal time, experiencing nature, ?loving life? and ?having fun?? that also reflect recreational and leisure activities. This manner of engagement and experience appears to be initially similar to other outdoor recreation experiences in that it is dynamic, evolving, multi-phasic and contextual to the process (Borrie and Roggenbuck, 2001). However, in den Breejen?s (2006) study of the experiences of long distance walkers, there appears to be a difference between them and those experiencing outdoor recreation in a static or relatively in situ context. Rather than the on-site experience comprising of three distinct phases of entry, immersion and exit where at ?the middle of the course many participants described as sense of revelation as the environment and self were newly perceived and appreciated, developing into feelings of awe and exhilaration? (Borrie and Roggenbuck, 2001:206), den Breejen?s (2006) study found a different pattern. Instead of the intensity of experience reaching a peak level before tailing off towards the end, this study found that that the long distance walker?s immersion ?fluctuates relatively little? and ?generally experience the end of the walk as a climatic high? (den Breejen, 2006:1424-1425), whilst experienced walkers shows the least fluctuation and rated the enjoyment as being consistently higher. 221 This result also differs from Hull, Stewart and Yi?s (1992) study of hiker?s moods, satisfaction and consideration of landscape scenic beauty which compared two groups of hikers following the same trail, one going uphill and one going downhill, finding that the uphill hikers tended to be more satisfied whilst downhill hikers were more distracted, rushed or even bored. However, the study was of a short hike and made a comparison of the experience on two opposing forms of topography, and so very different from the multi-day experience over a continuously changing landscape that comprises walking a long distance path. Kay and Moxham (1996:176) discern more complicated motivations to walking than just appreciations of the scenery or overall satisfaction rates and consider that ?walking is not so much and end in itself but rather a means to complex ends, to comprehensive experiences?. As an example, long distance walking may be considered as a peak experience activity (Quan and Wang, 2004), and even a bodily engagement where one may achieve ?flow?, when the challenge of the activity is matched by the skill of the participants that have the following six characteristics: a merging of action and awareness, a centring of attention on a limited stimulus field, a loss of ego, personal control of action and environment, coherent demands for action and clear feedback, and an autotelic nature (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). Long distance walking also has elements of the pilgrimage, as previously mentioned, providing the possibility of ?a personal renewal? or ?even spiritual revitilization? (Coble, Selin and Erickson, 2003:9). Furthermore, long distance walking, like other forms of walking, ?is beset by conventions about what constitutes ?appropriate bodily conduct, experience and expression? (Edensor, 2000:83), and as such is a performance that serves ?as a medium for bestowing meaning on the self and the social, natural or metaphysical realities through which it moves? (Adler, 1989: 1368). As an example in this context, Jebb (1996:74) describes the heavy backpack of the long distance walker as being: ... a symbol of self-sufficiency, and its bearer is proclaiming a message just as explicit as when clothes told of class distinctions. He is saying he can travel without the help of anyone... he is fit and... prepared for any eventuality. The backpack is a badge of intent, a membership card to a confraternity. 222 This confraternity holds popular connation?s of virtue and the personification of right-living, self-improvement and self-discipline in the expression and recognisable form of the short-sleeved hiker (Matless, 1998). As such, long distance walkers carry with them specific signs and signifiers of a sub-culture that denotes a separation from other types of walker, for example those who are taking a stroll for just a few hours, and creates an identification amongst themselves as being part of a particular fraternity that is considered amongst that group as being more authentic (McLeod Fondren, 2009). Edensor (2000) identifies that the distance of a walk carries with it different cultural notions regarding the practice and proclamations of the walking body. He conceives of two approaches; on the one hand, the pleasure in engaging in a long distance walk is derived from the formation of character through masculine fulfilment, of ?a trial of physical endurance and mental strength? beyond which ?lies the promise of a more confident self and a return to a masculine (bodily) essence? (Edensor, 2000:93). Whilst walking the Wall, particularly the last section westwards, I met a number of walkers who were committed to either completing the walk within the recommended time, or to do it in much less (and perhaps significantly they were all male). On the other hand, Edensor (2000:95) recognises that ?these competitive, physical desires are scorned by many walkers?, and that their approach is altogether more leisurely and is about seeking knowledge through exploring and observation. Morris (2004:1) makes a similar distinction regarding those walking Hadrian?s Wall: Some people experience the wall as a challenge: they want to march briskly in legionnaire footsteps. Others prefer to take their time, get a sense not only of the wall but also of the archaeological structures which accompany it, to reconstruct the towers and lodgings, peer through the gateways, and above all soak in the view. However, in the case of a long distance walk, I would argue of possibly greater significance, unless the walk is done at such a break-neck speed there is little or no time to observe and reflect, is that both approaches provide the walker a mobile interaction with both monument and land that imparts an immersive experience of them, and enables the sites along the way not to be considered in isolation from one another, but rather as part of the continuum of being a wayfarer. Such walking as a mode of travel across swathes of landscape brings about different possibilities as to 223 how place is interpreted or considered. Perception becomes drawn out along the line of the walk through engagement with its spatial, temporal, and embodied dimensions (Ingold, 2007). Walking comprises of a ?suite of bodily performances that include observing, monitoring, remembering, listening, touching, crouching and climbing?, and through these performances made through a prolonged engagement with the landscape ?knowledge is forged... the movement of walking is itself a way of knowing? (Ingold and Vergunst, 2008:5). In this way walking generates its own particular kind of experience because it is a cultural body, rendered through the social, and becomes also much more (Slavin, 2003) because it is not totally determined by these two aspects. As Turner (1996:66) suggests the ?body is simultaneously an environment (part of nature) and a medium of the self (part of culture)?, and what is between the two is the individual phenomenological experience of the wayfarer. This brings me to the final theme arising from my initial analysis. 224 Walking the Wall ? Approaches and Perspectives A Phenomenological Journey The Wall is ?monumental to unravelling narrations of civility, barbarism and imperial strategy, and has resonance with modern accounts of Empire, borders and national identity? (Nesbitt and Tonia-Kelly, 2009:384), reflecting an established political discourse of heritage landscape or ?heritagescape?, which reinforces the notion of a mythical place where one may search for roots or identity (Tressider, 1999:138). However, an account of tracing its entire length on foot is a mobile and embodied approach that creates ?spatial stories? (Cresswell and Merriman, 2011:5) that may re-configure it from the Wall being simply a context through which one walks to one where it is animated and co-produced. Such a mobile approach creates momentary meetings with the micro and macro elements of its physicality, from rocks and stones to cities and estuaries (Massey, 2006), or as I mention in my narrative ?all is given an equality of contemplation or regard. The seemingly mundane or ordinary is afforded the same opportunity of consideration as is the curious or exceptional? (p.157). Through the process of walking the Wall, a relationship of it and with it is produced that is not only highly personal but also established through a sensory holistic and emotional engagement. This is reflective of recent phenomenological approaches that focus on a being-in-the-world attachment to place and landscape (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994), where mind and body become inseparable. By using such an approach, the officially sanctioned perspectives of the Wall as cultural heritage and tourist spectacle may be open to re-interpretation and re-evaluation from a temporal, spatial and embodied perspective. As Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly (2009:385-386) suggest: The auditory, sensory, aesthetic and kinaesthetic accounts of sites are critical to representations and knowledges of the past and our heritage. The mobilities of peoples, matter and values are part of rethinking the monument; it should no longer be a fixed singular bounded entity, with ?modern? notions of time and power attached. Instead, thinking encounters via the senses engages with a different set of politics of national identity, embodiment, affect and being in 225 landscape... Thinking through the body can enrich our knowledge of the Wall and its meanings in a multimodal landscape perspective. By walking along the Wall a three dimensional conceptual map of it is gradually created and evolves as the walker progresses, which Macfarlane (2007:141) terms a story map and are a representation of a place as an individual moves through it: ?They are organised around the passage of the traveller, and their perimeters are the perimeters of the sight or experience of that traveller. Event and place are not fully distinguished, for they are often of the same substance?. Lee and Ingold (2006:72) make a similar observation in that the boundaries between body and environment are blurred by the movements of both and everything around and that the walker engages in neither an outward visual gaze nor a turning inwards to the self: Instead we see the co-operation of a walking experience between environment and person, both of which are in flux. The eyes, furthermore, seem rather secondary to the feet, ears and skin in terms of how the environment is perceived. Walking in this context dismantles the privileging of the visual that Crouch (2010:59) considers a ?pervasive emphasis, particularly through the notion of the gaze, and as applied to heritage?, but rather it being but one component in its dynamic constitution. It also subverts the visual bias to the central upland sector where most of the stone remains of the monument may be seen, since these are contextualised by the walker with the other fainter traces and resonances of the Vallum and ditch encountered along the route that are often largely ignored at the centre. By walking the long distance path sight, sound, smell and touch are part of the experience and perception and interpretation of the monument and the landscape is made in a process of ?ambulatory encounters? (Bender, 2001:83). Through such an embodied approach, or ambulatory encounters, alternate perspectives are gained which may challenge the established heritage discourse through an affective relationship with the multiple sensibilities located in the landscape (Schama, 1995). It becomes: a fluid dynamic site, mobility at the heart of a new embodied paradigm of thinking through history, landscape and embodied encounters; the touch, memories, scents, tastes and aesthetics of the Wall enable contact with 226 biographical pasts and historical presences (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009:377). However, the phenomenological experience of walking the long distance path of Hadrian?s Wall cannot be considered solely as a way of gaining alternate perspectives of landscape and heritage site; an exercise of experiencing ?cool? authenticity of place or the desire to seek knowledge (Edwards, 1996). It is also an experience that transcends daily life through the utilisation of the activity, ?the body alters its routine existence and enters an alternative, yet intensified, experiential state recreation, diversion, entertainment, spontaneity, playfulness, or in short, authenticity in the existential state? (Wang, 1999:362). In short, it is fun to do and so may also be considered in the context of a search for the authentic self. Through such an existential perspective, ?manifestations of authenticity? might come ?through an individual?s assertion of personal identity? in the embodied practice of walking (Hughes, 1995:799). As a final consideration, I return to examine the motifs of pilgrims and pilgrimages that kept arising in a number of the preceding discussions. Walking as Pilgrimage The discourse surrounding perceived analogies that exist between the tourist and the pilgrim is one that continues to be propositioned and articulated in a variety of contexts (for example, MacCannell, 1973; Graburn, 1977; Cohen, 1979, 1988; Selwyn, 1996; Santos, 2002; Slavin, 2003; Selberg, 2010). Whilst there has been an understandable reluctance on the part of religious organisations to associate sacred places and practices with the hedonism and negative impacts associated with tourism, the distinction between the two continues to remain unclear (Timothy, 2001). Much of the debate regarding how the experience of a pilgrim might be analogous to that of a tourist generally takes into account Turner?s (1974) notions regarding pilgrims of ritual, liminal identity and liminoid social spaces in relation to the surrounding society, and the experience of communitas. His approach can be summarised in a three stage ritual process (Cohen, 1988): First is separation, where the individual is taken to an unfamiliar place peripheral to his/her ordinary place and 227 from his/her ordinary social group. Second is Liminality, where the individual crosses a threshold from the ordered world and is out of time and space and suspended from normal roles and status obligations, and communitas is experienced as a bonding with the group undergoing the ritual. In this liminal stage the pilgrim directly experiences the sacred, invisible, supernatural order. Third is reintegration, where the individual returns to his/her ordinary social group, usually in new roles and status. The similarities between the pilgrim?s experience as outlined above and that of the tourist are not difficult to be comprehended. The ritual process is one of leisure. The tourist also goes to an unfamiliar place and away from his/her usual social group. The tourist also crosses a threshold where obligations are suspended as are the usual notions of time and space; communitas is often experienced as bonding or identifying as being part of a leisure group, and the liminal experience is the frivolity or playfulness often to an exaggerated extent. Finally, the tourist returns home, refreshed and subtly transformed albeit temporarily. This notion of the tourist as a pilgrim is reflected in Cohen?s (1979) typology of authenticity discussed earlier, which utilises the concept of the Centre and the Other. He contrasts travel away from the Centre and travel towards it. Whilst the medieval pilgrim travels towards their own (sacred) centre, the contemporary, secular pilgrim travels away from it in search of another elective Centre. The opposite are the tourists who remain committed to their own Centre no matter how far they travel. By definition, all are tourists who travel out from their own Centre, but those seeking a Centre elsewhere are also pilgrims. Brown (1996), however, comes to a different conclusion, that genuine tourists are fake pilgrims and vice versa, and critiques Cohen?s notion of the contemporary pilgrim seeking an elective Centre. Brown (1996:40) asks the question: ... what happens when Cohen?s pilgrim arrives at his elective Centre? The quest of MacCannell?s tourist for the Authentic Other, it will be remembered, is one of ever-receding horizons. Likewise... an elected Centre is invested with too much potency to survive prolonged familiarity: the contemporary pilgrim either gathers strength and illumination from the experience, and moves on elsewhere in his quest for yet greener pastures, or returns disillusioned whence he came. It is the quest which he values, not the pasture. 228 It is MacCannell?s tourist on a continuing Other-seeking quest that appears to emerge as a contemporary pilgrim rather than Cohen?s description, and is in distinct opposition to Graburn?s (1977) notion of the tourist in a Self-seeking quest where he/she enters the sacred world of a recreation experience, which transforms or renews them, before returning them to normality. However, a different set of analogies might be ascribed to the similarities that exist between the pilgrim and the long distance walker, and which may contest the dichotomy of Other and Self that is described above. The ritual of the walker, whilst being leisure, is also much closer to the ritual of the pilgrim in that the process is one of a journey. Moreover, that journey is an embodied one made on foot. Whilst for the tourist it is the destination that is generally of prime importance, for the walker and the pilgrim it is the journey and this is at the centre of the authenticity of the experience. This is also reflective of Wang?s (1999) notion of existential authenticity which is concerned about transcending the banality of modern life by seeking a simpler truth and authentic self with the aid of activities or toured objects. Wang (1999) proposes that such existential authenticity can be divided into two different dimensions: a) Intra-Personal authenticity of bodily feelings (the display of personal identity and source of sensual pleasure and feelings), and Intra-Personal authenticity of self-making (the motivating desire to reach beyond the mundane reality of existence in pursuit of self-realisation and a new self through challenge activities). b) Inter-Personal authenticity of family ties (the family being where individuals experience their true selves through ritual experience of authentic relationships), and Inter-Personal authenticity of communitas (seeking common humanity that strips away institutionalised social codes of stratification in favour of group bonding that is regarded as natural and friendly). Some or all of these dimensions may be equally applied to the motivations and experience of pilgrimage and long distance walking. However, it may be argued that by walking either a long distance route or a pilgrimage trail one is engaging with objective, constructive and existential authenticity. 229 As Lee and Ingold (2006:75) state ?The status of a destination can affect the way we walk towards it?. Whether walking to a pilgrimage site, a heritage site, or simply the end of the route it exists as a goal in the mind of the walker that has a symbolic relevance; it has power of legitimisation since it is a manifestation of tradition (?sergaard and Christensen, 2010) and therefore has an objective authenticity. However, whilst this goal may carry some symbolic meaning, for the walker of both long distance paths and pilgrimages it is the path and the journey that are of prime importance. It is on paths that space is transformed into place (Lefebvre, 1991); where abstract space becomes a place filled with meanings and narratives. It is on paths that authenticity is created and self transformed in a purposeful engagement in the environment where the route and body combine so that the two become inseparable (Ingold, 2000) and so resembles aspects of constructive authenticity. Finally a third aspect of long distance routes and pilgrimage is the walking itself, a source of activity-related authenticity that is also related to a ritual-based activity that carries embodied intentionality. The activity of walking is a transformative practice, where one?s identity is displayed and the experience realised through bodily engagement in pursuit of self-realisation, and so carries with it existential authenticity (Wang, 1999). Walking a long distance path one tends to focus upon the self and the journey rather than the destination, and Slavin (2003:10-11) contends it becomes a meditative process as the body falls into a rhythm which is external to both body and mind and cannot be consciously controlled, it just arises: ?By submitting to the rhythm of the walk and its involuntary nature, a way of seeing and organizing thoughts and experiences emerges?. Furthermore, Slavin (2003:16) claims that from the experience of a pilgrimage: The practice of walking allowed us to understand and explore a nexus between the body, self and the world. It thus demonstrates the many complex ways in which the body, situated within specific material circumstances, helps produce experiences that are profoundly spiritual. Through such temporal and spatial bodily investment and interaction, a close relationship with the landscape is created not only in a physical sense, but also with the mythologized components of the path which merge with the ritualised process 230 creating a liminal space within which self realisation may occur, whether religious or secular (?sergaard and Christensen, 2010:251). A Conclusion to Walking the Wall In regards to walking the Roman Wall, the authenticity or not of the process, how the monument was represented, and issues regarding the consumption of place came to be questioned. Authenticity is a contested concept, but in considering some of the various approaches that have been proposed to give a definition of it, existential authenticity (Wang, 1999) appears to provide a concept suitable for understanding contemporary engagements with the Wall as a tourist consuming it as spectacle and walking it as a meaningful activity. However, this is but one conceptual position to take explaining my experience of walking the Roman Wall. As well as being a tourist, I was also variously long distance walker, secular pilgrim, leisure participator, cognitive archaeologist and cultural researcher. The phenomenological experience of walking the long distance path brings with it an embodied, intentional process that is an affective engagement with the environment and the terrain, the route and the walk becoming an indivisible whole. In this way the landscape becomes ?entwined materialities and sensibilities with which we act and sense? (Wylie, 2005:245). In what has been described as post-phenomenology, landscape becomes considered in terms of performative cultures of practice (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009). Walking a long distance route also has ritualised components that might be regarded as a form of secular pilgrimage (Slavin, 2003). By the steady, methodical and even ritual practice of walking, the journey becomes neither material nor external but rather an ontologically different place of liminality that provides potential of an authentic realisation or reimagining of it and self. My walking the Roman Wall was also reflective that it is a leisure activity of choice; it is part of my identity and cultural capital that had an influence as to how I approached it. Furthermore, whilst making the journey I was continually seeking signs of past histories in the landscape, considering how these remains had once appeared, and attempting to connect with them through touch, sense and my imagination. Finally, the primary reason I was making the walk was because I was 231 researching it as an ethnographic phenomenon, collating data that I deemed relevant along the way of both observed external materialities and internal self reflections. As such, rather than the experience of walking the Wall being from a singular perspective, it was of an individual moving between various subjectivities. At times I was walking either as a pilgrim, absorbed in the journey in a rhythmic and meditative progress, as a tourist visiting the prescribed sites, as practising the leisure activity of my choice, or engaging in a an embodied encounter with landscape where the walk, the walker and the path become an inseparable, performative practice of wayfaring. However, most of the time I was a combination of some or all of these in an emergent and continuously evolving process, reflective of a post-modernist perspective aware of the flaws of relying on a singular stance or position, but rather engaging with a plurality of approaches (Featherstone, 1993). The following chapter continues to describe my experiences of walking in the surrounding landscape of the Roman Wall. However, the narratives are of my walks with the Haltwhistle Walking Festival, and so are considerably different in that they are made in the company of others and reflect a more ethnographic approach of research. 232 Chapter Ten Haltwhistle Walking Festival ?All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole? (Hal Borland). An Introduction This chapter contains a narrative of three walks undertaken at the Haltwhistle Walking Festival during the break I took walking the Hadrian?s Wall Way at its midway point. Of all the narratives produced from my walking journeys, these are perhaps the least self-reflective, being concerned not only with my own impressions of the landscapes and places passed through but also those of my companion walkers and the volunteer guides who led us. The reason I was keen to participate in some of the walks that the Haltwhistle Walking Festival had organised was that it provided not only an opportunity to experience several walking journeys exploring the landscape around the linear feature of Hadrian?s Wall, but also to consider how that experience may be shaped by both being part of a group and by that group being led by guides. To this end I went out on three walks from the week-long programme; one that explored the land north of the Wall, one explored the south, and one that was undertaken at night that went from a place close to the Wall back to the village. Up to this point of my walk along the Hadrian?s Wall Way that had brought me to its approximate half-way point, I had mostly avoided using any guidebooks. This was to change when I walked the remaining section from Wallsend on the edge of Newcastle back to where I had finished the first section at Twice Brewed, using both maps and guide books to inform me of my progress (as described previously). Before this, however, I wanted to explore the surrounding landscape at this mid-point on the Wall, without written guides to influence me, but with companions who might bring different perspectives to mine whilst walking. Therefore, whilst there are elements of ethnographic enquiry within the narratives, the concern was still how these 233 impressed upon my own perception of the experience of walking landscape and place. Walk One - North of the Wall I joined a small group of twelve or so in the small square at Haltwhistle, waiting for the minibus that would take us to the start point for the walk. They were all quite a bit older than me, as I had expected they would be, and consisted mostly of local people. Many seemed to know each other from previous walks and were talking animatedly, whilst there were a handful, like me, who were new to the walking festival and were waiting quietly on the group?s peripheries, a little shy of joining in on the conversations. The walk leaders turned up, and after some brief introductions, we piled into the minibus for the short journey to Sewingshields, the farm straddling the Wall reached by a rough track. Colin, who was the designated leader for the day?s walk and a retired teacher, gathered us together and explained the route of the walk to us which would be of about nine miles exploring the land north of that section of the Wall. Much of the time, he told us, we would be on recently created access land and so we would not be necessarily following footpaths all the way, and that there were only a few stiles to negotiate. He also explained that he would be attempting to provide us with an insight into the history of the area we would be walking through, so that we might gain a better understanding of the landscape and of the peoples who had lived there over several thousand years. With a final briefing regarding safety, and explaining that another walk leader, Tom, would be bringing up the rear, he led us off of the escarpment ridge down along a track, heading for some crags a few miles distant. Before long the group had settled into a slow but steady pace, following the rough track and chattering between ourselves with every so often Colin providing a snippet of information. We came across a man repairing a dry stone wall, and after explaining the scant financial rewards there were in his profession, he warned us that there were a lot of adders about that year. We climbed a stile and entered the access land, making our way across the rough pasture that was dominated by the deciduous Purple Moor Grass, which was endemic hereabouts, only recently controlled by the reintroduction of an ancient breed of cattle that grazed upon it. As we carried on, Colin kept up his commentary about the area. He explained that the distinctive waves of ridges in the land was formed by outcrops of Whin Sill, a hard rock pushed up from the magna deep underground some two hundred and ninety five million years ago through the collision between the land mass of England and that of Scotland. Others on the walk also contributed with more personal stories about the area; one woman remembering as a young girl riding out this way with foxhounds, the mass of brambles we were passing often being where they lost the scent of the fox as it went to ground there. 234 We stopped for a break atop of King?s Crag, a rocky outcrop providing fine views across the rugged moorland. As we sipped our tea, Colin told us of the story of a shepherd who was knitting amongst an old castle?s ruins up on the high ridge behind us (which was demolished in the 17 th century). His ball of wool got away from him and fell into a crack in his resting place. He managed to squeeze through and followed the trail of wool down into a deep chamber. Here he came across the bodies of knights in armour apparently asleep and surrounded by hordes of treasure. Beside them on a table were a horn, a sword, and a garter. The shepherd realised that they must be King Arthur and his Knights, since there was an ancient story that the shepherd had been told as a boy of this area being the place where the ancient King slept waiting for the time when England needed him to defend it once again. This story also told the way to awake the King was to cut the garter with the sword requesting the King to awake and blowing the horn three times. Unfortunately, the Shepherd only remembered to cut the garter with the sword, neglecting to blow the horn, and instead of the knights awakening, the cave began to collapse and the shepherd barely made it out alive. Despite him searching for the rest of his life, he could never find the cave?s entrance again. As we were told the story, I scanned the rocky outcrops that climbed out of the rough moor land trying to imagine where the cave might have been. Despite the fact that I knew the story to be a myth, being there where it was supposed to have happened nevertheless gave it some hint of authenticity. The story also was a change to the incessant tales about the Roman Wall which seemed to dominate the descriptions of the area, almost to the exclusion of anything else. We moved off of the crag onto first Queens Crag and then Crows Crag, before dropping down to a path that was part of the Pennine Way and following it to reach a rare example of a bothy in England, most of these buildings that provide free and basic overnight shelter for walkers being north of the border. Here we stopped and had our lunch outside, enjoying the occasional shafts of sunlight that pierced the clouds scudding across the sky in the stiff breeze. We moved onwards after half an hour or so, Colin leading us towards a slight rise in the distance where he said there was an ancient bronze-age encampment which was not marked on the map, so relatively unknown to archaeologists that it was still an unscheduled ancient monument. We crossed a stream, one of several that surrounded the site, and over a low enclosing bank to reach six or seven circular features in a line, most with their entrances still clearly visible. As the others continued on their way I lingered at the site, drawn by the enigmatic remains and their peculiarly intimate layout. I felt a memory of the inhabitants still lingered here, their ghosts an almost tangible presence in the silence that descended as the rest of the group disappeared over the hill beyond. As I hurried to catch up, I thought of how much more mystery and indefinable spirit the place held compared to the Roman remains that were being continually promoted and reinterpreted up on the high 235 ridge behind, like the exhibits in a museum, their presence subsumed both by the weight of tourists and the iconic status they have been given. I caught up with the main group as we cautiously passed a group of Longhorn cattle with calves, glimpsing views of a hidden body of water called hereabouts a lough, the land beyond being private and belonging to Blackett shooting lodge, an area that had been used for hunting and owned by only four families in the last twelve hundred years. By now I had talked to most of those in the group, finding out a little about them and their backgrounds. Some were part of a local walking group that met every Wednesday, their members forming the caucus of the leaders for the Walking Festival. There was an amateur botanist, who provided a running commentary about the plants we passed, a woman whose profession it was to ?farm-sit? and look after the stock whilst the owners were on holiday, and a couple who regularly came up for the Festival every year, fascinated by the landscape and the rich history contained within it. Carrying along now a rough track, our initial reticence and shyness now long passed, we came across two adders entwined about each other, which quickly disappeared into the grass and rushes as we all gathered around excitedly. A little further on there was the severed leg of a lamb laying on the track, the remains of a meal by an unknown predator, and a reminder of the wild nature of this land. Eventually, we arrived back at Sewingshields farm, a corruption, so Colin reckoned, of Sovereignshields, which fitted with the predominance of names with royal links that littered the area thereabouts. On the way back to Haltwhistle in the minibus we passed some standing stones marked as the Mare and Foal on the map, another ancient monument that seemed forgotten by the presence of its more famous neighbour, Hadrian?s Wall, and one that I resolved to make a visit to later. We said our farewells back in town, tinged with a regret that the brief acquaintances forged over the walk were over, and then I hurried back to the campsite to eat and rest before the next organised walk that was due to take place later that evening. Walk Two - The Full Moon Walk At about half past eight in the evening, a minibus and several cars took the gathered group off to Crindledykes Kiln for the start of the walk that would take us back into Haltwhistle. The gathering clouds did not bode well for a night-time walk illuminated by the full moon, and I realised that I had forgotten to bring my torch. Hoping that there would be enough light to see by, I joined a group gathered next to the Kiln where I discovered that Mark Richards, the guidebook author I had met at the Backpackers? AGM, was the designated walk leader. He explained the Kiln?s purpose of smelting lime, and how it was a once typical sight in the area. As we set off down Stane Street, I found myself in the company of one of the support leaders, Jane, and she remarked on how it was difficult to imagine the landscape about was once criss-crossed with railways, mines, quarries and kilns, given that now their evidence of being there has almost completely disappeared apart from a few ruins. 236 The lane we were following was dropping into a small valley, the overhanging branches of trees deepening the twilight. Just before we reached the Roman fort of Vindolanda, Mark pointed out a rare example of a Roman milestone still in situ, set just off the road in a field. A few of us vaulted the gate to gain a closer look, most of us taking the opportunity to stroke the stone?s surface that felt surprisingly warm to the touch, still retaining the heat from the day?s sun. We passed Vindolanda, pausing at a cottage that had been thatched in heather, and then carried on in the gathering gloom of the evening to reach Cranberry Row. As we walked I continued my conversation with Jane who explained that the Walking Festival was now in its seventh year, and it had come about because some ten years ago three major employers in the area had closed down all at the same time. This was a disaster for the people of Haltwhistle, leaving many unemployed and with little prospect of being able to find new jobs. However, Jane explained, Haltwhistle was a community that was self-reliant and had an attitude of ?doing it for yourself.? With this in mind, a group of local women got together and set up what was to become the ?Haltwhistle Partnership? which searched out funding and organised retraining opportunities for those effected by the closures. With a tenacity of purpose, the partnership gradually expanded its remit, with successful lobbying for more leisure facilities for the young, drop-in centres for the old, and eventually organising events for the town, one of which was the Walking Festival. From the dark days ten years ago when it seemed possible that Haltwhistle might not recover from the mass redundancies; now the community was revitalised and moving forward with confidence, all because a small group of determined women were not prepared to sit by and watch their town go the same way as so many others. We passed my campsite as darkness proper began to descend, the lights of Haltwhistle glittering in the valley below. Leaving the lane we had been following, we crossed into pasture following a footpath that took us into a field where Longhorn cattle were grazing. After a brief discussion, the walk leaders decided that it might be a little hazardous to continue along the path in the dark with the possibility of suddenly bumping into the cattle, and so we diverted over into a neighbouring field, and followed the dry stone wall down the hill. It was now dark, but still most people were avoiding using their torches, preferring instead to rely on their night-vision which suited me well since I did not have any other option. With a few stumbles and strays into boggy mud or water, we reached the bottom of the hill and picked up on a track that appeared ghostly white ahead of us. Quite unexpectedly, the full moon suddenly appeared in a gap in the clouds, and the land was briefly bathed in a silvery light that deepened the patches of dark shadows, before the cloud cover returned and the monotone gloom once again descended. The track picked up on a lane that dropped steeply down another hill into the town. There was the offer of soup and bread at the house of one of the walk leaders, but by this time I was tired and ready for sleep, so I made my excuses and made my way back to my car, and drove back to the campsite. 237 Walk Three - South of the Wall The following morning I had a hurried breakfast and drove down to Haltwhistle, parked, and went to the village square to await the minibus that would take us to the start point of the day?s walk. There was already quite a crowd, mostly people over fifty and the majority women, many of whom seemed to know each other and were exchanging greetings and continuing to chatter about their latest news even as we climbed aboard the two buses that arrived after about five minutes wait. Both were almost filled to capacity as we drove off south of the village to be eventually dropped off at a lay-by of a busy road after about 15 minutes, close to the hamlet of Midgeholme. The initial chill of the morning was disappearing as the sun began to burn off a light mist although a few of the walkers chose to continue to wear their waterproof jackets and trousers. I avoid wearing waterproof clothes unless it was absolutely necessary, yet I have noticed that many other day walkers, and particularly those on led walks, tend to keep them on most of the time. This may be a reflection of inexperience and a belief that this is what one wears as a matter of course when out for a walk. However some explained when asked as to why they continued to wear these clothes despite the warm weather that it was through a desire not to get the other clothes they wore underneath dirty. As someone who did not mind a bit of mud I found this slightly perplexing, wondering maybe that for some, particularly those from older generations, wearing clothes in public that had gotten dirty was something to be frowned upon. This sensibility of manners also suggested to me an attitude of a state removed from the reality of being outdoors and involved with the natural consequences of engaging with the landscape. We had two walk leaders in the shape of Colin, the leader from the walk north of the Wall the day before, and Mark Richards who had led the Moon walk. Mark first explained that we were to be following part of his route to the south of the wall described in his guide ?The Roman Ring? that ran from the top of the Fell above us back to Haltwhistle. He continued to enthuse about ?the broader brilliance of the area? and that ?the spirit of the area is of a rich diversity?, this being one of the reasons why he had left Lakeland to make his home a few miles away on Cold Fell, which was away in the distance to the south-west. As to his writing the guide, he explained it had been born out of a frustration that to follow the long distance footpath was ?to see the Wall in one narrow vein? and so miss the context of the land within it was set. ?People who are on it are absolutely focussed on their deadlines and don?t see what?s about them? he said, something which I was to become increasingly aware of myself in the future, both on the Wall Path and elsewhere. Both he and then John made a few despairing comments about those who cannot walk ?off path? and stick slavishly to a set route or a footpath even though it is running through open access land, as if to leave the path was still breaking some code or was an inconvenience. This behaviour was something I had also pondered upon, and it too continued to resonate as a peculiarly common behaviour which I was to encounter in the future. 238 Mark went on to say he had also written the guide because of the damage that was being done to the wall through erosion by walkers, particularly between September and April when the ground was at its most fragile. He explained that there was an increasingly felt resentment by archaeologists towards the opening of the long distance path, and that this was understandable given that ninety-five percent of the archaeology was just below the path?s route and was in danger of being uncovered through the continual erosion (the cover of an earlier guide book of the Hadrian?s Wall Path he had done for Cicerone showed the path as a white and spreading scar climbing up a hill next to the Wall). Now new flagstones were being laid along the areas of the worst wear in an attempt to protect what lay underneath. It was then Colin?s turn to talk, beginning by pointing out a grassy track that was the ?old railway track where the Rocket had died? and went on to explain that it was here that George Stephenson?s steam locomotive was sent towards the end of its working life, and where it had eventually gave up the ghost. Its old engine shed could be seen down the road, in the process of being refurbished. Again the industrial past of the area seemed to be at odds with the landscape of the present. There were few clues to be seen now that suggested that it was here a revolution in science and technology that spread about the world took place. Introductions over, we set off along the road a short distance before turning onto a footpath that ran behind a cottage, through its garden, and over a footbridge that spanned a small stream. We were quickly onto open moor, climbing slowly up the side of the fell, the rushes and grasses brushing against our boots and legs with a rhythmic sweep. As we ascended so the view to the south began to open out and on the hill that dominated the skyline a line of cairns came into view, memorials built by the families of soldiers who had died in the First World War. As we reached Roachburn farm, Mark pointed out some ruins, the remains of a mine, and a little further on we come to the Roachburn Colliery Memorial Seat which recorded the bravery of two overmen who lost their lives in a vain attempt to save a drowning colleague in 1908. It was at this point that we joined the route of Mark?s ?Roman Ring?, and we turned due east to follow the ridge of the hill. Colin remarked upon the call of a curlew, its fluttering calls all around us it seemed but with no sight of the bird, and then pointed out a depression in the land ahead that was the result of collapsing mine shafts deep underground. All of the land hereabouts used to be owned by Lord Carlisle?s family, Mark was explaining, and before that by a family called Gilley, hence the name of a small village to the north called Gilsland which I had passed through when walking the first half of Hadrian?s Wall, and was once part of a larger area known as ?Gillies Land.? A quiet voice at the back of the group said ?That?s my husband?s name.? Mr and Mrs Gilley were from Australia, and were visiting for the second time where he was born and lived before he emigrated when a young boy. They had no idea that once his ancestors owned vast swathes of Northumberland, thinking his name had come from the village, rather than the other way round. I think we all were a little stunned by the coincidence of having a descendant from such an ancient local family being 239 amongst us, having travelled so far seeking out his roots, just as Mark was describing the significance the Gilley name had in shaping this land hundreds of years ago. The path following the ridge picked up on an old drove road that continued eastwards. The sky was now a clear azure, all the mist now gone, contrasting with the rolling brown and green hills that surrounded us stretching away to the horizons. I found myself walking next to Mrs. Gilley, and we started talking about the landscape about us. She told me that when at school 40 years ago in Australia, the geology lessons they were taught were all about this area in Northumberland and Malham Cove further south in Yorkshire. Now she was here and seeing the successive ridges of Whin Sill formed by the collision of the land masses of Scotland and the English part of the European continent, all those memories of the classroom lessons from a lifetime ago were coming flooding back. I commented on the peculiarity of the times when Australia continued to refer back to ?the old country? for so much in their society, and how much it has changed now, mentioning about how outdoor education programmes there were now beginning to turn to Aboriginal views and ideas about the land to provide alternate understandings of it. Quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Gilley professed to have a special interest in the recent Australian re-examination of their relationship with their land and the indigenous aboriginal people. She had been part of a voluntary group that took urban aboriginal boys back to where it was thought their ancestors may have come from, and encouraged them to attempt to rediscover their own cultural heritage. Some had even rediscovered distant relatives through this process, and were being reintroduced to their family songlines. Lost in conversation, we suddenly realised the group had stopped for a break by a gnarled birch growing up over a stone block that Mark said was called Maid Marion?s tree, and there was a connection between it and the Maiden Way, the Roman Road that we were about to join for a short stretch. Quite a few of us were quite taken with the story that he spun of it being where she had met Robin Hood until he admitted with a twinkle in his eye that he had made it all up, with the justification that there was still room for a bit of myth making or the telling of tall stories, just as there always had been in the past. Break over, we picked up on the Roman road for a short distance, passing a farmhouse seemingly deserted, and then descended gently down to Hartleyburn Beck and followed its banks under trees only now just beginning to come into leaf. Underneath them, taking advantage of the warm sun before the growing leaves brought the shade were banks of wild garlic, bugle and pansies growing in profusion beside the path that wriggled its way along by the gurgling brook down to its out flow into the broad and deep River South Tyne. We stopped for lunch on its banks opposite Featherstone Castle, parts of which dated back to the 13 th Century. As we tucked into our sandwiches, a couple of women I was sat with who had grown up in the area during the war told me about the German and Italian Officer POW camp that had been built just down the road from the Castle, and how as teenagers they had often seen them out labouring in the fields, and sometimes stopped to talk to them. I got the impression that a little flirting had gone on, and that some of the prisoners were, as 240 one of the woman said with a giggle, rather handsome young men. Security had apparently been quite relaxed, and there was little animosity held between the prisoners, the guards and the locals. The women related a story that once a group of captured Gestapo prisoners were sent there, but the inmates to a man barred the entrance gate and refused them entry. In the end the British sentries had to give up trying to persuade the prisoners to allow their countrymen in to join them, and the Gestapo were sent off elsewhere. At the war?s end, quite a few of the Italian inmates decided to stay on in the area and married local girls, and even now in the telephone book there was a good number of names of Italian origin. Lunch over we carried along the bank of the river, passing an impressive narrow stone footbridge that crossed it, and ascended through woodland and then back down to an area called Wydon Eals, Colin explaining to the group that ?eals? is a local form of the word ?isles?, indicating that the river once spread over a greater span than it did now, with many small islands being formed amongst the numerous channels. We were now amidst more pastoral farmland, regularly passing farm buildings set amongst copses of trees and over small pastures and fields, often being grazed by beef cattle. After a period of passing through a number of these small fields exposed to the heat of the afternoon before plunging back into the welcome shade of periodic copses, we eventually came to Wydon Farm and then to Bellister Castle, a National Trust property, and the Bellister road, a quiet lane we were to follow to Haltwhistle. We trudged along the road in small groups spread over a hundred metres or so, crossing the River South Tyne by briefly joining the A69, and then rejoining the lane until we reached another bridge heading for the town which a few took, the rest of us opting to carry on a little further to visit Haltwhistle Arches. This was yet another fine stone bridge that had been eventually deemed too weak for the railway that passed over it, so it was closed and a new one was built just downstream. For a number of years the old bridge had been left to decay, fences and barb wire denying any access, until the Haltwhistle Partnership had lobbied to reopen it as part of a local nature trail and cycleway. What was left of the group picked up on this trail where it switch-backed up a steep embankment thickly replanted with young saplings and spring flowers to reach the span of the bridge that had only just recently been reopened, affording fine views up and down the river. We sauntered along the cinder- surfaced track, peering over the parapets to the swirling water below, and then continuing along the old embankment. By the side of the trail every so often were new seats for resting and sculptures or stones carved with text or pictorial depictions of the area. The trail brought us out onto a road that we followed for a short distance to find ourselves on the edge of town. Five minutes? walk brought us back to the square we had gathered at that morning where the few that remained in the group said our farewells, and I set off for the supermarket where I was parked, collected my car and then drove back to the campsite. 241 Stories and Place The narratives in the preceding section of this chapter that emerged from the three walking journeys reflect how the experience of the landscape and its perception is altered radically by being amongst a large group of people and by being guided through it. Rather than producing a largely self-dialogue as when walking solo, whilst in the company of others this personal dialogue becomes mediated through and shaped by the other walkers? observations and reminiscence. This is particularly so when the walkers have personal connections with the places within the landscape being explored, thereby bringing a local insight unavailable to me as a visitor. Therefore, the preceding stories that were told to me by them and that are contained within my own narratives, reflect a more ethnographically informed auto- ethnographic account of my engagement with them. A key recurring feature gained from these narratives that are predominantly about the guides and other walkers? insights, is how they used stories to either explain or put into a context the surrounding landscape and also the specificity of places. These narratives that I produced from my being guided at the Walking Festival in the company of other participants contain many stories that were told either as a way to explain or illuminate particular aspects of social or cultural history connected to particular places, or as more personal account of a person?s particular relationship or involvement to a place. From these stories many of my own observations of the landscape were substantially influenced, providing me with an alternative insight and understanding and so enabling me to make better, or at least a different sense of the surroundings. Significantly, these were oral storytelling concerned with past events as opposed to the written texts found in guidebooks which have a tendency to explain places and landscapes of historical interest based on documented evidence, examples of which I was to later use on the second stage of walking Hadrian?s Wall Way (Bibby, 2006; Burton, 2003; Richards, 2004), and as previously described. A person telling a tale or story about a place whilst actually there bears, in my view, little comparison to the detached, impersonal and somewhat unemotional descriptions found in most guidebooks. These lack an immediacy and authenticity that an oral story can invoke. 242 Ingold (2000) makes a similar point regarding how we consider place in terms of how we know it in his describing of two fictional scenarios. The first given is to imagine you are walking with a friend in a territory unfamiliar to you both with a topographic map. You reach a viewpoint and your friend asks where you are whereupon you seek out surrounding landmarks and correlate them to the markings on the map until you can put your finger on its surface and say ?We are here?. The second scenario given is you are walking in an area familiar to you and close to home with a friend who is a stranger to it. Once again, upon arrival at a particular viewpoint your friend asks ?where are we??, and you may respond with a place- name: But then, realising that the name leaves him none the wiser, you might go on to tell a story about the place ? about your own association with it, about other people who have lived and visited there, and about the things that happened to them (Ingold, 2000:237). Therefore, both the people who acted as guides and the local participants had a major influence on my perception and interpretation of the landscape on these walks through their use of oral reminiscence and mythic representations. Through the telling of stories they explained or illuminated the specific places we encountered, and so those places and the broader landscape came to be understood and known by me and the company I was with, in the context of personal, social and cultural histories. Through these stories, and by the process of walking, the formation of ideas about place and locality began to take on a greater significance for both me and many of the other walkers. As Lippard (1997:7) observes: Inherent in the local is the concept of place ? a portion of land/town/cityscape seen from the inside, the resonance of a specific location that is known and familiar? Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person?s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there. Lippard (1997) does not conceptualise place as a purely geographical context, rather it emerges for her as an interweaving of the planes of existence both inhabited and moved through by an individual who occupies it. The resulting human histories and 243 memories are frequently communicated through the process of telling stories about place, and Cresswell (2007) proposes that to examine place that is both storied and material, a number of interconnected ways or levels might be utilised: Firstly, he suggests there is a descriptive approach to place, which resembles the ?common-sense? notion of the world consisting of a set of places, each with a unique and specific identity. This ideographic approach is concerned with the ?distinctiveness and particularity of places? (Cresswell, 2007:51). Next he proposes a social constructionist approach to place. Whilst still concerned with the particularity of places, this approach is concerned with the general underlying social processes which come to create this place. Here the construction of place is considered within underlying structures such as capitalism, patriarchy, post- colonialism and a host of other conditions. Additionally he suggests a phenomenological approach of place. Rather than being concerned with the unique attributes of particular places, or the kinds of social forces that are involved in their construction, this approach seeks to define the ?essence of human existence as one that is necessarily and importantly ?in-place?? (Cresswell, 2007: 51). It is less concerned with places and more interested in the quality of place. Creswell (2007:51) continues ?Research at all three levels (and the ones in between) are important and necessary to understand the full complexity of the role of place in human life?. Therefore, in attempting to make understandings of walking and stories of place that were told whilst participating in the three walks I joined from the walking festival, all of the above approaches require consideration, since they provide a model that might be attached to the contention that the world is experienced through a reality, imagination and the symbolic (Lacan, 1977), with these stories providing insights into the descriptive, social constructionist, and phenomenological approaches to place. In analysing the text of the narratives produced from the walking festival, some of the stories contained therein could be divided into these three broad definitions as follows. Descriptive Reality of Place On Walk One the initial descriptions Colin made of the geology we were walking through gave an understanding of the unusual geology of the area and a sense of its 244 connection with the science of plate tectonics and the evolving formation of the Earth. In contrast, the woman who reminisced about the patch of brambles still there which she remembered as where foxes often went to ground when she was out hunting was a very personal memory that was evoked by the act of walking past the site. On Walk Three the track and engine-shed where the Stephenson?s ?Rocket? ended its days was a famous local historical story. Just as evocative, but not as well known, was the story the two women told of the POW camp when they were teenagers, and how some of the inhabitants stayed on after the war. Another tale told in passing was how the place name Wydon Eals indicated how the river there was once broader with many channels since ?eals? was a local form of word for ?isles?. Social Construction Symbolism of Place In Walk Two the explanation of the ruins of Kilns and mines gave an insight into the early days of the Industrial Revolution, and how the landscape was then scarred, environmentally degraded and a hive of activity and industry. This theme of labour and exploitation was echoed by the story of the formation of the walking festival when the last three major industrial employers of the area closed down. During Walk Three the cairns that were put up as memorials by relatives of the dead from the First World War, and the memorial seat to the victims of the accident at Roachburn Colliery were symbolic of both grief and loss, as was the dip in the landscape of a collapsed mine. The story of ?Gillies Land? was all the more resonant when we realised that amongst us was a descendant of the family that had once dominated the area, and brought a sense of connection between the social and the personal. Phenomenological Imaginations of Place The story Colin the walk leader north of the wall told whilst we rested at King?s Crag of the shepherd finding King Arthur and his Knights? resting place, and linking it to the local place names that carry royal connections takes the well-known English myths and connects it to the specificity of the place. In a similar vein, the story of Maid Marion?s tree seemed to carry the same mythic quality, particularly since there were many stories of Robin Hood being connected to the area. However, these 245 stories, along with the one told regarding Maid Marion?s tree, did not have the same historical longevity; they were almost all modern ?tall stories?, which reflects how place continues to be constructed and so modified. By way of example, producing these sets of narratives I am in effect creating my own stories about the places passed through or visited, and so adding to the continuing constructions we make about them. It is through the combination of these stories of descriptive reality, social symbolism, and phenomenological imagination that place begins to be understood on a more intimate and personal level, and thereby a process of identification with it begins to be possible. It is these connections between the personal, place and identity that I wish to explore in the next section. 246 Connecting the Personal with Place One of the key elements of most of the stories that arose out of the walks was the personal and biographical connections people expressed with the land we walked through, and a sense of their seeking an intimate connection and belonging with place and landscape. Muir (1999:274) suggests that: Places matter because they are the focus of personal sentiments, with the feelings for place permeating day-to-day life and experience. Often, the significance of place and the meanings associated with it lie at the core of a person?s identity. In this context of having intimate and long-standing associations with place, with one?s own locale, it is more than a backdrop of landscape but a touchstone of individual existence. Place has a role in the making of who we feel we are, a sense of belonging, giving us an identity that is peculiar and distinctive to it (Massey, 1995a). It might be argued that the telling of stories about a place demonstrates to the audience listening that one is staking a claim of belonging to that place; a subtle emphasising of having a legitimate ownership through specific knowledge, subordinating the outsider whilst empowering the local, the insider. Through the telling of stories about a place, one is demonstrating a personal claim upon it whilst also articulating a sense of identity with it. It has been conjectured that this need to belong to a particular place is a reflection of an instinctive survival strategy related to territoriality (Rose, 1995), whilst another interpretation posits a cultural explanation and suggests that a sense of place results from systems of meaning which are employed in order to make sense of the world (Muir, 1999). It should also be recognised, nevertheless, that there are many different human cultures, and it is an awareness of this difference which may foster the developing feelings of a sense of place and of one?s identity with it. Some writers have argued that it is an awareness of a cultural difference which may encourage a sense of place to develop. They argue that different groups in a society may notice their differences from other groups and want to mark that difference, and one of the ways in which they do that is by claiming that they belong to a particular place to which other groups do not belong. A sense of 247 place can thus be a way of establishing a difference between one group and another (Rose, 1995:99). However, this approach of territorial ownership of place, whilst possibly applicable to certain predispositions of regionalism and nationalism that landscape has often been associated with both literally and metaphorically (Schama, 1995; Muir, 1999; Cosgrove, 1998), presupposes an overall attitude of exclusivity and appropriation of place that was the antithesis of my experience of the walking festival and elsewhere. Rather than the telling of stories of place establishing a hierarchy of ownership of the local over the visitor, what appeared to be taking place was by the telling of these stories, so the sense of place and identity with it felt by local inhabitants was being shared with the visitor, and in so doing a bond was being formed within the group and with the landscape. Rather than exclusivity, it was inclusivity that appeared to be being established. Whilst in the telling of these stories a common bond within the walking group was being established, they also hinted at articulations attempting to establish, maintain or share a connection with the landscape. It has been argued that an aspect of modernity is an increasing encroachment of ?placelessness?, a term coined by Relph (1976) that not only described locations and physical structures that failed to reflect the specificity of place and landscape, but also an emotional response to it, hence a sense of placelessness. Relph (1976) describes this sense of placelessness in relation to notions of authenticity and inauthenticity. ?An authentic sense of place is above all that of being inside and belonging to your place both as an individual and as a member of the community and to know this without reflecting upon it? (Relph, 1976:65), whilst placelessness, or inauthentic place, ?is essentially no sense of place, for it involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significance of places and no appreciation of their identities? (Relph, 1976:82). For Relph placelessness is becoming an ever increasing aspect of modernity, a process that is due to a variety of causes including mass communication, mobility, centralised authorities and tourism. However, it should be pointed out that whilst Relph?s description of placelessness and inauthentic place continues to be discussed as a relevant consideration, for example with Aug??s (1995) concept of non-place, that mobility was a cause has been contested, in particular by Lippard (1997) who 248 suggests that places and mobility are indivisible. These themes of place, authenticity and the central notions of place and placelessness in regards to processes of identification with them or not appear to have continuing relevance. Placelessness, or inauthentic place is indicative of lost connections with place, whilst authentic place is a sense of unreflective belonging and being ?rooted? with place, and the stories arising from the three narratives about the walking festival seemed to reflect either one or other of these notions. . The stories told by the local people and guides participating in the walks reflected their connections with their locale; their knowledge of the myths that were embedded in the land, the cultural, historical and geological processes that have helped shape that land, the monuments and icons that have been established upon it, and their reminiscences that connected the personal to the place. In walking these places, so that sense of connection is reinforced, stimulating memory and by that bodily involvement revitalising their engagement with the locale. In contrast, the visiting Australian man whose name came from the area, and his wife telling her tale of helping young Aborigines to find their home kin, these were stories that reflected both a sense of placelessness and a seeking to correct it by re- connecting with a place that held a significance that had been lost to them. That they chose to include walking the area where Mr. Gilley?s forebears originated from as a way of making this re-connection, also demonstrates that a bodily engagement with place and landscape is recognised as having particular potential when seeking a sense of place and one?s position within it. The significance of how these guided walks within a group influenced my perception of the land passed through is reflected in the narratives produced; the personal stories and local myths produced a meaning or spirit of place that is intimately connected but not identical to landscape. Massey (1995a:59) describes place as being meeting places located at ?intersections of particular bundles of activity spaces, of connections and interrelations, of influences and movements?. Places, therefore, are cultural constructions that are not static and so differ from landscape by the meanings humans cast upon them. Landscape might be modified by human activity, but would still exist without such interference. Place, however, is contingent upon the stories told about it for its existence that are reliant on movements through it. 249 With the multiple stories and tales told whilst out on these walks, so it might be argued that a wider authenticity of place was produced in my own personal interpretation of the journeys undertaken, in so far I was made aware of descriptions of the landscape from many other sources. This is not to say that an authentic narrative of place depends on the oral tales and stories of other people; a personal interpretation might be seen as just as authentic if it is both informed and reflective. However, participating in these walks at the walking festival and listening to the oral stories of others served to emphasise the peculiarity or specificity of place as a cultural construction formed through multiplicities of forms, movements and engagements. Therefore, this process of place making needs to be understood in context to the embodied sociability of walking with other people, and the shared experience and conversations that arise from such activity. 250 The Sociality of Walking with Others There is a long tradition, particularly in Britain, of walking as a social activity to be shared with others. Despite the distain expressed by the Romantics for walking with companions or in groups, and continuing treatises to the modern day that despise ?their insensitive intrusion, blundering into nature and into the solitary walker?s consciousness? (Edensor, 2000:90), walking as a collective practice has long been promoted not only for communal fellowship but also as a source of collective strength to challenge the notion that the countryside is the preserve of the landed gentry (Bunce, 1994). From the early beginnings of the formation of the first walking clubs in the 19th century through to the present day, there remains a remarkable consistency of focus on the pursuit of walking with others as being a key rationale for its engagement (Edensor, 2000), as might be observed in the continuing popularity of group walks (Ramblers? Association, 2008). The American writer Rebecca Solnit (2001:160) goes as far as to argue that in Britain: Walking has a resonance, a cultural weight, there that it does nowhere else. On summer Sundays, more than eighteen million Britons head for the country, and ten million say they walk for recreation. In most British bookstores walking guides occupy a lot of shelf space, and the genre is so well established that there are classics and subversive texts ? among the former, Alfred Wainwright?s handwritten, illustrated guides to the wilder parts of the country, and among the latter the Sheffield land-rights activist Terry Howard?s itinerary of walks that are all trespasses. This perspective from someone from outside looking in at the walking culture to be found in Britain serves as a useful reminder that this situated concept and activity is not necessarily reproduced elsewhere. Recreational walking in this country has a long cultural legacy that has resulted in a variety of forms that established their own traditions which people aspire to maintain; whether that may be walking in organised rambles, hiking the fells and mountains, or completing long-distance routes, in groups or alone (Solnit, 2001). Indeed, it may well be that the embodied process of walking has largely been responsible in the production and continuing reproduction of the particular aesthetic qualities ascribed to the British landscape (Wallace, 1993). Furthermore, Solnit (2001:160) relates a comment made to her by a walker met on a 251 path that: ?A lot of people walk for the social aspects ? there are no barriers on the moors and you say hello to everyone ? overcome our damn British reserve. Walking is classless, one of the few sports that is classless?. This touches on one of the quaint social etiquettes of walking; that of the convivial greeting of strangers encountered. It is almost an unbreakable rule in any rural setting that there is a mutual acknowledgement of others, just as there is a similar rule that others are steadfastly ignored when in a built-up environment. There also exists between the two a type of no-man?s land where either rule may be in place and which etiquette of behaviour to follow is less easily defined. Whilst the comment that walking is classless may be debatable, it articulates the peculiar sociability that walking in groups may bring about. It provides an arena where conversation may be engaged in with few of the social prejudices that may often be found to accompany it elsewhere. This may be because when walking a person engages with a particular style of movement and of pace and direction that may be understood as a rhythm of walking, and when sharing or creating a walking rhythm with others this can lead to a particular closeness or bond with them (Lee and Ingold, 2006). As I have previously discussed, the main feature that arose from the three walks I participated in at the Walking Festival was the telling of oral stories that arose from the landscape being passed through. Some of these stories came from the guides and so were to varying extents researched and rehearsed previously. Furthermore, these stories tended to be told when we were not walking, but rather when we had came together as a group and stood or sat as passive listeners to the tale. This social interaction was face to face, and reflects what is regarded as a familiar process as to how people interact with each other when conversing together, where the face emotes and the eye has a pre-eminent significance. However, many of the stories related came from the participants spontaneously and often as we walked together in a small group or as a couple. When these stories were told by local inhabitants who were familiar or had a history with the places being passed through often gave a very different perspective regarding them. As Jones et al. (2008:7) comments ?These kinds of stories add a richness to spaces which, to the casual observer, have no meanings?. From these oral tales, the landscape becomes populated with individual memories, and places become imbued with a specific significance. 252 It was noticeable that there was generally a buzz of conversation all of the time amongst the group as a whole, and that this emanated from multiple conversations arising from small groupings or couples as they came together and engaged in not only a verbalised encounter but also an embodied one as they shared a mutual rhythm of walking. The landscape was possibly the prompt that induced the storyteller to relate their tale, as Hazlitt (cited in Jarvis, 1997:193) states, that through the practice of walking associations are made from the place and ?we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years?. Therefore, it is the landscape that acts as ?a mnemonic device for remembering the stories: in other words, the story is a map, the landscape a narrative. So stories are travels and travels are stories? (Solnit, 2001:72). This reflects the close relationship that exists between stories and journeys, and maybe why the narrative tale is so closely associated with walking, since both share common features; a story has a beginning, it takes one on a journey along a particular path that may have many twists and turns, each word an individual step, each building until it is comprehended in its entirety when eventually reaching its conclusion. The shared processional quality of walking together also seems to have a part to play; walking with others appears to be inseparable from talking with others (Tuck- Po, 2008), particularly when a consensual rhythm has been established. This mutual rhythm of movement compliments the terrain of the path, and tends to be increasingly difficult to maintain as the going gets rougher and/or steeper. Then a much more personal effort and individual concentration takes precedent, the mutual rhythm is lost, as is the conversation (Vergunst, 2008). Furthermore, rather than as might be expected that the conversation between walkers results in a far weaker social interaction compared to a face to face and static encounter, bearing in mind the multiple of other things walkers are engaged with as they proceed, such as observing their surroundings and co-ordinating bodily movements across the terrain, Lee and Ingold (2006:79-80) suggests that this is not the case. Rather, it is through the shared bodily engagement with the environment, the shared rhythm of walking, that social interaction takes place. People communicate through their posture in movement, involving their whole bodies. Crucially, walking side by side means that participants share virtually the same 253 visual field. We could say that I see what you see as we go along together. In that sense I am with you in my movements, and probably in my thoughts as well. We can talk within and around our shared vista and the other things we are doing along the line of the walk. Participants take it in turns to carry the conversation on, and when not actually speaking one is nevertheless listening, participating silently in the ongoing flow. Lee and Ingold (2006) contend that the full bodily experience of social interaction when walking would appear to have some advantages over the presumed superiority of face to face social interaction which is more confrontational and less companionable. They observed that during conversation between walkers the heads were periodically inclined towards each other not so much as to look directly but to better project the voice and in doing so enabled them to see the gestures of the body and contribute to the creation of a walking rhythm. Walking gives the opportunity to be together, where sharing a rhythm of movement is the basis for shared understanding of each other in a holistic rather than an ocularcentric manner: fellow walkers are aware of each other?s bodies but rarely look at each other. In this we see similarities between shared walking and, amongst other activities, some forms of dancing and martial arts (Lee and Ingold, 2006:82). Walking together therefore tends to engender behaviours of reciprocity where a mutual process of movement is established so as to share the flowing experience of a dance where one body matches another (Amato, 2004). As the bodies move together across the terrain in a spontaneous choreography, so there is a tendency for conversation to match this fluidity, to also flow in mutual pattern. From this process that is almost unconscious comes the opportunity to engage with another person?s point of view and develop an understanding of them that is based on a mutually shared bodily experience; one almost has the opportunity to exist in their shoes for a moment. As Ingold and Vergunst (2008:1) propose, social relations ?are not enacted in situ but are paced out along the ground?. Furthermore, Anderson (2004:260) suggests that: This practice of talking whilst walking is also useful as it produces not a conventional interrogative encounter, but a collage of collaboration: an 254 unstructured dialogue where all actors participate in a conversational, geographical and informational pathway creation. Therefore, through such a process meanings and understandings are talked into existence through both the reciprocal sharing and the creation of knowledge regarding place and identity. To conclude, the description of the walks in this chapter that I undertook at the Haltwhistle Walking Festival have arisen from the application of both ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methodologies, enabling the observation to be made that the telling of oral stories and tales are key features of the narratives produced. I have also considered how stories have the capacity to create notions of place and also continue to construct them as part of an evolving process, and how they demonstrate attempts at a personal connectivity with landscape and place that is an aspect of identity and of belonging. Additionally, the notions of place being constructed through movement and multiple engagements with it have been introduced, as have the links between walking and place. Finally, the sociality that walking in groups engenders, how it is a particular cultural element that appears to continue to be pre-eminent in Britain, and how social interaction is affected by walking through its mutual rhythmic engagement with the terrain have also been discussed. The following chapter has my final narrative describing walking from the Roman Wall and into the Cheviot Hills following the final stage of the Pennine Way long distance footpath. It considers some particular themes arising from this four day journey, and finally seeks to draw together some key elements that have emerged from all of the research narratives and, as such represents the final discussion piece of the thesis. 255 Chapter Eleven Making Lines in Landscape ?The wayfarer is continually on the move. More strictly, he is movement... the wayfarer is instantiated in the world as a line of travel? (Tim Ingold). An Introduction A few weeks after completing the Hadrian?s Wall Path, I returned to the campsite close to Haltwhistle which by now I was well familiar with, having the intention of exploring the land north of the Wall a little before following the Pennine Way to its finishing point at Kirk Yetholm just over the border in Scotland, and had a number of reasons for choosing to do this particular route. The first of these was to see if I would encounter any young people, or people of any age for that matter, backpacking the Pennine Way. By now I had walked the long distance path of the Wall, attended the Backpacker?s Club AGM and the Walking Festival, and my suspicions that there were less young people interested in walking as compared to 20 or so years ago were apparently being confirmed. This had perhaps been not so surprising in regards to the Walking Festival; I realised that the demographic age would tend to be of older individuals. At the AGM, however, I was surprised as to the dominance of people aged over fifty, particularly as the activity of backpacking was one that used to be associated with fit, young people and groups like the Scouts or youth hostellers. Furthermore, I had expected to meet at least a few people backpacking along the Hadrian?s Wall Path, since it had only been opened relatively recently and was supposedly attracting a large amount of walkers doing all of its 84 miles. However, this was not the case. Only once had I met someone who could have been described as ?young? (late teens to early twenties?), and had met very few walkers doing the Path?s entire length, and fewer still who were engaged in the ?classic? backpacking activity of carrying their own shelter and food. Maybe it was because I had been on the wrong type of route, or at the wrong time of year I thought. Maybe it was because an activity that I had thought of as being the 256 ?bread and butter? way to walk long distance paths, and a common practice, was actually becoming an idiosyncratic rarity. So I decided to revisit the most iconic of all the long distance paths that England has to offer, the Pennine Way, and in June when students would be free from college and is the favoured month (because of average rainfalls) to walk it. Another reason for choosing to walk just this last section of the Pennine Way over the Cheviot Hills, apart from that I did not have the time to do the entire length, was that it gave me the chance to further explore the territory north of Hadrian?s Wall known as ?the debateable lands? and away from the tourist sites along the Roman Wall. The final and main reason for doing this route through the Cheviots, however, was that I knew this was going to be a journey into an increasingly remote and less frequented area, notorious for mist, rain and high winds, where it was not only easy to get lost but also to experience a remoteness and solitude rarely found in an English landscape. As such, it provided a counterpoint to the other areas explored on my wayfaring in England. I had started walking my local, urban landscape and now I was going to explore a landscape that was almost in diametric opposition; a high, remote and wild walk through dense forest, boggy heaths and wide rolling hills that would eventually take me over the border into Scotland, and a fitting end to my journeys in England. 257 The Cheviots ? Paths and Trails Day One The morning I left the camp site it was grey and overcast. I set off along the quiet road, still damp from overnight rain, which led towards the ridge along which Hadrian?s Wall ran. It felt good to be on the move again backpacking; the journey ahead was an unknown entity that beckoned me on despite having walked much of the route planned several times over the past 30 or so years. The first section that would take me to link up with the Pennine Way was new to me however. It crossed the Wall at Steel Rig and then following a trail devised by Mark Richards called the Moss Troopers? Way, the disbanded remnants of the soldiers who had eventually defeated the Reivers who had plagued the area for centuries, and the name given to about 40 families who feuded, raided, and rustled cattle and sheep back and forth across these once lawless border lands. Once the Reivers had been dealt with, the Moss Troopers carried on with their legacy of theft and murder for a few more centuries, and both are as much part of the mythology and history of the landscape as the Romans are. I crossed the busy B6319 and followed a lane before scrambling over a steel gate and technically trespassing onto rough pasture to take a look at the Mare and Foal Standing Stones that stood seemingly forgotten on a small rise in the middle of the field, surrounded by rushes and nettles. I walked around the stones, approaching them in different directions and attempting to see them in context to the surrounding topography, trying to make sense of what was and had once been there. The comforting image conjured up by their name was belied by their twisted and broken forms, and the feeling I got from them. Maybe it was the dark clouds bringing rain with them, maybe because I wanted to get on, but the longer I stayed there, the more uncomfortable I felt; there almost seemed to be a presence there that carried with it a hint of malevolence. I did not linger there long before I felt compelled to retrace my steps back to the lane, and with a faint sense of relief I followed it up to where it crossed over the ridge as the first drops of rain beginning to fall. Here I briefly walked west along the Wall to pick up onto another lane and then a path that would take me onto the Moss Troopers? Trail at Edges Green. The rain was turning into a misty, wind driven drizzle as I left the road, crossing into rough pasture and slogging through the rushes and boggy ground, thankful for having put on gaiters before I had left that morning, and having to make educated guesses of the route of the path half the time. After crossing a number of fields and stiles, I picked up onto the Moss Troopers? Way that, although unmarked as such, followed a track and so was easy to follow. I briefly stopped and looked for a line of rushes that Mark Richards? guidebook said betrayed the course of a Roman aqueduct but could not make them out, so I continued along the track, and then back onto paths through fields, glimpsing the occasional building amongst the rough moors, and broken stone walls against a distant backdrop of dark forest to the north. I had not seen a soul since leaving the Mare and Foal Standing Stones. 258 The drizzle had eased when I paused for a break at a hollow named appropriately Resting Gap where cattle drovers had also rested, Watch Hill close by a reminder of the danger of ambush by the Moss Trooper and Reivers. I pushed on, following a mix of track and path until I reached Greenlee Lough Bird Reserve and picked up on its boardwalk trail that ran through the bog and sphagnum moss bordering the lake. The guidebook claimed that the trail did not go very close to the water, but it had not taken account of the amount of rain that had fallen over successive weeks. I came to a stretch of the boardwalk that disappeared under a couple of inches of water for a short distance that I gingerly splashed through, the boards slippery and their edges difficult to see under the peaty water that stretched away to either side. A little further on there was another stretch of boardwalk underwater that I crossed, and then another. Then the boardwalk disappeared for a good 50 metres or so under an expanse of the flooded lough. I had come too far, I felt, to retrace my steps and so I cautiously waded in, mindful that if I strayed off of the boardwalk, the edges of which were now all but invisible, I would probably go into the water over my head. Shuffling forward, the water gradually rose higher until it was around my calves by the central point of the crossing. I continued my wading, my soaked feet getting rapidly colder until I reached the other side of the flooded section and carried on along the boardwalk to its eventual conclusion at the far end of the reserve. I pushed on, water squelching in my boots until I reached a fingerpost marking the crossing point of the Pennine Way which I joined heading northwards, and followed it for a mile or so into the South Wark Forest until I reckoned it was time for me to have my sandwich and change my sodden wool socks for the pair of waterproof ones I carried for just such an eventuality. The Way left the forest track I had been following through the dense conifers and went onto a path that was flooded and very muddy in some areas, until it broke out from the plantation and onto open moorland which I crossed before plunging back into the cover of the dark trees. It had stopped raining but when amongst the trees, whilst relatively sheltering and still, they continued to drip in a tinkling cadence that blotted out all other sound. The Way reached a lane at Ladyhill along which it followed, then went back into the final section of the Wark Forest before remerging out onto the open moorland and rough pasture. Here I came across a young man dressed in army kit resting by the side of the path. I stopped to chat and he explained that he was ?shadowing? a group from a school who were on a training trip for their Duke of Edinburgh Award, and nodded his head at a hill half a mile away where I could make out some figures sprawled on its top. I asked as to how important was the specific landscape that they used for their expeditions, and whether its history or culture was a significant element in making the journey. ?Oh yeah, very, they all have to research what is in the area they?re going to walk through, and plan their own route and things, although generally they are told the area where they have to go? he said, although as he continued I got the impression that the research 259 conducted was fairly cursory and done to fulfil a trip planning requirement and then immediately forgotten about when it came to actually walking of it. As to his motivations in being involved with the D of E scheme, he explained how this voluntary work would serve him well in his forthcoming application to join the army. I wished him luck and headed on over the undulating moorland, the rain once again returning and reducing the surrounding mid distance to a hazy blur. At the time I was using a strip map specifically produced for those walking the Pennine Way that was light, easy to use and had extra bits of information on it, this including a refreshment stop that was marked just ahead. I dreamed of hot tea and cake as I plodded through the drenched landscape towards the isolated farm, only to find that it was long closed. Someone later told me that there was just no longer enough business to make it worth their while. I carried on across a series of pastures and stiles, and then onto a mile or so of road, only a solitary tractor passing me before I was back onto fields that I trudged across towards what I thought was the appropriately named Shitlington Hall, since I was now feeling tired and a little grumpy. The Hall turned out to be another farmhouse, and beyond I could see another ridge to be climbed, Shitlington Crags, considerably higher and steeper than anything else encountered that day. I tramped up the lane and onto the steep fell side until I found myself surprisingly enjoying the scramble up the steep and rocky path, maybe just for the variation from plodding across fields. I reached the crest of the ridge close to a transmitter mast a lot quicker than expected, and found that just as quickly my mood had improved. The bounce in my step had returned as I descended a track and across fields, the town of Bellingham, my destination for the day, coming into view at long last. I covered the final mile along a busy road, my fatigue returning so it felt a struggle, eventually reaching the town centre and the campsite. As I pitched my tent on a small rise in the field that gave a good view of the surroundings but was also protected by a stone wall, patches of blue began to appear amongst the blankets of grey clouds. Slowly the clouds drifted away, and the sun appeared, bathing the surrounding hills and town in a warm evening glow that dried the grass and cast soft shadows that I sat and watched gradually lengthen as dusk approached. Later that night I was awoken by a howling wind and driving rain that was drumming on the nylon above my head. I lay in my bag and watched my walking stick that I used as a centre pole for my pyramid tent flex under the buffeting, a fine mist appearing with every gust, either rain being driven through or from condensation being knocked off its interior. A few drips were also coming from the tent?s peak, but my sleeping bag did not appear to be getting too damp, and I eventually drifted off to sleep as the wind eased. Day Two I brewed my tea and made porridge inside the tent since it was still raining in the morning. I was using only the outer of the tent and a small groundsheet on this trip to save weight, but it 260 also meant that I could easily cook, pack and pull on waterproofs and boots all inside its spacious interior. As I ventured out to pull the tent down, the rain eased and then stopped. I chatted to the farmer who owned the site as I paid my dues, asking how many people he got through doing the Pennine Way. ?Used to have 30 to 40 people in every night? he said ?once had groups of nurses, no, not nurses er?? he gestured with his hands above his head ?Nuns! With their habits! Now I?m lucky to get even one or two walkers. I think they now get B and B rather than doing it like you are?. ?Has the age group changed then?? I asked. ?Oh yeah. Don?t see any youngsters doing it any more ? just people of your age, like, and older.? It was the same story from everyone I met it seemed, the heyday of the Pennine Way and other long distance paths had passed it appeared. I felt I was fast becoming an anachronism in the landscape, a throw-back from another age. How long would it be before what I was doing would be regarded as ridiculous, maybe even in some way transgressive? I hunted the few local shops for some elastic webbing to attach to the mosquito net I was carrying, with the idea that not only would it keep off any midges encountered, but also guard against any stray drips. By the time I had found some, I noticed a caf? had opened and so had a full English breakfast before setting off up a quiet road, passing the old youth hostel that, like so many others along the Way, had now closed due to lack of business. The route left the lane and took to the increasingly broad and massive fells ahead that were a taste of what was to come when I reached the Cheviots. It seemed to take an age to plod up over each one; first Lough Shaw, then Deer Play and Lord?s Shaw, and over innumerable other rises. The path was either running with water or made up of deep pools, and I struggled along through the black peaty slime underfoot. The rain began rattling in again with gusts of wind that were strong enough on the tops of the hills to make me stagger to keep my balance. The landscape around me seemed to be dissolving, more fluid than solid, and under my hood I retreated from the weather by falling almost into a stupor as I was buffeted by the wind and picked my way through the water and the bogs. Suddenly, paved slabs appeared on the path, a serpentine grey thread that traced a line through the mire of bog and black pools amidst brown heather, and it instantly doubled my rate of progress. A dark horizontal line ahead in the mist slowly resolved itself into the shape of Redesdale Forest at long last, and I crossed Padon Hill to descend to its edge marked by a tall fence that I crossed by a ladder stile. The slabs immediately vanished, and I was faced with a steep hill and the path that climbed it an atrocious mess of glutinous mud, running water, fallen branches and tree roots, with impenetrable ranks of dripping conifers to one side and a broken stone wall to the other. It was amongst the worst paths I could ever recall encountering; very steep so that each step was an effort, the sucking mud and fallen stones from the wall underfoot, and a stream running down its course in a series of rapids that was choked with the fallen branches and trees. I sweated and cursed my way up the hillside, my 261 animosity towards the Forestry Commission growing; they had no interest in any path maintenance, I thought, since it had no benefit for them and so it did not matter how bad it got. It took one and a half hours to cover just two miles, the first half of which was up hill, then along ground more level but just as muddy and very exposed to the driving rain and gusts of wind since the path was now beyond the tree-line. At long last the Way picked up on a solid forest track down which I steamed, feeling anxious to make up for lost time, despite having no itinerary that I needed to keep to. The track entered the forest again, but there was still no respite from the chill wind since many of the trees had been cut back. I settled into a fast stride along the gravel surface of the track that snaked its way through the plantation, much of which in that section had been felled. Occasionally, ahead in the distance I spied a couple of walkers that I could not help but attempt to catch up; I had not seen anyone all day since leaving Bellingham and was by now missing the opportunity for a chat, even if only for a minute or two. So I pressed on rather than taking a break and slowly reeled the two figures in, eventually catching them up at Blakehopeburnhaugh picnic area. I was rather hoping they would turn out to be an exception to the rule and young backpackers, but typically were a retired couple using Bed and Breakfast and doing just a section of the Pennine Way. It was good to chat with them for five minutes, though, as we took a break at one of the picnic tables. I had been considering camping at this point since there was a small toilet block there, but the ?no camping? signs dissuaded me along with the fact that the rain had started again. Instead, I decided I needed to visit the hostel, newly taken into private ownership from the YHA, a few miles further on at Byrness. So I trudged on, the Way leaving the forest track and following a path that ran close to the banks of a swollen and fast flowing river. At one point a footbridge crossing a tributary that fed into the river was underwater, and I had to cross by creeping along the narrow lower spar of one of the wooden handrails hoping it would bear my weight. As usual, those last couple of miles seemed to take an age and I felt exhausted by the time I reached the hostel that was made up of two ordinary terraced houses in a crescent. A sign pinned on the garden gate said that the warden had just ?popped out? and I was to let myself in by the back. There was no-one else there, and I began to dry clothes off and make tea whilst awaiting the warden who did not appear until an hour or so later. She was friendly, however, and chatted with me awhile. I described my day?s travails, particularly regarding the very muddy and steep section at the beginning of the Redesdale Forest, and she asked why I had not nipped over the wall which, although technically trespassing, was what many other local walkers did to avoid that particularly notorious section. I wondered why it had not occurred to me, and realised that I was guilty of slavishly following the path despite that it was obviously the worst possible route up that hill. I was persisting in always following the path almost as if it was an addiction, and I resolved in future to be prepared to venture ?off- path? when appropriate. 262 The warden also confirmed what I had begun to realise myself, that in the main it was all older people doing the Way now, and less of them. The demographic had changed drastically in the last 15 to 20 years along with the drop in numbers, and the closing caf?s, Bed and Breakfasts and hostels were a sign of what might be facing the Hadrian?s Wall Path in a few years time. No-one else turned up that evening, and I sat in the lounge toasting my feet in front of the electric bar heater listening to the small portable radio I had with me before an early night, drifting off to the sound of rain rattling against the window pane. Day Three The following morning a watery sun greeted me as I pulled back the curtains in the dormitory room before packing my gear away and having a leisurely breakfast of cereal bought from the hostel. I did not plan to walk very far this day, only about nine miles to the mountain refuge hut that was set by the Pennine Way amidst the high remote hills of the Cheviots, and where I planned to overnight. The wind had dropped considerably, and the ground was beginning to dry as I retraced my steps from the day before to a garage and caf? where I had another breakfast before picking up on the Way that crossed the busy A68 close by and then began to ascend the steep, wooded slope of Byrness Hill. I remembered from my previous trip some five years before that I had found this hill a struggle, but maybe because then I had done it at the end of a long days walk rather than at the start of it, I found myself close to the top surprisingly quickly. The last section was clear of the conifers, and the path switch-backed up through the new growth bracken and round a large boulder upon which their appeared to be the shape of a large face. I wondered if past inhabitants had also noticed it, even regarding it as being sentient and with power, knowing how many ?pre-modern? cultures regarded such shapes in the landscape as having a spiritual significance. The wind was stronger now on the top of the ridge and I gazed across the broad green hills that rolled away ahead of me, the dark forests still a feature to one side, seeking out the thin linear mark of the Path that traced its way up towards the distant Windy Crag. It was a bright day, the horizon crisp and sharp, the threat of rain gone, and I made steady progress across the waving grasses of the moorland that flashed and shimmered in the light. Some sections of the path were very boggy, the black scar of it made wide from walkers attempting to detour the worse of it, whilst in other areas flagstones had been laid through the black, bare peat. The evocatively named Raven?s Knowe and Ogre Hill were crossed, their stories and myths lost in time but still resonating with imagined meanings, and then the Way turned sharply away from the edge of the forest plantation it had been keeping company with, to follow a burn upstream to an area called Chew Green. Here there were the remains of Roman camps and the old route of Dere Street. Long grassy mounds marked the outlines of the ancient forts that used to guard this section of the Roman road. I took a break on one of the banks 263 and gradually became aware of an eerie atmosphere about the place that was silent apart from the rustle of the grass in the wind and only but deepened by the occasional faint metallic crump of shells being fired in the far distance over the hills from an artillery range. Again it felt as if there was supernatural presence at the site and before long I felt compelled to move on, as if the ghosts of a distant past were still hovering close by. Later, I discovered that it was here a temporary court was often established, catching smugglers, thieves and rustlers as they passed through, swiftly putting them on trial before hanging them on the spot. I passed an old wooden gate with a sign forbidding vehicular access onto the Roman road of Dere Street which was but a muddy bridleway now crossing the bare moors. The Way ran parallel with it for a mile or so before turning away and beginning a long ascent towards Lamb Hill and the refuge hut there. Its outline came into sight as I came to the top of a hill, sat on the crest of a steep slope opposite, and as I approached I could make out two figures walking away up the far hill, the first walkers I had seen all day. The hut was little more than a large shed on a concrete plinth, with benches within running round its walls and a single window. I pitched my tent next to it, in case others turned up needing the hut?s shelter, collected water from a stream at the bottom of the hill and brewed up tea as the sun began to make an appearance. I snoozed awhile in its warmth until the showers returned and I sheltered back in the hut, watching a company of wild goats slowly wander over the far slope of Lamb Hill and then begin to settle down as the evening closed in. The shadows began to lengthen over the bare hills with the return of a setting sun and I set off for a final wander around the hut. On far slopes facing the south west were the marks of what looked like old field work systems, from maybe when the climate was warmer. I wondered whether the land had changed over the centuries, or had it been always as bare and cropped by sheep for millennia? Despite its remoteness and the stark bare beauty that I saw in it, this land was as much a reflection of a place adapted and attuned to the production of meat and wool. I climbed the hillock behind the hut and looked to the west and the wide open views over lower hills to the lowlands beyond, hidden under a blanket of mist through which the rays of the sun, now low on the horizon and below the dark clouds, pierced with golden shards of light. I returned to the hut, lit a candle, and began to bed down for the night listening to the strengthening wind buffeting the walls and rushing around the surrounding slopes. Day Four The rain had returned overnight, and I trudged up the long slope of Lamb Hill in mist, for some reason feeling the weight of my rucksack more than ever, and pondering the irony that John Muir, the inspirational walker of 19 th century United States, only used to carry on his multi-day hikes in the High Sierras a satchel for botanical collecting and ?a crust of bread strapped to his waist?. 264 I became aware of two sets of relatively fresh footprints on the muddy path that I guessed were from the two walkers I had seen the day before ahead leaving the refuge hut. They had written in the visitor?s book there a brief message and that they were 67 and 69 years old, undoubtedly proud of being that age and close to completing the Pennine Way, and I wondered whether they were the couple I had met two days before at Blakehopeburnhaugh who I had taken to be much younger. I was thinking more and more about the value of continuing to stick to the path since I was passing through open access land and so could quite easily choose to make up my own route. I was now quite often walking parallel to the muddier sections of the Way and finding the going consequently much easier; I was also coming across areas that once had been badly eroded but now were healing, evidence that people were walking through less frequently. At the aptly named Windy Gyle a bridleway crossed the path at right angles. Looking at the sparse details marked on my strip-map of the surrounding features of the Pennine Way, I thought as a variation I could drop down off the high hills to a lower track and follow that before once again climbing up to meet the Path again. So I set off down the bridleway that descended off the hill that eventually brought me to an isolated farm where I chatted with two farmers there busy doing some welding on a quad bike. I then headed off down a track that I presumed was in the right direction, bolstered by their being no objections from the farmers as I left them and presuming I was on a public right of way. I passed through a gate and a large flock of sheep parted to either side of the track revealing the fly-blown corpse of a dead lamb that maybe I should have taken as an omen warning that this was not the direction I thought it was, as I was to eventually discover. I took shelter from a heavy shower, thunder rolling around the hills briefly before the sun reappeared and I resumed on my course. I convinced myself that a shack in the distance high on the hillside was the refuge hut marked on the map and was confident I was where I thought I was and making fast progress. Then I found the track was petering out, and the hills were closing in on the valley, forcing me ever higher, and not corresponding to what the few elevation lines on my map showed. I checked my compass to find that I was walking in the opposite direction to what I thought. I just could not work out how I had gone wrong, and even began to think that somehow I had magnetised my compass and that it was at fault rather than me, a classic and very basic mistake to make. However, after some head scratching I decided that I had only lost my way rather than actually being lost, and since I had all the kit I needed for several days, there was really no problem. Instead, I felt a certain liberation as I carried on, heading for the highest hill in order to get my bearings. Suddenly the surrounding land had become unknown in an indefinable way as compared to half an hour before, and I was enjoying the uncertainty of where I was, as if released from the tyranny of following a map and designated path and so no longer bound to a timetable or direction. 265 After some steep climbing up grassy slopes, I reached a crest and a wide path that I decided to follow uphill. Within half a mile or so, I suddenly spied a fingerpost with the familiar ?Pennine Way? on it. With a shake of my head it dawned on me that I had walked in a wide circle and was back in precisely the same place where I had originally decided to make my detour. For a while I was tempted to just to walk off into the hills following my nose, but the lure of the path had captured me again, and timetables and destinations to keep had returned. So I carried on along the Pennine Way, gradually climbing up the long slopes to Cairn Hill before making the long undulating descent past another refuge hut, and over the comparatively craggy peak of the Schil, accompanied by the rumble of more thunder and flashes of lightning that were landing uncomfortably close and hurried me on. The path was now descending continuously, and after another brief shower the sun returned as I picked up on a track and then a lane. Another steep hill was climbed, and then Kirk Yetholm and the end of the Pennine Way came into sight. Within five minutes I was passing the village green and then I was at the Youth Hostel where I booked myself in before going to the Inn to treat myself to a large meal and several pints. 266 An Analysis From the preceding narrative of walking the last stages of the Pennine Way three themes emerged. The first of these is regarding changes in the demographics and fewer numbers of people walking the Pennine Way, an issue linked to some of my previous considerations of the experience of walking and landscape, and one of the reasons I chose to walk the final section of the long distance path. The second, and more philosophical, issue has also been a constant aspect of all my walks, and regards the relationship between the walker and paths. Footpaths and public rights of way are particularly consistent features to be found in Britain and are therefore fundamental in regarding the experience of walking in its landscape. The final theme addresses one other element of my walk through the Cheviots and one of the reasons I chose to make it; the experience of walking alone in a remote and less frequented region, combined with the practice of wayfaring that I had come to realise made a fundamental relationship with embodied mobility, place and landscape. Therefore, what follows is a consideration of these themes that serves as a final discussion of these and other issues that arose in the thesis of my researching walking, landscape and their relationship with each other. The Decline of Walking One of the reasons I chose to walk the last 50 or so miles of the Pennine Way was in order to see who else was walking it. Whilst there is not an officially recognised ?best time? to walk this long distance path, late June and early July provides long daylight hours and, on average, the lowest rainfall. I thought, therefore, this may be the best time to encounter the maximum amount of people walking the long distance footpath?s length. It rapidly became clear, and as I had previously suspected, that the numbers of people walking the Way had declined rapidly over the past two to three decades. Many businesses providing accommodation or refreshments along its length had closed due to lack of trade, and the few walkers that there were tended to be older and not backpacking in the classic sense of carrying ?all the gear?. This trend of a decline of use and lack of younger participants appears to be confirmed by statistical evidence. Whilst there has been limited research in this area, Kay and Moxham 267 (1996) suggest that the numbers of people participating in all forms of recreation, including walking, in the countryside has been steadily falling. In addition, the National Trail User Survey (Edwards, 2007) found that of those people using a National trail or long distance path in 2007 there were more people aged 45 to 64 than any other age group, and more people aged 65 plus than those aged 25 to 34. The smallest group was that aged 18 to 24. Furthermore, walking as a form of transportation also appears to be declining. Between 1986 and 2005 the average proportion of journeys that were made on foot fell from 34% to 23%, between 1995 and 2005 the average number of walk trips per person fell by 16%, and less than half of all children now walk to school (Ramblers, 2010). Whether or not this decline might be reversed is open to debate, and why fewer people walk for recreation or transport is not within the remit of this thesis (although this would be an interesting future research project). However, in researching the experience of walking in a variety of landscapes, it has become increasingly apparent to me that walking and landscape are inextricably linked culturally and historically (Wallace, 1993; Jarvis, 1997; Solnit, 2001; Amato, 2004). Furthermore, walking is also a process and practice that is fundamental in the making of place (Seamon, 1980; Tilley, 1994; Creswell, 2004; Ingold, 2004), and it is argued central to community cohesiveness and health (Jacobs, 1961; Adams, 2001; Jacks, 2004). In the National Trail User Survey (Edwards, 2007) there is also another finding of significance. Of all the reasons as to what motivated people to walk some or all of the 15 long distance paths surveyed, consistently the main one by far was because of a ?love of nature and landscape (including heritage)?, whilst ?for adventure and exhilaration? came consistently amongst the lowest (Edwards, 2007:6). Whilst these results are by no means definitive, and recognition must be made that the sample gathered by the survey consisted somewhat more of those who occupied an older demographic, it does suggest that the experience of walking in the cultural landscape is of great significance despite that this may have been somewhat neglected in favour of over-emphasising the adventure element by those seeking to encourage it (Brookes, 2002; Wattchow and Brown, 2011). In presenting walking a long distance path as being a challenge activity, it immediately proposes that the landscape is something to be overcome, removing it from a realm that an individual might be with it to one where the individual is against it (Henderson, 2002). The activity of such 268 walking becomes to be about the predetermined outcomes rather than the experience in itself (Loynes, 1998), and the landscape a commodity to be consumed (Hogan, 1992). In so doing, walking becomes increasingly marginalised as an activity where one is in opposition with one?s surroundings rather than being part of them. This situation might be further exacerbated by the continual emphasis put on specific techniques of walking, safety, map and compass procedures prompting the walker to be forever attempting to conform to particular prescribed behaviours. As Edensor (2000:97) observes: ?Rather than an uninterrupted occasion for contemplation and sensual pleasure, such disciplines lead to continual physical self-control and spatial orientation?. Walking becomes a regime of multiple skills to be acquired and continually referred to which only serves to further alienate it as an activity from wider participation. The decline in walking, both as recreation and for transportation, may have major consequences regarding how people make identity with a sense of place and community. Walking, as Adams (2001:186) notes is a ?vanishing experience? leading to ?a vanishing sense of place?. He goes on to propose: The disappearance of walks ? the walk to work, the walk to the store, the walk to the park, and the pleasure to walk ? directly contributes to the often observed thinning out of the meaning of place frequently associated with modernity and the reduction of sensory involvement in one?s surroundings, as well as weakening place-based forms of community... the romantic urge to envision walking as part of the ?good life? is not an indulgence but a strategic response to the ideology of bodily immobility as a necessary adjunct of the good life (Adams, 2001:187). The multi-sensory and physically embodied apprehension of one?s surroundings that walking affords is qualitatively and profoundly different from that of the passive, visually prejudiced experience of late modernity that is increasingly mediated through mechanical or virtual environments (Tuan, 1974). This grounded, embodied perception of place afforded by peripatetic knowledge and the spatial stories that arise from such practice (de Certeau, 1984) are fundamental elements as to how humans dwell in the environment (Ingold, 2000) and make sense of the relationship between their surroundings and their identity. A decline in walking brings with it an 269 increasing alienation of the individual and society with place, the world and each other (Adams, 2001; Solnit, 2001; Amato, 2004). Whether such a decline is destined to continue is open to debate. Groups such as the Ramblers Association (2008) have suggested that rates of those participating in all forms of walking may have stabilised, and in recent years walking has been increasingly promoted as being an activity which benefits both physical and mental health (Morris and Hardman, 1997; Mind, 2007). Whether the activity of walking as both transportation and recreation has a renaissance in popularity or not, there also needs to be recognition as to the significant role it plays as a cultural and social phenomenon that is fundamental as to how humans occupy, relate to and make sense of place and space. As I have suggested, all varieties of walking have a great significance as to how associations with place are formed, enabling an embodied, personal relationship to be formed with landscape and its cultural associations, and that these qualities are increasingly being considered in approaches of outdoor pedagogy and leisure provision (Dahle, 1994; Birrell, 2005; Wattchow and Brown, 2011), as is attention given to the particular attributes that walking offers (Henderson and Vikander, 2007; Stewart, 2008). Furthermore, in order to develop such a relationship, Brookes (2002) makes the argument that consideration should also be given to repeated visits or re- inhabitation, or the encouragement to explore a geographical region through a number of walks, rather than a fleeting, one-off engagement. Bender (2001:83) makes the significant observation that ?by moving along familiar paths, winding memories and stories around places, people create a sense of self and belonging. Sight, sound, smell and touch ? mind and body inseparable?. In such a way a sense of place and identity with it is formed through a combined relationship of memory, imagination, culture and embodied action, and integral to this relational experience is the following of paths. Walking Paths In Britain there are at least 140,000 miles of official off-road public rights of way, and numerous additional unrecorded paths open by permission or under other arrangements (Ramblers, 2010). They are an integral part of the British landscape, and Kay and Moxham (1996) contend should be recognised as having a particular 270 hierarchy in it, rarely found elsewhere as to the diversity of opportunities it affords in exploring and experiencing the multiple environments that constitutes it. The following of paths was a constant feature of my walks. So constant was this practice of following paths that their significance almost passed unnoticed until I started to ponder upon their specific quality, particularly when walking the final section of the Pennine Way as described in the previous narrative. The way their surfaces changed, how I tended to slavishly follow their route despite better alternatives being available, what happened when I left their security, the very nature of their coming into existence and the meanings made of them; these considerations increasingly began to come to the fore. After all, what exactly are paths? A path is often regarded as the physical mark on the ground shaped by previous individuals, a line in a story of culture shaping landscape (Hindle, 2001). However, whilst a path might be considered as existing as a worn trace on the ground or a material lain down upon which to walk, it also exists to some extent in the air above, as the cleared space that allows free passage of head and shoulders of either human or animal. A path may also be defined by what borders it. The hedges, the trees, the ditches, or even the crops, are what delineates its route; they are features of its passage through the landscape too. As such, it has its own ecology, a sequence of habitats forming a corridor of opportunities for life to take hold or to move along (Muir, 2008). Footpaths are not only routes for access; they are also barriers that impede access. They make overt as to what land is open for public use, and what land is private. They control our movements; regiment us to follow the prescribed route. The thin linear line through the land is our only experience of it. ?Stick to the path!? is a parental injunction, and ?Don?t Stray!? a warning we learn in childhood. Footpath planners and repairers know how hard it is to dissuade adult walkers from the habit of using the well-beaten path, and to take an alternative route; for this is to resist the re-assuring lure of visible evidence. The Path is a powerful trafficking device, creating a corridor of popular experience... (Lorimer, 2010:28). It is only in relatively recent years that such a widespread network of paths has come to exist in Britain. Prior to the latter part of the 20th century, footpaths were unmarked, often difficult to follow or permanently blocked by the landowners, and it 271 was only through vociferous campaigning by local and national walking groups that legislation came to be introduced that gradually gave statutory rights of access on paths and bridleways deemed to be in common use (Stephenson, 1989). However, as Edensor (2000:91) notes: ?The advent of wide-spread way-marking and the evolution of organized walking tours were disdained as a domestication of nature by certain walkers and the idea of following a path was dismissed as an unsuitable practice?. This seeking out those spaces perceived as un-trodden and devoid of paths came from a romantic notion of striding across moors and mountains (Jarvis, 1997) and that trespass was an art that enabled an appreciation of a hidden countryside, possibly made more attractive by its very denial of access. Graham (1927) writing in the early part of the 20th century describes trespass as being an enhanced way of walking, declaring: ?This is real England, the England into which you ought to have been born, rather than that of the curbed ways and tarred roads? (Graham, 1927:230). However, the very notion of trespass only came into being with the advent of land enclosure in the 18th and 19th centuries and the scrubbing out of traditional footpaths (Wallace, 1993); the valorisation of walking avoiding all human intervention in disciplining the body to follow a particular form in the landscape is as much a reaction to those paths lost as it is seeking a relationship with nature (Edensor, 2000). There is some irony that the very act of walking ?off track? is still making a path, whether that being the faintest of traces as evidence of passage or as a conceived route; paths are integral to walking whether they are followed or are made. In recent years paths have proliferated to encompass a wide range walking practices (Edensor, 2000). Like the fine filaments of a root, they seek out new territories to colonise, adding to the fine tapestry that both connects landscape but also divides it. Many of these routes have become increasingly designated as nature trails, heritage trails, or having particular cultural significance. Specified viewpoints are incorporated and the walker is invited to collect certain prescribed sights along the way (Urry, 2002). Paths are increasingly becoming themed and named. As Edensor (2000:91) observes: ?In this way, the British countryside has become intensively mapped by way-markers, anathema to the individualist walkers who seek nature unmediated by dense representation and contextualisation?. Trails have become invented that link dozens, maybe hundreds, of short stretches into a continuous whole by finger signs and emblems on posts. These long distance 272 trails are a relatively new feature in the landscape, despite being positioned as having some historical authenticity. The Ridgeway long distance path in Southern England is a modern interpretation comprising of a single linear route that was in reality a multitude of different paths (Hindle, 2001). Similarly, as previously mentioned, Hadrian?s Wall Path was never walked in Roman times as it is now, apart possibly from a handful of people; it was never the route of a path but the route of a wall. A path representing a particular historical theme and named as such seems to be an increasingly popular one. It panders to a notion that it has a particular significance of heritage, something that carries with it a sense of national ?belonging? (Edensor, 2002). Following the route is to follow a particular history that has been mythologized (Said, 2002) to suit the present circumstances and purposes of our culture. One of these purposes is economic acquisitiveness; walks and trails have become commodities to be consumed (Baudrillard, 1988; Selby, 2010). An industry has developed around them, from clothing and kit manufacturers to guide-book writers describing what is needed to walk these paths and how to walk them. Walkers follow the thin prescribed linear feature with barely a glance left or right; the walk has to be accomplished in the recommended time or even quicker (Edensor, 2000). Through their commitment of time and money, so walkers become consumers with all the expectations of service that comes with them. ?Boring? parts of walks become the fault of those seen to be responsible for them, and criticised for lack of forethought and planning to design them otherwise; any lack of facilities seen as the tourist authorities abdicating on their duties. These established, prescribed routes through the land provide a sense of security against getting lost in the outdoors, since little thought has to be given regarding crossing the land; decisions as to which direction to follow is abdicated in favour of following the course of a route that may have been laid down thousands or just a couple of years ago. My detour from the Pennine Way serves as an example as to how rapidly one can get lost once the signposted path is left. I found the experience a liberating one; no doubt due to my being well equipped and relatively at ease with being ?geographically challenged? from many years of losing my way. As Solnit (2005:10) notes there is an ?art of being at home in the unknown, so that being in its midst isn?t cause for panic or suffering, of being at home with being lost?. It was on 273 the final stages of the Pennine Way that I began to realize that whilst paths undoubtedly had great cultural and social significance, and held many attractions and benefits for the walker in England, to wander ?off-track? or to stray even briefly from their definitive line was also an option, albeit a rare opportunity. However, for many, to stray off the path is to be entering a forbidden and forbidding place. Without a route to follow a panic creeps in ? the path must be found again since to be off it is to be lost. As Kay and Moxham (1996:180) observe ?they are subtly frightened of being lost, metaphorically, no less than literally, on paths leading into the unknown depths of the countryside?. The introduction of ?access land? has not led to multitudes of walkers wandering over it ? in the main they continue to cling to the paths (Ramblers, 2010). A footpath also is a mark on the land that reflects the culture that made it, and the culture that continues to use it. It is memory embedded and inscribed in the land. As Solnit (2001:68) observes: A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do. To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep; to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts. Following a path is to follow a line made by ghosts, an aspect of spectral geographies that is concerned with the haunting of place and memory by previous inhabitants (Pinder, 2001: Maddern and Adey, 2008; Wylie, 2007, 2009), and a subject I shall return to in the next section of discussion. As such to walk along a path is a link not only to past histories but also past methods, patterns, strategies and techniques of engaging with the landscape (Tilley, 1994). The line of a path may feasibly be traced back to the Neolithic or even before that when it was a migration route for wild animals. Its origins might be from iron age track or Roman military roads, a drove route, a holloway, a corpse way, an enclosure road, a short peasants? path out to the fields from village or hamlet, or a longer route frequented by medieval pilgrims (Hindle, 2001; Muir, 2008). These past existences impinge into the present; clues imprinted into the physical environment that contain echoes of a past landscape, possibly very different to what now exists and yet maintain a continuity of presence. It is memory stamped 274 into the ground for the present to recall. Paths and trails are routes to remembrance just as they are routes to knowledge (Tuck-Po, 2008). Therefore, a path might also be considered as being what understanding is being made by an individual walking a particular route, a conceptual line of passage across the landscape. As such, it might be envisioned as much as an imagined place or concept in the landscape as it is a physical feature (Ingold, 2007). Through the passage of an individual on their own route they make their own unique path, and this path becomes a metaphor for their journey between places and through life (Olwig, 2008). The path is a repository of prior knowledge that is retrieved by the body and the imagination. The path is an extension of walking, the places set aside for walking are monuments to that pursuit, and walking is a mode of making the world as well as being in it. Thus, the walking body can be traced in the places it has made; paths, parks, and sidewalks are traces of the acting out of imagination and desire... Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world (Solnit, 2001:29). Such are their importance in how the world is understood, many indigenous cultures still regard paths as being fundamental to their existence (Tuck-Po, 2008), their culture (Legat, 2008) and even having a deeper spiritual significance, such as the Australian Aboriginal peoples (Tuan, 1974; Chatwin, 1987). There is evidence that in pre-history and up until relatively recently, paths in Britain were also symbolic for their spiritual associations (Devereaux, 2001; 2003), where in walking them particular sacred qualities are conferred upon the walker such as the following of mazes (Fisher, 2004) or cursus monuments (Trubshawe, 2005). The path becomes symbolic of the practice of walking, and has some resonance with paths that exist as an expression of creativity. As an example, the artist Richard Long (1997, 2005) is intimately concerned with the experience of walking and the making and following of paths where the agents of the marks of movement are absent. His work reflects the practice of walking and its constituent elements of sensations felt by the body, the impacts it makes on the landscape, and ?the serendipity of things stumbled upon, heard and sighted? (Edensor, 2000:105), whilst also articulating alternate representations regarding it. 275 Paths not only serve to link places together, they are integral to the constitution of places and indivisible from them. As Ingold (1993:167) suggests, ?there can be no places without paths, along which people arrive and depart; and no paths without places, that constitute their destinations and points of departure?. Paths arise out of the movement between places, and impose a pattern of habitual behaviour on people. Movement is embodied, on the side of people, in their ?muscular consciousness?, and on the side of the landscape, in its network of paths and tracks. In this network is sedimented the activity of an entire community, over many generations. It is the taskscape made visible (Ingold, 2000:204). Taskscape is defined by Ingold (2000) as the mutual and interlocking ensemble of tasks, the constitutive acts of dwelling. From this perspective, paths may be considered as thresholds of dwelling where walking is a complex performance of achievements, relational to spatial and temporal settings, that may only be appreciated in the emergence or unfolding of its practice (Jones, 2006). Paths, therefore, may be considered as being places since, as Ingold (2007:2) suggests: ?To be a place, every somewhere must lie on one or several paths of movement to and from places elsewhere. Life is lived... along paths, not just in places, and paths are lines of a sort?. Ingold (2007) proposes that human beings generate lines wherever they go, and that the world is inhabited by people and consists not of things but of lines. He draws together the processes of walking, weaving, observing, storytelling, singing, drawing and writing that he conceives as being interwoven and interconnected; as all having a close relationship with each other because all proceed along lines. He also makes a distinction between a route and a trail. A route is for points of destination, like a dotted line they are point to point connectors, and as such exist as a function of transport. They differ from a trail which he describes as being made by the wayfarer because these are gestural and traced out. Drawing freehand, I take my line for a walk. Likewise the wayfarer, in his perambulations, lays a trail on the ground in the form of footprints, paths and tracks... Like the line that goes out for a walk, the path of the wayfarer wends hither and thither, and may even pause here and there before moving on. But it has no beginning or end. While on the trail the wayfarer is always somewhere, yet every ?somewhere? is on the way to somewhere else. The inhabited world is 276 a reticulate meshwork of such trails, which is continually being woven as life goes along them (Ingold, 2007: 79-84). The wayfarer is analogous to the path, and the path to the written line. Both are comparable to the telling of a story or the writing of a narrative; they all exist as lines that weave and make shape of lived life. Walking and writing, wayfaring and the telling of stories; they are all intimately related to each other, each using the other as metaphor and simile to describe their forms and functions. In both wayfaring and storytelling ?it is the movement from place to place ? or from topic to topic ? that knowledge is integrated... the storyteller proceeds from topic to topic, or the traveller from place to place... knowledge is integrated along a path of movement? (Ingold, 2007:91). The narrative form and walking, therefore, have a distinct affinity with each other in that they both impart knowledge through the line of their movement, whether across a landscape or across a page, and bring place into existence by the telling of stories and by linking one place with another. Therefore, the use of a series of auto-ethnographical narratives that tell stories of the walks I conducted in England serve to impart a knowledge that closely reflects the form of knowledge and reflexivity I gained by walking in landscape. As Solnit (2001:72) observes: This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as guide... The songlines of Australia?s aboriginal peoples are the most famous examples conflating landscape and narrative. The songlines are tools of navigation across the deep desert, while the landscape is a mnemonic device for remembering stories: in other words, the story is a map, the landscape a narrative. Walking, landscape and narrative ? all are conflated to the point where they are indivisible from one another. They are conjoined elements that reflect each other and are held together by the practice of making lines. 277 The Spectral and the Wayfarer Whilst not wishing to be drawn into any debate regarding whether it is better to walk alone or with others, since both forms have their advantages and disadvantages as they have their advocates and opponents (Edensor, 2000; Solnit, 2001), my experience of walking in relative solitude for the majority of time whilst traversing the Cheviots did appear to have a particular and specific outcome. Making an extensive walk brings about a particular state of reflexivity, and when undertaken alone may ?produce an acute awareness of small changes of mood, along with the ever-changing landscape? (Edensor, 2000:102). An acute receptivity to a perceived mood of the landscape appeared to be engendered by an embodied experience of its multiple characters that resist the idealized tendencies imposed upon it (Jarvis, 1997). Through a singular engagement with all the senses of terrain, surfaces, and weather, a relationship is slowly acquired of a complex and multitudinous entity. Being alone makes one susceptible to an awareness of the atmosphere or ambience of particular places, along with the recognition that such manifestations are as likely to be generated by internal influences as they are by external ones. The odd sensations of there being a presence at the Mare and Foal Standing Stones and at the Roman Camp as described in the preceding narrative brought about an element of disquiet within me, of a perception that either the landscape held an unseen manifestation or I was projecting upon these sites my own fears and insecurities. On the one hand the two sites may hold a psychic record of emotions, memories or even consciousness (Devereux 1999; Holloway and Kneale, 2008), or on the other my own: ?Fears and phobias disturb the ordinary and the expected as projections? upon these sites (Maddern and Adey, 2008:293). In either case, these particular landscapes were imbued with an uncanny sense of spectral inhabitation. Notions of spectrality and landscape, or spectro-geographies, have become increasingly current in contemporary geographical thought (Maddern and Adey, 2008). They attest as to how space and time are folded together allowing an intimate connection to be made with presences, events, people and places in the landscape and ?confounds settled orders of past and present? (Wylie, 2007:172), and are constitutive of a metaphysical sensibility regarding landscape. As such, it challenges the concept of a phenomenological being-in-the-world with one where place as dwelling and 278 having an authentic identity in a static sense is replaced by haunting. Wylie (2007) draws on the work of W.G. Sebald as an example as to how spectrality is used as a way to write about place, memory and self, and central to his approach is that of the wandering walker: Wandering is figured as a primary or given mode, so making a restless background of ebbs and flows the very condition of possibility for apparitions and visitations of place and memory... Wandering has here an originary, a priori quality, and in this way it precisely displaces the opposition of the sedentary and the nomadic, and more specifically the opposition of ?movement? and ?place? in which the latter is conceived in terms of dwelling, or authentic identity (Wylie, 2007:176-178). Walking, as part of the emerging paradigm of mobilities of practice in landscape (Merriman et al., 2008; Cresswell and Merriman, 2010), articulates a sense of place as being a continuum of instances for ever evolving and changing. This is the perspective of the wayfarer (Thrift, 2006:141-142) where: ?Life is a meshwork of successive folding... in which the environment cannot be bounded and life is forged in the transformative process of moving around?. As a wayfarer, landscape is not just an embodied and phenomenological experience, but also one where past, present and futures may temporally co-exist as reflexive imagination and spectral haunting, the practice of which ?embraces the difference, the alterity of nature, the contingent, the heterogeneous, the decentred, the fleeting, and the unrepresentable? (Edensor, 2000:102). Wayfaring also expresses a belonging to a landscape. It is a statement of being a part of the environment, of fulfilling the ancient ecological niche of being nomadic. It is an activity that might be viewed as having both a biological and cultural function ? the infusion of the two being the experience. The embodied approach of walking over the land?s surface is an accumulation of traditions as to how it is approached and how meanings are derived from it. Landscape is an arena where identity, myth, history, place and space meet, and as such: ?Landscape is tension. The term denotes the tensions through which subject and object, self and world, find their measure, balance and attenuation; their coil and recoil, proximity and distance? (Wylie, 2006:465). 279 The perception of landscape, however, is contrived through cultural influences as to how to perceive it ? a learnt way of making understandings informed by one?s surrounding culture. Increasingly, these cultural imperatives concerning the land have been generated through idealised perspectives of it ? particularly through the arts and, latterly, the general media. Cultural icons associated with landscape are continually reproduced offering up a sanitised, approved version of that land. Landscape becomes viewed from an idealised and imagined perspective that is but a distorted reflection. As an outsider or a non-local, a specific landscape is seen through the prism of received wisdom. The insider or local has a very different understanding and perception of it as a particular place, rather than landscape. Its meanings are more hidden, and it has personal stories intimately associated with it. The cultural way an outsider considers landscape often serves to hide these other perspectives of those living in that land. Walking through the landscape as a wayfarer, however, provides the opportunity to be both outsider experiencing the landscape, and a glimpse of what an insider may experience, through having an intimate and physical interaction with it which challenges those easy cultural motifs generated through a passive relationship with it. It produces disequilibrium where encounters are made in both phenomenological and the temporally fluid world of spectrality. Walking is a way of engaging and interacting with the world, providing the means of exposing oneself to new changing perceptions and experiences and of acquiring an expanded awareness of our surroundings. Through such experiences, and through a deeper understanding of the places we occupy, we acquire a better understanding of our position in the world (Moorhouse, 2002:33). 280 Chapter Twelve Conclusion ?Solvitur ambulando... It is solved by walking? (St. Augustine). As indicated in the introduction to this thesis, the interpretation of landscape, the significance of walking and their relationships have been rarely considered, critically examined or the subject of much research in leisure or outdoor pedagogic practice, despite their significance within other fields of academic study such as anthropology, archaeology and cultural geography. Therefore, the aim of this research project was to examine how a variety of specific landscapes in England are generally perceived, how prevailing cultural and social interpretations influence this perception, and whether these interpretations may be modified by the practice of walking as an alternate way of making understandings and meanings with landscape. In order to investigate the above a number of walks were undertaken, the routes devised to offer opportunities to investigate a variety of types of landscapes to be found in England and consider their affects on the self and identity. These walks included places that might be termed as having archaeological, historical, cultural and social significance, and were made through urban, semi-urban, and rural areas of different types; a mix of environments that might be recognised as being what makes up a large part of the English landscape. A number of these walks also took place in my local area, a landscape that is a mix of urban, semi-urban, arable and wooded countryside, so as to provide the opportunity to investigate the specificity of the local place and its significance in regards to identity and affects on the self. Other walks I made explored areas outside of my locale but which I had visited before, and also places entirely new to me to in order to explore the same issues. The wide variety of historical or contemporary cultural elements to be found when walking in England, in either urban or rural settings, how one identifies with them or not, and why that is the case, offered a way of exploring alternate perspectives of place. Therefore the specific qualities of different landscapes, how all are repositories of particular histories, myths, stories, and mysteries, and how these culturally 281 influenced phenomena are perceived, felt and imagined by the walker were a central aspect of the research undertaken. The experiences of these phenomena were also considered in the context regarding walking as a process and practice that is integral as to how landscape and place are perceived and understood. The research was carried out by utilising a plurality of approaches; a combination of phenomenology, auto-ethnography, and walking as practice informed by the developing mobile methodologies paradigm. The following is a brief consideration of what emerged through using these combined approaches and their contribution to the resulting findings and knowledge. Phenomenology Landscape is about the individual experience and perception of it which involves a skilful bodily activity interacting with the environment (Velmans, 2006). In the consideration of the phenomenology of landscape, therefore, the perspectives of the environment or places within have to be considered at least a part of that perceptual experience, as does the interaction with them is in part a construct of mind, brain and body. Pile (1996) argues that reality is constituted by the real, the imaginary and the symbolic, and the individual experiences it within these realms phenomenally, whereas Merleau-Ponty (2002) makes emphasis on the role of the body in human experience as the engaged action, with those things perceived including other people. Consciousness is argued as being embodied, and equally the body is infused with consciousness, or cognition. When making the walks I carried out and recording my data through notes, photographs and sketches, I attempted to consider how the landscape was being perceived by my embodied self, how it related to a cultural perspective, and how my perception related to a phenomenal experience of the real, the imagined, and the symbolic. This was because when experiencing landscape phenomenologically, a walker perceives it with an intentional, engaged action, and with the multiple meanings it holds, consciously and subconsciously, on multiple levels via cultural bias, inclination, memory and imagination. It is through these prisms landscape and the places within may become representations of different times and of peoples? different 282 worldviews (Dorrian and Rose, 2003). On almost all of my walks, past cultures and inhabitants of the landscape were particularly important elements, and these arose through my personal and culturally derived perspective. An example of such in Chapter Five was my following the old drovers? route through High Wycombe; it was ?discovered? by myself through piecing together bits of evidence uncovered through research because I found it personally interesting, and through walking its route I imagined how the route may have been used back through to prehistory. The experience and perception of walking this route through the town was, therefore, a blend of interpretations informed by multiple sources. My walking journeys provided a phenomenological perspective of the landscape that drew together embodied engagement and experience involving perception infused with cultural associations being made of it. These associations involved the stories told of that landscape, the histories and myths embedded in it, as well as an individual experience that is influenced culturally, and my walks along and around Hadrian?s Wall in Chapters Seven, Eight and Ten are reflective of these combinations. Recent phenomenological approaches focus on a being-in-the-world attachment to place and landscape (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994), where mind and body become inseparable. My phenomenological experience of walking demonstrated that an embodied, intentional process is an affective engagement with the environment and the terrain, where the route and the walk becoming an indivisible whole and so becomes a performative culture of practice (Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly, 2009). Therefore, my utilising the conceptual framework of phenomenology proved to be particularly suitable as an approach to enquire how landscapes are perceived, how cultural and social interpretations influence this perception, and whether these interpretations may be modified by the practice of walking. Phenomenology enables the researcher to simultaneously engage with multiple perspectives of perception that involve embodied action, individual experience and cultural motifs. In addition, such a framework is also an advantageous approach when using of auto-ethnography as a methodology. 283 Auto-ethnography This research approach proved to be an appropriate form of enquiry regarding walking journeys in landscape, since it enabled a series of reflexive stories to be told of how I experienced them and the feelings that arose. Furthermore, the narrative story is often described metaphorically in the context of a journey, and landscape interpreted through stories and imagination in the context of a culture. The auto- ethnographical method enabled me to describe how I as a walker experienced and culturally constructed the landscape, and also reflected how the walker is passing through a place rather than occupying it, forever mid-stride between the here and there (Wylie, 2005). It is important to note however that narratives that I produced, whilst employing some of the characteristics suggested by Richardson (1994, 2000a, 2000b), Ellis (1997), and Ellis and Bochner (2003) of evocative writing, reflected rather an approach suggested by Anderson (2006) of analytical auto-ethnography, that is compatible with more traditional ethnographic practices. Such an approach allows the researcher to be part of the research group or setting, for the discourse to include other voices, and for interpretation to be made by the researcher in developing theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena. In addition, it is my consideration this research project demonstrates through utilising such an approach auto-ethnography might be applied to a far wider field of enquiry than generally thought suitable. The presentation of my auto-ethnographical narratives, therefore, were not meant to be an emotional journey for the reader of my subjective and personal experience, and in the context of the marginalised ?other?, but rather creative and evocative accounts of my walking journeys that attempted to adhere to an accurate portrayal of what was encountered and felt, with reference to other people?s interpretations, and with a subsequent critical analysis of the arising themes or motifs in context of broader cultural and social considerations (Kidd and Finlayson, 2009). Furthermore, by combining auto-ethnography with phenomenological and the new mobilities? paradigm, an effective methodology emerged that might be utilised for future studies where the researcher is engaged with embodied activity and the environment. The following is a brief summary of key themes that emerged. 284 Walking and Place From the various walking journeys I made, themes began to arise that articulated not only how walking provided a number of different approaches that might be employed in the interpretation of landscape, but also how walking is fundamental as to how place is formed, envisioned and relationships made with it (Seamon, 1980; Tilley, 1994; Creswell, 2004; Ingold, 2004). In Chapter Five a number of approaches of psychogeography such as the d?rive and the drift were employed to investigate a known and local area; through both unguided and led walks around Hadrian?s Wall in Chapters Seven, Eight and Ten I came to make deeper and intimate understandings of the landscape there; whilst in Chapter Six I describe the particular affective feelings I have for Whiteleaf Hill that were built up over a number of years of walking the area. Furthermore, it became apparent that walking and landscape are inextricably linked culturally and historically (Wallace, 1993; Jarvis, 1997; Solnit, 2001; Amato, 2004), since on all of the walks I made it was these aspects that continued to come to the fore, and the argument that walking is central to community cohesiveness and health (Jacobs, 1961; Adams, 2001; Jacks, 2004) appears to have a validity. Through my walking journeys, I became aware of the importance of what is termed a sense of place and the movement through them. This is the emotional and subjective interpretation people have to place, often understood in the personal relationship one has to a specific locale, and is significant in the establishment and maintenance of a sense of identity (Massey, 1995; Lippard, 1997; Muir, 1999). These places hold distinct meanings for individuals and are accredited with certain attributes, they exist both physically and as places of imagination; stories are told and made by them, legends develop about them. Whilst walking Hadrian?s Wall, I was walking as much along a series of stories and myths as I was a physical entity; stories about the Reivers, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Roman Legionnaires mingled with the more personal tales told from the people I met. Place is not a neutral geographical backdrop; it is a dynamic medium that people interact with, influence and are influenced by, where one?s identity becomes a part of the story of that landscape (Tilley, 1994). 285 Being in place implies an awareness of practiced place, of movement in space. Such movements through place constitute not only how it is formed but also how it is always reformed. Furthermore, cultural geographers such as Thrift (1996, 2008) have suggested embodied practices and performances should be considered as a way of engaging with landscape and place, and might be envisioned as an embodied relationship with the world that are constantly being constructed and performed (Cresswell, 2004). The bodily engagement and practice with place has significance, therefore, to the consideration of landscape as something other than just a cultural image; rather than being considered just as a visual entity, landscape requires reconsideration as somewhere that is moved through in a process of bodily engagement as in the process of walking. Through my embodied engagement with landscape by walking, so I became aware of it as an entity that is contingent and evolving through movement and stories, and this was what a sense of place meant. From these experiences, I suggest the landscape that is dwelt in and moved through in a full embodied sense provides a better understanding of the relationship that may be had with it. It is also subtly different to experience of space and place, but rather an encompassing of all three together as a conceptual totality. In this context, landscape needs to be considered as the world that is known to those who dwell in it, arising from their inhabitation of its places and their journeys along the paths that connect them. Through my walking paths and trails through landscape, in particularly on the long distance paths of Hadrian?s Wall and the Pennine Way but also on the shorter walks in town and countryside, enabled a perspective to be gained that was fundamentally different from most others; it was an awareness of the extensive terrain and its intimate detail gained through the combination of a physical interaction and a reflexive consideration. As demonstrated in Chapter Eleven when walking through the Cheviot Hills, the narrative is concerned with not only how the experience of it is felt physically, the ground underfoot, the weather, the topography, but also the stories of place, its history, memories and imaginations. Furthermore, these experiences were sequential and active because it was a mobile encounter with the landscape. From this experience, I would suggest that how we understand and relate to our surroundings are distinctly different when moving or being mobile from when we 286 are static, and my approach of researching walking and landscape reflects the emerging methodological processes increasingly adopted to research and represent mobile experiences. Mobility research is concerned with all manners of bodily variant, transient behaviours and technologies, both in virtual and non-virtual space, and in the context of Sheller and Urry?s (2006) new mobilities paradigm has mobile practice and culture as being central in the consideration of social science processes. This mobilities paradigm undermines a sedentary approach that considers stability and place being a static consideration and normal, whilst distance, change and place as being in motion are considered abnormal. In the context of landscape, a methodology of mobility overcomes the associations it has with static pictorialism, and instead considers how it is emergent and animated through mobile and material practices and performances. In a similar context, I describe in Chapter Six how walking in the countryside around Whiteleaf Hill serves as a possible rebuttal to the sedentary and visually prejudiced perspective reflected by constructing the bench seat on it. A significant strand of mobility research considers the role walking plays in interpreting and practicing landscape or place. Walking is regarded as a body technique (Mauss, 2006) and a practice with performative properties that make engagements with the world (Thrift, 2008). I therefore suggest that through the social and cultural technique of walking landscape may be mobilised, animated, articulated and performed. I would also suggest that walking may be considered as being a product of places, an ordinary feature of everyday life, as a reflexive and internalised self-regard, and even as wilful or artful engagement (Lorimer, 2011). Walking Hadrian?s Wall as I did reflected a number of engagements that included elements of performance, culturally derived activity, reflexive practice, and symbolic associations as a tourist, a long distance walker, an ethnographer, and a wayfarer. Furthermore, as having distinct cultural meanings or expressions (Lorimer and Lund, 2008), or where the self and the landscape are in a process of simultaneously emerging and dissipating as if a spectral entity (Wylie, 2005), so landscape and place might be re-envisioned as being indivisible from the cultural practice and engagement of walking. It was through my practice of walking that the landscape became animated and place was brought into being. 287 Our experience of and in the world, therefore, is considered from the perspective that we move through it in a variety of practices and engagements that are fluid and complex, and emerging from that bricolage of engagement and practices are the stories of social life, or spatial stories. Throughout my walks, stories of place were told by others or told by me; they were what brought a meaning and significance to the land by animating it and exposing its multiple characteristics. It is through the telling of stories that place begins to be understood on a more intimate and personal level, thereby a process of identification with it begins to be possible, and personal stories and local myths produce a meaning or spirit of place that is intimately connected although not identical to landscape. Massey (1995a) describes place as being meeting places located at intersections of particular bundles of human activity spaces, locations of connections, interrelations, influences and movements. Places, therefore, are cultural constructions that are not static and so differ from landscape by the meanings humans cast upon them. Landscape might be modified by human activity, but would still exist without such interference. Place, however, is contingent upon the stories told about it for its existence that are reliant on movements through it. An example of this is the Bronze Age site that was pointed out to us on the guided walk north of the Wall in Chapter Ten; to experience the site it had to be moved through and a story told, and in so doing the place was formed and brought into being as having a particular specificity of place. Since walking enables an embodied, personal relationship to be formed with landscape and its cultural associations, and that it is so fundamental to how a sense of place is formed and relationships made with it, I suggest that these qualities should be given more consideration in approaches of outdoor pedagogy and leisure provision, particularly in regards to historical and cultural contexts, whilst attention should also be given to the particular attributes that walking offers. I would also suggest that both outdoor education practitioners and academics need to be more aware of the specificity of place and landscape character, give more regard to these entities as essential elements in pedagogic practice, and recognise the learning opportunities of reflective, reflexive and engaged practices in them. Furthermore, the preoccupations with risk, challenge and goal-orientated activities for inter/intra personal development are in need of some re-appraisal, particularly as they may be 288 considered as functions of colonialist and capitalistic dogma (Wattchow and Brown, 2011). Walking Paths This thesis demonstrates that to experience and make sense of landscape one needs to move through its places and along the paths that connect them ? to walk the landscape. In so doing landscape might become understood not only as an array of related features, but also an array of related activities, or a taskscape (Ingold, 2000), that you as a walker are also participating in. It is through this perspective of taskscape that orthodox perspectives of evolution, history, biology and culture are no longer considered as dichotomies but as part of an overall dwelling perspective where they are inextricably linked and inter-dependant, and part of a process that is on-going. In applying this perspective, landscape can neither be considered as a neutral and naturalistic backdrop to human activities, or a particular cultural or symbolic ordering of space. Rather it is the enduring record and testimony to the lives, works and activities of the past generations who have dwelt there, and in so doing have left there something of themselves. Many of my narratives reflect on those who once dwelt in the landscape, but in particular the Hadrian?s Wall chapters consider how past inhabitants? cultures, beliefs and histories impinge on the present through their physical remains, their symbolic associations, and their imagined presence. It is also in this context that landscape becomes a variety of spatial and temporal activities that are embodied involving a variety of senses, and as demonstrated throughout my narratives, walking is a practice that encapsulates all of these elements. This not only dispels the hegemony of vision ascribed to the appreciation of landscape, but also the possible accusation that paths are just but another form of amenity. Paths are the sedimented activity of past and present generations of communities, and the taskscape made visible. Through walking these paths one is part of this taskscape and engaging in a cultural practice that has a deep resonance with both creating and understanding a sense of place within it, and represents a connection to those past communities by being able not only to follow the same route as they once did, but 289 also to be part of a continuum of action that adds to the layers of memory associated with it. As such a footpath is a mark on the land that reflects the culture that made it, and the culture that continues to use it. It is memory embedded and inscribed in the land, a prior interpretation as to how best to traverse it and by moving through the same space of one?s predecessors is a means to become the same person and have the same thoughts (Solnit, 2001). Following a path is to follow a line made by ghosts, the haunting of place and memory by previous inhabitants. As such to walk along a path is a link not only to past histories but also past methods, patterns, strategies and techniques of engaging with the landscape (Tilley, 1994). On my walks along the variety of paths I followed I was always aware that I was continuing a practice of those who were there before me. Whether walking pavement, passageway, holloway, drover?s route, ancient path, or even recent trail, the ghosts of my predecessors were evidential as the mark underfoot and following along in my imagination. I make the assertion that the landscape in Britain has a particular quality and potential for engagement because of the multiple networks of paths that exist through the combinations of quirks of chance, accident, protest and design; engaging with the landscape by walking these paths may result in a better understanding of it. Paths, tracks and even roads are often the oldest of features in a landscape, being places resonant with history, as places of spectral haunting, and so reflect a direct and immediate connection to past inhabitants and how they dwelt there that is often underappreciated. Landscape as Amenity and Authentic Heritage Throughout the thesis, I observed that landscape is increasingly being controlled by centralised authorities under the auspices of conservation, heritage, and amenity. Some are becoming not only places of consumption through tourist recreation, but are also being changed by a process of hybridisation into places increasingly displaying the same homogenous characteristics. Chapter Six provides one example of this as how countryside is increasingly being regarded as a place of recreation through an urban (or suburban) ideology that seeks to maintain a myth of the rural. 290 I make the argument that prescribed recreational spaces arise from an urban sensibility in regards to nature and the rural, and might be conjectured in having its origins in the town public park, and a reflected aspect of this tendency to regulate and supervise nature and amenity is increasingly being transmitted onto rural spaces. The countryside, especially in the south of England, is a particularly contested space that not only carries these ideological representations but is also considered as a place where appropriate and obvious spacialisations of nature might be realised, such as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a Nature Reserve or land owned by the National Trust for its cultural or historical significance (Cloke and Little, 1997). Furthermore, the character of countryside is now overwhelmingly considered for its visual quality (Urry, 1995). From the perspective of a walker, such a passive and visually prioritised engagement with the environment that appears rooted in an urban sensibility seems not only inadequate, but also feels to be an aberration in regards in having any real understanding of its sense of place. I suggest that the walker in these landscapes to a limited extent may usurp and resist these notional representations through an embodied engagement with the sedimentated characteristics of a taskscape and its inter-generational footpaths. Another possible manifestation of an ideology of recreation consumption is that some landscapes and places are ascribed having a particular meaning or authenticity, a quality not in those objects so defined but rather because those with authority to do so says they are (Fees, 1996). It is this representation of a place taking on a particular authenticity of meaning that shifts its status from land to landscape (Urry, 2005), transforming historical site into an iconic one. Such iconic sites often become regarded as heritage sites, and the relationship between what is considered history and what is considered heritage is not necessarily interchangeable. Whilst history might be recognised as having always been subject to alteration to suit an ever- changing present (Lowenthal, 1985), heritage is what is recognised as such and what people will pay money to see (Voase, 2010). Heritage is therefore part of an industry that supplies a product to be consumed (Urry, 1995), and whilst it may be argued that heritage makes history more accessible and democratic (Selwyn, 1996), representations of the past are increasingly reliant on a steady flow of customers who have certain cultural and social expectations that they require to be met. 291 I discuss at length in Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine these themes regarding the use of heritage and the creation or maintenance of notions of historical inheritance since heritage is closely related to ideas surrounding cultural identity (Crouch, 2010). I make the argument in Chapter Ten that a fundamental rationale of heritage tourism is primarily concerned with the selection, display and preservation of sites and artefacts that are nationally significant and designed to promote an idea of nationhood. I also make the observation that heritage sites promote an ideological notion of authentic national identity, and are examples as how landscape and a selective reading of history serve a powerful function in the justification of certain nationalistic and political stances, and may be exploited to suit a certain political imperatives (Said, 2002). I also consider in Chapter Nine how authenticity is a contested concept and consider some of the various approaches that have been proposed to give a definition of it, suggesting that the form of existential authenticity (Wang, 1999) appears to provide a concept suitable for understanding contemporary engagements as a tourist consuming a heritage site as spectacle and walking it as a meaningful activity. The tension that exists between the quest for an authentic experience of self and the quest for authentic experience of the ?other?, and the inevitable resultant structural consequence of staged authenticity at a designated tourist or heritage site, may be reconciled by understanding authenticity in the existential context. Tourism and the concept of authenticity have been so contested because being a tourist and engaging in any leisure activity is socially and culturally derived and is always evolving and subject to change. Furthermore, if leisure and the tourist experience are understood as existing as a form of play, engaging in simulated recreations or pseudo-events at these sites may be regarded as demonstrating a capacity to enjoy the myth or story of what is being represented, whilst maintaining awareness that it exists in what has been described as the liminal (Turner, 1974), a region beyond the threshold of ordinary life which has components of ritualised activity and transformative potential. Considering my walking the Hadrian?s Wall long distance path in this context, whilst it may be considered as an invented route, something to be consumed as a pseudo- event and exhibiting elements of having a staged authenticity, and a postmodern world example of systematic and organised consumption (Baudrillard, 1988), I 292 suggest there is another interpretation. It might better be considered as having existential authenticity in that not only is the landscape engaged with actively and so experiencing an existential state of Being (Wang, 1999), but also in that it has both ?hot? and ?cool? authenticity (Selwyn, 1996). Furthermore, simply with the passage of time or feet or both, the Hadrian?s Wall long distance path becomes heritage and takes on an authenticity through a history of use. Walking as Pilgrimage The analogies between long distance paths and pilgrimage both appear to have particular significance when making a consideration of the experience of walking, particularly as a long distance walker, and these are discussed in Chapters Nine and Eleven. The very status given to a destination can affect the way we walk towards it (Lee and Ingold, 2006). Whether walking to a pilgrimage site, a heritage site, or simply the end of a trail it exists as a goal in the mind of the walker that has a symbolic relevance; it has power of legitimisation since it is a manifestation of tradition (?sergaard and Christensen, 2010). However, whilst this goal may carry some symbolic meaning, for the walker of both long distance paths and pilgrimages it is the path and the journey that are of prime importance. Whilst on all of my walks, it is on the paths followed that space is transformed into place (Lefebvre, 1991) and where space becomes a place filled with meanings and narratives. It is on paths that authenticity is created and self transformed in a purposeful engagement in the environment where the route and body combine so that the two become inseparable (Ingold, 2000). My walking the long distance paths of Hadrian?s Wall and on the last section of the Pennine Way share with making a pilgrimage as being a source of activity-related authenticity that is also related to a ritual-based activity that carries embodied intentionality. In both activities walking is a transformative practice, where one?s identity is displayed and the experience realised through bodily engagement in pursuit of self-realisation (Slavin, 2003). When walking a long distance path one tends to focus upon the self and the journey rather than the destination, and it becomes a meditative process as the body falls into a rhythm which is external to both body and mind and cannot be consciously 293 controlled, it just arises (Slavin, 2003). Throughout the narratives regarding walking the Hadrian?s Wall Path and the Pennine Way, reference is made to occasions when I progressed along long sections as if I were separate from the action, as if in a different state. Through such temporal and spatial bodily investment and interaction, a close relationship with the landscape is created not only in a physical sense, but also with the mythologized components of the path which merge with the ritualised process creating a liminal space within which self realisation may occur, whether religious or secular (?sergaard and Christensen, 2010). The ritual of the walker, whilst being a leisure activity, is also close to the ritual of the pilgrim in that the process is one of a journey. Moreover, that journey is an embodied one made on foot. For the walker and the pilgrim it is the journey that is important and this is at the centre of the authenticity of the experience. This is also reflective of the notion of existential authenticity which is concerned about transcending the banality of modern life by seeking a simpler truth and authentic self with the aid of activities or toured objects (Wang, 1999). I make the proposition in Chapter Nine that walking a long distance route has ritualised components that might be regarded as a form of secular pilgrimage. By the steady, methodical and even ritual practice of walking, the journey becomes neither material nor external but rather an ontologically different place of liminality that provides potential of an authentic realisation or reimagining of it and self (Turner, 1974). Wayfaring I suggest in Chapter Eleven that wayfaring as a mode of travel across swathes of landscape brings about varying possibilities as to how place is interpreted or considered because perception becomes drawn out along the line of the walk through engagement with both its spatial, temporal, and embodied dimensions, and through such prolonged engagement with the landscape, knowledge is forged; the movement of walking is a way of knowing (Tuck-Po, 2008). When wayfaring sight, sound, smell and touch are part of the experience and perception and interpretation of the landscape is made in a process of ambulatory 294 encounters. Through such an embodied approach and encounters, alternate perspectives are gained which may challenge the established heritage discourse through an affective relationship with the multiple sensibilities located in the landscape. The perspective of a wayfarer is where life is forged through the transformative process of moving through a meshwork of successive folding (Thrift, 2006), and where landscape is not just an embodied and phenomenological experience, but also one where past, present and futures may temporally co-exist as reflexive imagination and spectral haunting (Wylie, 2005, 2007), the practice of which embraces the different and alternative conceptualisations of nature, along with elements that are contingent, heterogeneous, decentred, fleeting, and unable to be represented (Edensor, 2000). A wayfarer is a ghost in a landscape populated by ghosts, occupying the same space momentarily as they did and feeling their fleeting presence. This presence may be imagined, seen in the physical landscape such as monuments and paths, or even as a tangible feeling of manifestation, as described in Chapter Eleven. Wayfaring also expresses a belonging to a landscape. It is a statement of being a part of the environment, of fulfilling the ancient ecological niche of being nomadic. It is an activity that might be viewed as having both a biological and cultural function ? the infusion of the two being the experience. This embodied approach of walking over the land?s surface is an accumulation of traditions as to how it is approached, how meanings are derived from it, and brings the experience of the journey for its own sake to the fore. 295 Recommendations for Further Study There are a number of areas where I consider research might be carried out to further investigate relationships between landscape and walking. A consideration of walking and nature. Whilst this thesis is concerned with landscape as a cultural entity, there is further scope to investigate the many associations walking has with nature, the land as natural space, and the contested meanings that are given to it. The research might explore landscapes further afield, and in particular those places devoid of paths to further investigate the process of walking in these circumstances. An ethnographic study of those in a walking group. The motivations and experiences of people at a Walking Festival, or as members of a regular walking group would be a logical progression from the research I made at The Haltwhistle Walking Festival. Such a study might expose a wide range of motivations and positions regarding walking as social and cultural phenomena. A study of a diverse range of people in regards to ethnicity, gender and age whilst on the Hadrian?s Wall Path, using auto-ethnography as a methodology by the keeping of personal journals or diaries. This would serve to investigate whether my experiences and observations whilst walking the Wall were highly personal ones, or whether others had similar ones. Consideration would have to be given as to whether the participating individuals would walk alone or as a group. A study of young people making a walking trip. Mention in my thesis was made of the changing demographics of walkers, and a study of a group making a Duke of Edinburgh Award trip regarding their motivations and observations of the experience would be of particular interest. A variety of methodological approaches might be employed to collect the data. An auto-ethnographic study of ancient and prehistoric sites in the landscape. This was of interest to me early in the research period and some initial excursions were made during the pilot-study phase. Whilst it was decided that the form of walking journeys did not fit comfortably with a consideration of such sites, a future study would be able to engage with forms of cognitive or phenomenological archaeology, qualities of ancient place, and alternative perspectives regarding spiritual landscape, myth and belief. 296 References Abram, D. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous. New York, Vintage Books. Ackroyd, P. (1985) Hawksmoor. London, Hamish Hamilton. Adams, P.C. 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(2009) Landscape, Absence and the Geographies of Love. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 34 (3), pp.275-289. 318 Appendices Appendix I - Pilot studies Both of these genres of phenomenology and psycho-geography had previously been explored by engaging on the series of walks conducted by myself this summer previously mentioned, in order to establish possible approaches that aid in gaining insight and alternate perspectives of a landscape or place. These pilot studies included backpacking trips and shorter day walks, and a brief description of some examples of these that helped to inform the process of determining the research direction follows. Stonehenge This was an early study when I was considering the relevance of prehistoric sites in landscape, and the cultural significances that are ascribed to them. The summer solstice at Stonehenge is a good example of the contested meanings a site such as it have made of them; as heritage, history, spiritual, celebration and subversion. Walking through the night also gave the opportunity to consider its effect on the experience. I went alone, with the intention of attempting to consider the experience as a participant observer of a ritual practise or observance where the local landscape had a prime significance, even though it now has little or nothing to what the original builders of Stonehenge originally intended it for. Avebury This was a circular walk undertaken in company, following on with the interest in spiritual landscape. The West Kennet barrow was visited, and a spring that had pagan decorations and ritual offerings all around. From there Silbury hill was passed and a path followed to the stone circle of Avebury. Whilst touring the stones, a group of dowsers were encountered who explained that they were seeking ley lines. We had a go with both metal rods and crystals, and although I was highly sceptical, I did get a reaction from the rods. We talked for some time before we moved on and followed a path back to our starting point. 319 Urban Walks A series of walks was undertaken in my local town, inspired by some of the approaches adopted by psycho-geography. As ways of exploring a specific place within landscape, elements of psycho-geography allow for a broader consideration of making understandings of it, rather than based on the phenomenological aspects alone. One can revisit that place or walk; research aspects of its background further and discover the local landscapes history and stories. To begin with a number of routes through mainly urban environments were explored by linking significant features in the landscape. These features were identified initially through local knowledge and the use of maps, but later also through document research at the local museum. The features included monuments and earthworks, both ancient and the more recent, locally designated heritage sites, streets or paths significant for their names, and rivers and streams, all of which were separately used one to several times to create a route or constrained walk following public byways through an urban environment. These walks were developed initially alone, but as my own local knowledge of the different features discovered grew, I began to take others out on them to share the stories contained in the local landscape, and gauge their reaction as to the walks? worth and value. Developing from this, some experiments were made with algorithmic walks and ideas behind the derive and the drift with students, and using dowsing rods to search for a hidden well as a demonstration of an alternate way to interact with a landscape, inspired by the meeting with dowsers at Avebury. Grims Ditch Following on from exploring my local place and a developing interest now in phenomenology of landscape in regards to archaeological sites and how it is experienced and perceived through a variety of cultural and social influences, I began to explore paths and routes that connected the urban environment with the more rural one beyond. A series of walks were made that followed an earthwork feature, Grims Ditch, as shown on the local 1:25000 map, a linear ditch and mound that followed a distinct route for some 8 miles and for which purpose was unknown. The mystery of its origins and purpose, together with a realisation of what a significant feature it must have once been in the landscape and how neglected, almost forgotten, it was 320 now, encouraged me to seek out more sites in the local area that carried traces in the landscape of earlier cultures. Hughenden Following document research, a circular walk was devised by linking a number of local places that had hidden features or stories associated with them. From ancient stones in the town centre, passing over hidden tunnels underground, the way follows part of a coffin way out into the start of rural countryside, passing the site where the Hughenden dragon was supposedly caught and is now part of the folk-lore of the area, then down the Church road, a steep path running down to a church that has a mystery as to why it was built, and into an ancient wood that has the remains of banked enclosures from medieval times prior to the Black Death after which there were no longer sufficient people to tend the land, and the wood re-established itself. From there the route crosses over a high common down into a valley that was a principle way in Neolithic times, with ancient tracks running off along the sides and tops of the hills leading to it. A climb up the opposite hill to the hill fort that could be overlooked because of a church within it and caves below, is followed by a descent and another climb to a place named Druids Hutt, which is at the head of what is supposedly a ley line that runs back into town, passing another hill fort set amongst a housing estate. Park Wood This patch of National Trust woodland was explored a number of times with one overnight camp (with the Trust?s permission). The site had an unusual feature of having a very large underground bunker built underneath the hill the wood grew upon, and also the remains of earthworks that were discovered through investigating the entire area. Although not marked as such on the map, it was confirmed by the Trust?s area archaeologist that they were as yet unidentified, ancient features in the landscape. Backpacking Journeys As part of these pilot studies, it was felt necessary to also explore longer distance walks. Because of time constraints, only a few trips were made. One involved was a 321 two day backpacking walk in Snowdonia, following a meandering route devised to take in some sites marked on the map of interest followed by a ridge walk down through forest to my pick-up point. A Neolithic site containing barrows, settlements, and a standing stone was investigated trying a phenomenological approach, discovering that they did appear to be some correlations with how the standing stone was sited to the surrounding landscape. A short way on across the mountain was an abandoned slate-mine that was also explored, turning out to be just as a atmospheric place as the Neolithic site. The walk continued up over a mist- shrouded ridge before following a valley down. At one point I came across some holes in the ground and then a cave which I explored, skirting more holes in its floor where water could be heard falling far below. They appeared to be old mine workings, but with no trace of the usual industrial, rusting debris. After an overnight stop in a bunkhouse to dry out (the rain had been incessant), the way carried on down to a town where I was picked- up. Throughout these pilot studies, various ways of data collection were employed. To start notes were made both whilst on the walk during short breaks, and then a journal entry made shortly afterwards. Photographs were often taken as a pictorial record, along with, on occasion, sketches being made. These drawings often gave the opportunity to observe the landscape in detail, and since much interpretation of landscape has and is made through art, experimenting with this medium as a subjective response to a scene or view was an initial element of a number of walks. However, making sketches demands time to make them, and as a record of a walk the photographs taken proved to be of better value when recalling the experience of the landscape walked through in a particular day. The notes recorded during the walk took the form of short descriptions or phrases to act as a memo to provoke the memory of its elements, both to as it was experienced phenomenally and also my responses to it; the thoughts, emotions, and cultural interpretations that arose out of that experience of a particular landscape. The journal entries made use of these notes, but were also aided by an incidental advantage of walking through landscape is that the memory is greatly aided in its recall by the features of it that are passed through. 322 In addition to the above, I began to explore the use of narrative by using diary entries and photographs from previous backpacking trips to recall incidents and experiences that resonated with the cultural interpretations and alternate perspectives of landscape I was interested in, and could also be worked into some kind of narrative story. One example produced was ?The Cloud? (see appendix II) which attempted to describe how the landscape encountered over two days walking was perceived as a repository of cultural and social histories, where its physical character and manifestations impinged on the emotions and imagination, and how the combination of these experiences seemed to have symbolic meaning as to the walk and my relationship with the land I was travelling through. Upon a thorough review of the pilot studies and consideration of the research methodology, in addition to identifying the problems discussed earlier, some other issues became apparent. Landscape as a cultural and social construction with its symbols and icons, is represented as a constituent part of the human/nature relationship debate, with often the words nature and landscape being used interchangeably with each other (Eder, 1996; Soper, 1995). However, any interpretation of landscape speaks of the relational effect between it and the interpreter, and includes not only the notions of nature, but also notions regarding past human relations with and meanings ascribed to it, the stories that are told about it. The discussions in outdoor education regarding the development of human/nature relationships might also consider the role that the landscape, whether it is perceived as natural or man-made, has in a relationship to place, since it is the realm within which not only nature resides, but also where culture and society interacts with it, and makes symbols of it. Rather than making discriminations between what is ?natural? and what is ?human-made?, in the consideration of a landscape, both are equal partners in the milieu of the experience and cultural construction of it, and both fundamental in how a relationship with it is developed. The pilot studies also enabled me to understand better how to record notes whilst on the move, and realise the beneficial values of having other people?s perspectives of landscape, as well as my own, for the research, whilst still employing the narrative form. The experience of the pilot studies and considering the use of narrative initially presented some problems in introducing an interpretative paradigm to a medium 323 where overt interpretation is avoided (Richardson, 1994). However, to consider the questions being raised regarding the experience of and relationship with landscape, the narrative would have to include not only walking journeys made alone and with others, but also the research journey as a student I was making. The interpretative element would therefore be a necessary and constituent part of some of the narrative produced, particularly in regards to the research participants other than myself. 324 Appendix II The Cloud The previous few days of walking had been trying. Route finding had been difficult crossing farmland whose paths were obviously rarely used, and the cattle were skittish, even a couple of times aggressive as I passed through. The stretches of canal towpath were initially welcome breaks to the struggle of seeking out hidden and often unsigned footpaths that took me on my meandering route from the borders of Wales heading for the hills of the Peak District. Following the canal had the advantage of being able to get into a rhythm, a steady pounding of the feet along the level, firm surface so that the miles were reeled in from the distant point where water, path and the surrounding hedgerows and trees merged and slipped out of view. No longer arterial byways of a burgeoning industrial revolution, the canals were now half-forgotten backwaters used by the occasional pleasure craft, the towpaths the haunt of a few anglers. After a few miles I started to feel an affinity with the blinkered barge horses that slowly plodded along pulling their burden two centuries before, rather than those who were now using the canal as a resource for recreation as opposed for labour. The countryside was generally flat. With no hills in the distance I felt somehow as if my perspective had contracted, blinkered as the barge horses, and that my progress was a plodding succession of enclosed fields, with sections along towpaths of enclosing hedgerows and trees that provided quicker going but still no conception of the surrounding landscape. However, I knew from the map that the hills were now not too far away, and that soon I would be leaving the low farmland and narrow canal-ways and climbing into the Peak District. It was in the late afternoon, shortly after passing under the thrumming roar of the M6 motorway, that a misty hill slowly came into view in the east, the highest of a low range that represented the first wrinkle of the Peaks arising from the flat vale. When I drew abreast of the hill, I climbed the bank of the Macclesfield canal I had been following and plodded up a narrow lane, the grey sprawl of Congleton coming into view as I gained a little height, the canal I had been following now a dark line that snaked through a decaying wharf on the town?s outskirts before disappearing. I camped in a field by a pub that night, and was told the local name for the hill that loomed above in the gathering gloom - the Cloud. It was wet and chilly the next morning. It had rained overnight, and a watery sun was struggling to break through as I set off, slowly ascending the lower slopes of ?the Cloud? by following a mixture of paths, lanes and a disused railway embankment, a memorial of a communications revolution that is now, just as with the canals that preceded the railways, slowly being forgotten and absorbed into the landscape. As I got higher, the path left the enclosing fields and crossed an open common scattered with gorse bushes, their golden flowers sharp and distinct in the brightening sun. The path entered a wood of low, twisted birch still damp and dripping from the previous night?s rain and then came out into the 325 warmth of the sun again, the summit of the hill topped with a scattering of gritstone boulders suddenly in sight an easy two minutes climb away. As I reached the trig point on the top I was greeted by a sudden and panoramic view of the Cheshire plain below and to one side, and on the other the folded hills of the Peak District stretching away. I had barely got my breath when suddenly two young girls appeared came scampering over, breathless and excited. ?Did you see the giants when you came through the wood there?? the older one gasped, eyes wide. ?Giants?? I said, ?Are there Giants in there?? I looked back at the birch wood. It certainly did have the look of a wood from a fairy story ? the low trees bent over by the high winds they were exposed to on the side of the hill, the dank moss and ferns from the low cloud that regularly enveloped them, hence the name given to the hill. The girls nodded gravely. That was where giants lived, and that was why they were not allowed to play in there, according to their father, who they pointed to, sat up on the rocks. The sisters appraised me up and down, and seemed to regard my having walked through the wood as a little foolhardy. As if a little surprised that I, as an adult, did not know of this vital local knowledge, one asked whether I had seen the giant?s footprint. When I said no, they raced off to an outcrop of stone just off of the summit, calling for me to come and look. Still laden with my rucksack, I followed them over. There, set into the flat weathered gritstones slowly drying surface was the imprint of what appeared to be a gigantic foot, complete with a clearly defined big toe and broad heel. The girls beamed at me, proud to have provided me with the incontrovertible proof of their story, and continued talking about giants and their traps in the wood, and how lucky I was not to have seen one as we walked back to their father who I guessed had something to do with the tale?s origins. He and I chatted for a while as the girls played and we took in the view. As we talked, I watched the slow progress of a distinct dark mass of cloud advancing over the next hill along the ridge, a squally downpour at its base dissolving the distant fields and copses into a smudged, watery blur. Quite suddenly as I watched a bolt of lightning split the dark mass and struck the ground, followed by a bang and a rumble. We both sprang up as one, aware of our exposed position and that the dark mass was drifting our way. With a wave goodbye, the father and his two daughters hurried off down the hill in one direction, I in the other. I followed a path down off the hill and, aware the squall was gaining on me, paused at a gate to pull on my waterproofs where a man was leaning on a fence admiring its progress towards us. It certainly did have a dramatic appearance ? a broiling mass of rain and cloud that rumbled and flickered with forks of lightning that was creeping up out of the vale and over the ridge towards us. As we parted company, the first large drops of rain began to plop down, at first intermittently, then much heavier until it turned into a painful hail that bounced off my hood. I carried on 326 through the downpour in a reverie of images from the struggles and monotony of previous days walking, contrasting to the sudden and elemental introduction a hill called The Cloud gave me to the older, squat highlands it guarded and I was entering, as if to remind me that other powers were at work here that called for respect. The mysterious foot at its summit pointing to the North seemed pregnant with symbolic significance for a walker heading to Scotland, and as the rain thrummed against my head and body, I fell into a stupor where the hill took on a presence almost sentient, the two small girls almost imagined, emissaries from another world. I stumbled down the lower slopes of The Cloud, with the thunder rumbling now in the distance, the summit shrouded in mist. The rain eased and then lifted, my brooding passed, and I entered the Dane valley and reached the river that I was to follow up into the Peaks. Whilst this narrative piece was not originally intended as answering the questions posed earlier regarding landscape, it does bring some insight as to how the physical form of landscape brings with it influences upon the emotions and state of mind of a walker, and how the historical remains encountered had varying effects on the imagination and mood of the perceiver. The almost sudden appearance of the hill after the claustrophobic confines of the vale with its enclosed fields and canals makes it a significant event in reaching the Peak District. The story of the giants on top of it and the appearance of the squall became interpreted as symbolic of crossing a boundary into a different landscape and phase of my journey. The narrative piece attempts to provide a snapshot that provides some idea of the experience of that landscape from a walker?s perspective, and how that experience is bound to ones imagination and emotional responses. 327 Appendix III This is an example of a journal entry made after spending part of a day exploring significant sites in the local area with some undergraduate students. Notes on D?rive We met on the Rye by the Dyke, and I briefly explained some concepts: psychogeography, algorithmic derive, and phenomenology ? all terms which sound complex but are not really. I also gave a brief history of the Rye and that there had been a holy well on it at one time. As an example of experiencing the world in an alternative way we experimented with dousing for the well on the Rye. Not surprisingly, the students did not take it very seriously but I believe it is a good way of illustrating how one might experience the natural world or landscape in a way not associated with the five senses. We then moved on across the mead and down Bowden lane to find the spring there, then passed under/over Brunel?s railway embankment to find another spring, and then on along a path, the Wye to one side and the old sewage works to the other, where a fire was burning in the middle of the cleared area. We came to a footbridge where the students had a quick game of pooh sticks, and then we walked up past the Currys building and down the London Road to a caf? for some refreshments. Carried on to the VW garage and then went across the Rye to the Environment Centre where we had a look round. Then we went to the Museum via the London Road, past the old Quakers cemetery now a public garden and an ice cream van, up a passage way and under the railway and then on to Totteridge road to Priory road. Looked round the museum, and visited the hill fort behind, the students having a lark hurdling flower beds and rolling down slopes. Walked down to the town centre to the dog stone, had a very quick lunch, then split into two groups for the algorithmic derive, using the directions of 2 nd right, 2 nd right, first left, and repeat. The three of us in my group were led by the directions west through Bull Lane passing two boundary stones set low in a wall, across Frogmoor, and out of the town by centre, passing under a railway bridge with complicated brickwork, and into Temple End (named after the Knights Templar who used to own the land there). The directions steered us onto Benjamins road (named after Disraeli), and then onto Roberts Road. I had never walked along this road before. The terraced properties were late Edwardian I would guess, and most were somewhat jaded and shabby, their small front gardens given over to cracked concrete parking areas for cars, the fences and walls broken. Stunted weeds and bushes struggled for a purchase in the ground amongst a detritus of litter. Some of the houses had drives by them, giving a glimpse of even older buildings which looked as if they had at one time been workshops or barns, forgotten legacies of what was there before the building boom of the 328 early 20 th century. We made a turn and was on a new road with modern starter homes. We discussed the legitimacy of going through a private parking area and through a hole in the fence onto the Coffin Way path, and concluded that since the directions called for us going left at the next available route, we would make a technical trespass although, by the size of the gap in the fence, it was obvious that the local kids and dog-walkers used the short-cut all the time (a good example of a ?desire path?, a pedestrian route made by the repetitive actions of others rather than being officially designated). We explored up the path a little further, before we turned back to meet the others at the start. D?rives definitely have potential as a way of exploring one?s local area, and are surprisingly fun to do, especially if you make an effort to record some of the odd things you see along the way ? a combined audio-visual record would be the best as it is difficult to stop and take notes all the time.