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Nick Hunt talking walking

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Have you been inspired by a piece of travel writing to try a similar endeavour of your own, but found circumstance or lack of courage has knocked you off your stride? Not so Nick Hunt, who as a teenager, read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of a walk across Europe. Nick has followed in Fermor’s footsteps, walking from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, recounting his seven month journey in a book entitled ‘Walking the Woods and the Water’. What pace do you set yourself? How do you keep yourself going? Who do you have as your companions? What do you learn about yourself and about walking? As I try to keep up with Nick on a walk along the popular canal towpath from Broadway Market to Islington, I ask him these questions and more. 29’27″14.5MB

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Want to hear more from Nick Hunt? Try his audio field guide on How to walk across Europe

Buy: Nick Hunt’s Walking the woods and the water published in trade paperback by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Photo credits: Nick Hunt

Where the wild winds are – published in 2017 – It describes a series of walks following the invisible pathways of some of Europe’s named winds – Helm, Bora, Sirocco, Foehn, Mistral – to discover how they affect landscapes, people and cultures. READ MORE

“Where the Wild Winds are” was shortlisted for the National Geographic Traveller Reader Award for 2018

What has Nick done since our interview

“In the past year I have moved from London to Bristol, but am currently looking after a small cottage in the Lake District for the coldest, darkest, wettest of the seasons. In 2016 I spent three months living and working in Atlantis Books, a bookshop on the Greek island of Santorini, and last year led a group of friends on a ten-day walk through the Accursed Mountains of Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. I’ve been continuing to work with the Dark Mountain Project as editor and contributor, publishing two books of (loosely) ecological and ‘uncivilised’ writing a year. But my main project has been a series of walks following the invisible pathways of some of Europe’s named winds – Helm, Bora, Foehn, Mistral, Sirocco – to discover how they affect landscapes, people and cultures. The book about these journeys, Where the Wild Winds Are, was published in September 2017 by Nicholas Brealey, and is soon being translated into Italian, German and Dutch. Currently I am working on a book about London’s feral green parakeets for Paradise Road.”

Indie publisher Paradise Road published in Autumn 2018, Nick’s study of parakeets in London – you can get a taste of it in this article that Nick wrote.

Nick Hunt shares his 20×20 Vision of walking in 2040

Jess Allen talking walking

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Originally a biologist, Jess Allen gained a PhD from Aberystwyth before joining Herefordshire Council as officer on the ‘Lifescapes project’ – a landscape-scale habitat mapping and community conservation scheme. She then went on to train in contemporary dance, latterly with an MA in Dance Making and Performance from Coventry. She has since worked as a landscape officer (Worcestershire County Council), dance lecturer (Bristol), community arts facilitator (Multi-Story Water) and as an aerial performer for Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company, Full Tilt and everyBODY Dance. She is currently doing a second PhD with a President’s Doctoral Scholarship from the University of Manchester, developing what she calls ‘tracktivism’: walking and moving in rural landscapes as an activist arts practice. She uses walking to facilitate talking and listening; creating unexpected encounters in unusual places. Her curiosity lies in how the aesthetics of a walk and intention of the walker can open a space of embodied dialogue around politics and sustainability.

In 2012, from her then home in South Herefordshire in the heart of the rural agricultural economy, she developed a month-long walking performance “All in a Day’s Walk”, first performed in the winter of 2012 and repeated in summer 2013.

We arranged to meet on Offa’s Dyke. I walking north from Chepstow, she coming south from Herefordshire on her way to the Green Gathering, however, our rendez vous wasn’t so successful, as we found ourselves on parallel paths, and to retrace our steps. 27’38” 13MB

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In 2013 Jess Allen contributed to Talking Walking’s 5th anniversary 5 year walking forecast – listen here

What Jess has been doing since her interview:

Jess Allen is a performance artist from Aberystwyth. She combines long-distance walking art with one-to-one performance in rural landscapes, using the walk to set up unexpected interventions with the strangers she encounters. Her work is characterised by conviviality, conversation, camaraderie; the epic scale of the walk set against the intimacy of person-to-person connection. She has a PhD in biology from Aberystwyth University, and a PhD in contemporary performance from the University of Manchester. She trained as a dancer in between. She has worked as landscape and conservation officer for local government, dance lecturer (improvisation/somatics), community arts facilitator (AHRC Multi-Story Water) and as an aerial dancer for Full Tilt Aerial Theatre and inclusive (disabled/nondisabled) companies Blue Eyed Soul and EVERYBODY dance (UK/US/Europe). She is a qualified AeroZen aerial yoga instructor and currently teaches on the Syrcas Byd Bychan community circus programme at near-zero-carbon Small World Theatre down the coast in Aberteifi (Cardigan).

Her current solo portfolio includes:

Drop in the Ocean (2013-18)
Water Treatment Walks (2016)
Trans-missions (2015)
All in a Day’s Walk (2012-13)
Tilting at Windmills (2010)

She will be presenting Drop in the Ocean at the SPILL Festival of Performance from 1-3 November 2018. She will also be participating in the lunchtime talks series with festival director Robert Pacitti and artist Nabil Vega on Weds 31 October 2018.

Photo credits: Paul Richardson, Bronwyn Preece, Richard Cott

Sara Wookey talking walking

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Sara Wookey is a creative dancer and choreographer, who when based in Los Angeles works as a movement consultant to Metro Transit the underground public transport system, winning over discretionary metro riders to experience the city on public transport beside discovering life on foot. Walking in LA was the means by which Sara discovered the city when she moved there in 2006. Being a pedestrian in LA is not something that many aspire to, walking in the city, or riding public transit is for those who can’t afford a car. Sara’s work as a movement consultant has also taken her indoors to museums and galleries, where she works with museum visitors to explore collections in a more playful way, and out and about in neighbourhoods working alongside urban planners. 24’09” 11.3MB

In summer 2014, Sara was performing at the Raven Row Gallery, in London, in a historic dance piece devised by Yvonne Rainer in 1966, likened to being a pedestrian as the performance links day to day movements.

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Photo credit: David Kelley

Matt Tomasulo talking walking

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How long does it take to walk from here to there? is a fairly straightforward question that crops up often enough. Providing duration times of journeys on foot, was the common sense answer that came to urban planning student and would-be pedestrian activist, Matt Tomasulo, from Raleigh, North Carolina in the southern United States. His answer to this common question was to devise a set of signs that not only gave direction but duration for journeys on foot, and set about putting them up around Raleigh. What if these guerilla signs could be made available to anyone, anywhere? What if anyone could make some of their own?

Using Kickstarter, the crowd funding website to raise funds and spread the word, Matt created the web-based Walk [Your City] app. We in the UK maybe more reticent about putting up signs around our towns, but it appears less so in north America, with not only citizens but towns and city leaders making signs of their own, to Walk their City. The interview, recorded over the Internet, opens with Matt explaining what is Walk [Your City]. 25’46” 12.1MB

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Photo credits: Walk your City

Linda Cracknell talking walking

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Linda Cracknell is an author who at the time of the interview was about to have published “Doubling Back–Ten paths trodden in memory” a moving memoir where she retraces ten walks undertaken by others, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Swiss Alps and Kenya. It had been chosen as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 that was broadcast in the last week of May 2014.

To order a copy of Doubling Back – click on the image

Our interview explores how she sets out to write a narrative of a journey on foot, what she leaves out and how she draws in the reader to the journey or story she tells. Now living in Scotland, her surroundings offer her plenty of variety for walks, short or long, in the surrounding countryside, much of which is devoid of people since the Highland Clearances. Nature and isolation are both important elements in her writing, as are memories conjured or animated by other walks, some personal, some collective some political. Linda has been influenced by the land artist movement, and especially by Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, but is also stirred by the romance of ‘setting off’, as captured in the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson and Laurie Lee. This interview was recorded over the Internet. 29’31” 13.8MB

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What Linda has been doing since our interview

Linda is now writing a quarterly column for Walk Highlands magazine, and an example of her pieces check out “Putting walks into words” for great tips on how to write about walking (March 2017).

Photo credit: Phil Horey Book jacket credit: Freight Books

Rowena Macaulay talking walking

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Co-founder of Walk Colchester, Rowena Macaulay is a chair user, passionate ‘walker’ and community champion. Although becoming paralysed some 15 years ago, her enthusiasm for getting out and about, and encouraging others to do the same, has not been dampened. The topics in our conversation range widely, from the language of walking in the context of disability, to inclusive perspectives on access to the countryside, and the relative merits of mapping and photography as information supporting walking. We chat about how she came to devise a campus map for the University of Essex, how this led her to work on a ground-breaking 3D digital journey planner, led by local company Smart Networked Environments, that provides accessible route information both outside and within buildings. Drawing on her own research as a former student in Inclusive Design, she is currently developing phototrails as guides to accessible countryside routes, aimed at boosting the confidence of walkers new to an area. Rowena also champions walk leader volunteering, by bringing commemorative walks celebrating the life and work of North American urbanist, Jane Jacobs, to Colchester each May. 33’54” 15.9MB

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Jody Rosenblatt Naderi talking walking

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An interview with Professor Jody Rosenblatt Naderi, Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department, at Ball State University, in Indiana in the USA. The interview begins with Jody talking about her research into street trees and their effect on driver and pedestrian behaviour. We discuss how cities can be judged on how civilised they are by the quality of the walking environment they offer and ends with a discussion of Jody’s research into the Philosopher’s walk. As this interview was recorded over a poor connection via the Internet, in parts it is difficult to make out some of Jody’s comments, so we have provided a Transcript 35’02” 16.4MB

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Photo credit: John Peters

Lottie Child – talking walking

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Lottie Child, a participatory performance artist who has devised “Street Training”, in which adults and young people learn how to be more playful in our streets. Through Street Training participants, young and old, learn how to let go of the social mores, testing the confines of what is considered normal behaviour in our cities and streets. Lottie has helped the Metropolitan Police, amongst others, to have a better understanding of young people’s desire to play. 20′ 29″ 9.6MB

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Tim Hagyard – talking walking

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Tim Hagyard a planner and urban designer, took a career break in 2013, to devise and walk a 1500 mile route through Britain, that linked places of worship with places from his childhood and those related to friends and family. “Walking Sacred Britain” also marked the 10th anniversary of his wife’s death. Contemplative walking is key to Tim’s way of life, providing respite from the day to day pressures of a busy local authority planning department, and as part of his practice as a Buddhist. The interview was recorded when Tim was only three days into the 112 day walk, full of anticipation and a sense of freedom. His walk began began from the Sangha of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in Hertfordshire – we join him in London, after breakfast in Swiss Cottage, and walk a short distance to the mosque in Regent’s Park. Our conversation ranges widely, as Tim reveals the choice of destinations and how they relate to his life and faith. 20’44” 9.7MB

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What has Tim done since our interview

“After the walk, it took me a while to note certain fundamental changes had taken place in my habits and ways of thinking.

For instance after 5 months of not sitting in a car I never found the option of car travel very attractive again. My annual mileage has fallen to 2- 3000 miles a year and that includes some essential use for work.

In daily life I try to either walk or cycle journeys because I really want to be outdoors, enjoy the physical movement and exercise . I also try to use public transport as I prefer many things that this offers in terms of exercise, adventure and the abilty to use the travelling time for reading etc. Car travel for me is not the quality choice.

I actually returned to complete gaps from the 2013 walk. So in 2014 and 2015 I walked another 350 miles so that finally my whole route around Britain had been done on foot, making it a complete continuous walk was important to me if not entirely logical.

When it comes to holiday planning I tend to find myself thinking of walking holidays as the most relaxing option. e.g. To keep me in touch with my young adult children we have started the South West Coast Path – walking it in stages.

Pilgrimage – I was delighted to hear about the British Pilgrimage Trust and joined them in 2017 for a weekend of walking and singing Blake’s “Jerusalem” down in Sussex. I very much appreciated their joyful and inclusive approach. http://britishpilgrimage.org/

This was a prelude to joining “Just Walk to Jerusalem” – Organised by the Amos Trust , a walk from London across Europe to the Holy land for equal rights in Israel / Palestine to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration ….As soon as I was sent a link I knew I had to join it .

http://www.amostrust.org/amos-palestine/

So I negotiated a career break even though it was a difficult time at work with re-structuring of the planning service. I joined over 100 others and 9 of us made the 2000 mile journey across Europe with a final huge reception in Palestine. My previous experience did give me a certain inner confidence in completing the walk, although the dynamics were very different from the more personal nature of the 2013 walk. It really opened my eyes to injustices that I was poorly informed about. I also kept a weekly blog of the journey.

https://justwalkingforpeace.wordpress.com/ “

Susan Trangmar talking walking

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Artist and Lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, Susan Trangmar is a visual artist working in the context of landscape, place and site and in particular the evolving relationships between material formations of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. An early training in sculpture and photography has developed into lens based practices using digital ‘moving’ and ‘still’ image, sound including the spoken word and text.

When Susan learnt that Central St Martins were going to move from their historic Charing Cross Road site to their new home in Granary Square, Kings Cross, she set out to walk her regular routes in and around Bloomsbury framing the city by its street trees. Interested in ways that the street tree acts as both focus and frame for our perception and experience of the city, she considers the tree to be a key figure in the construction of an urban imaginary through photography. She developed this photographic project ‘A Forest of Signs’ into the photo-essay ‘A Divided Glance: A Dialogue Between the Photographic Project “ A Forest of Signs” and the Figure of the Tree in Virginia Woolf’s Writing’ published in Literary London Journal (2013).

Susan’s curiosity of the juxtaposition of trees and buildings, makes for an intricate slow therapeutic walk. Recorded on a walk from Goodge Street tube station, London early on a Sunday morning in January 2013. 24′ 42″ 11.6MB

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What Susan has been doing since our interview

Susan has produced a short text animation film ‘Lunar Tides’ reflecting upon the impact of the changing relationship between the moon and the earth’s trajectories over time which affects the ocean tides (2014): ‘Wandering Shards’, a combined moving image and essay work addressing the foreshore of the River Thames at Greenwich in order to develop a series of reflections upon the transformative potential of ‘waste’ material (bone) associated with the site, and UNFOUND a film marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme during WW1.

She is currently researching processes of cognition in creativity and co-founder of Sensing Site a practice based research group engaging with questions around the political, material, and sensory natures of site, place, and space. https://sensingsite.blogspot.co.uk/

Photo credits: ‘A Forest of Signs’ detail (c) Susan Trangmar 2013

Christine Mackey talking walking

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Christine Mackey undertook an intriguing assignment for the Sideways Walking and Art Festival in Belgium in August 2012. She carried a portable laboratory come studio to undertake a study of invasive plants along the Sideways route through semi-rural semi-suburban Flanders. Working with two botanists she selected and catalogued a number of plants, concurrently recording her journey through video, still and sound recording instruments, to produce a multi-media installation in a barn in Turnhout.

The interview was recorded on site at Turnhout in September 2012. 16′ 06″ 7.5 MB

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Photo credit: Kristaps Gulbis

Ali Pretty talking walking

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Ali Pretty describes herself as the analog partner in a collaboration that will result in a 100 mile walk that links the 8 white horses on the Wiltshire Downs to take place in August 2013. Working with Richard White, a digital artist, together they will create an interactive exhibition including soundscapes, still and video imagery, conversations, and responses to the landscape at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. Ali has an internationally recognised reputation as a painter of large scale silks, creating carnival costumes and flags for exhibitions and festivals. Through a love of long distance walking she is moving away from the large scale to create a range of silk products inspired by long distance walks.

Recorded in the garden behind Ali Pretty’s studio offices in East London in June 2013 and published in August 2013 20’47” 9.7MB

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Photo credit: Mike Jonston

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