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‘Women walking, The City, at Night’ is an initiative begun in the last three years by Eléonore Ozanne. She and Andrew Stuck are walking briskly on a grit-covered path that runs beside a lake in the resort town of Banyoles, 20 km north of Girona in Spain. They have only recently met as they are both attending a Walking Arts and Relational Geographies conference. 22’01” 10.3MB
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Twenty radio transmitters were concealed along a three-mile route beside the M11 / A12 link road in east London by artist Graeme Miller, who in 2003 created a trail of sound that celebrated the everyday lives of the householders whose homes were destroyed along the route when the motorway link was built. Unusually for a Talking Walking interview, Andrew Stuck is sitting with Graeme Miller, rather than accompanying him on a walk. It is a weekend in September, at which “LINKED”, a work he made almost 20 years ago, is being reprised, and he is having to man a kiosk on a roundabout, from which he is handing out radio receivers. As will be revealed in the following conversation, Graeme creates work in which “listener walkers” become the performers. 22’18” 10.5MB
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Emma Griffin is a transport journalist, turned pedestrian activist, and maker of Footways maps of London, that identify calm and pedestrian-friendly routes and streets for us on foot to enjoy. One such route is the canal-side towpath, that Emma and Andrew Stuck walk along when they meet at Haggerston in Hackney, or so it should be, however, they have to share the path with inconsiderate cyclists. Emma argues that cyclists are part of the solution towards a more pedestrian-friendly London, as are Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and the real battle is with the car drivers. 26’09” 12.3MB
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Andrew Stuck is in the medieval heart of Vic, in Catalunya; its narrow streets are not very conducive to recording an interview as sounds reverberate off the stone facades.
He set out originally to interview Thomas Keis and Ivana Pinna, who together have set up an artist residency on the island of Sardinia. As you learn through the conversation, after the suggestion of Thomas, Andrew interviews Ivana alone.
As they weave through the bustling streets in search of ambient calm, their much interrupted conversation includes a discussion about “Artivism”, in which Ivana mobilised the community around her Sardinian childhood home in a walking protest against government plans to dump radioactive waste there. 22’39” 10.6MB
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Feature image credit: Tarek Dakwar
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Active travel and environmental activist Pam Rouquette has given Andrew Stuck a walk as a birthday present. The route that we take is around the city of Salisbury and links up places which are significant to Pam. 25 years ago in 1997, when she was still working as a community physiotherapist, she was a member of the Salisbury Walking Forum and became involved in a healthy walks initiative called the “Doorstep Walks”.
Pam has been the driving force behind healthy walks in Salisbury, ever since. She has led hundreds of group walks for different ages and abilities, devised scores of walking routes as well as being instrumental in creating a popular walking map for the city and surrounding areas. As you will learn from this slightly unusual interview, Pam has also had a hand in maintaining foot paths and in securing spaces for wildlife.
Over the years, Andrew has tried to entice Pam to be interviewed for Talking Walking and each time she has turned him down, modestly saying that she has little to tell. However, Pam is one of the most inspirational, and quietly determined people he has ever met, so as unobtrusively as he could, he took his recorder with him on this birthday walk.
The birthday walk begins on the bank of the River Nadder, we have reached this point by passing through a narrow railing-fenced alleyway between business units on the Churchfields industrial estate. We are less than 10 minutes walk from the railway station. 28’28” 13.6MB
Feature image – View of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Path on Harnham Hill
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In 2010 Jonathon Stalls walked from Delaware to California, crossing the United States on foot in 242 days. Quite an endeavour but it pales besides what he has achieved in the last ten years. He is the founder and creator of Walk2Connect walking beside thousands of people. It began in his home state of Colorado, and has expanded to several states, and even to the UK. It encourages people to walk (or roll) together, at an unhurried pace, to connect more closely with one another and their surroundings, in turn, building their appreciation of the environment and opening their eyes to the obstacles faced by pedestrians. In this extended interview – our first undertaken on Zoom, a month before the COVID pandemic struck, we explore Intrinsic Paths and Pedestrian Dignity, Jonathon’s new creative endeavours, and look into the future at what he anticipates he will be working on in the next 20 years. 32’28″ 15.2MB
As a walking artist, Jonathon sustains much of his creative work by way of patrons. You can learn more about becoming an Intrinsic Paths patron here.
STOP PRESS – buy Jonathon’s new book WALK: SLOW DOWN, WAKE UP, AND CONNECT AT 1-3 MILES PER HOUR – more details here
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Feature image Credit: Art Heffron
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Walking for 5 months and covering 2,000 miles across Europe from London to Jerusalem, the Just Walk marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in which the British Government announced their support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. In this episode Andrew Stuck catches up with Justin Butcher, who conceived and led it, who describes the Just Walk as a ‘pilgrimage of penance’ and a ‘march of solidarity’. Crossing the Alps by the St Bernard Pass to north western Italy was rivaled in its beauty by the Albanian countryside. Accompanied by groups of walkers of different faiths and nationalities, a core group walked the whole distance, meeting refugees making journeys in the opposite direction, and being welcomed as celebrities by Palestinians. It is an extraordinary undertaking, chronicled by Justin in his best selling book entitled “Walking to Jerusalem”. The interview took place on a cold winter morning on the Parkland Trail, from Finsbury Park to Highgate Woods in London. 22’38” 10.6MB Feature image credit: Eleanor Butcher
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In 2020-21 Justin Butcher will be touring his critically acclaimed stage show, which premiered at Dublin Theatre Festival 2017, more details here.
Watch the 4-minute film of Just Walk to Jerusalem
Download the Walking to Jerusalem 2020-21 tour guide here
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Jack Cornish is a programme manager for the “Don’t Lose Your Way” campaign at Ramblers, the UK charity promoting walking and defending rights of way. That’s the ‘day job’, but there is much more walking in Jack than just from 9 to 5. He has walked the entire length of the British Isles and is walking every street in London. The interview opens with Andrew Stuck asking Jack what “Don’t Lose Your Way” is all about and what his role entails. 22’06″ 10.4MBY
Since the recording was made, Jack has taken on a new role at Ramblers as Head of Paths.
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In this extended episode, published to coincide with the Festival celebrating London becoming a National Park City, Andrew Stuck talks to Dan Raven-Ellison, the campaigner behind the initiative. Dan is far more than just a ‘one trick pony’ having spent a lifetime seeking ways of getting people, young and old outdoors into nature. He has also been exploring new ways of making it easier for people to understand the scale of increasing urbanisation and its impact on the natural world of which we are all part. A self-styled, ‘guerrilla geographer’, the conversation begins with Dan explaining what that means. 34’41” 16.3MB
Recorded in April 2019 in Walpole Park, Ealing in West London on a windy day in which the recording had to be stopped as planes passed overhead.
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At the time of the publication of “Walking to Japan”, Andrew Stuck, producer of Talking Walking, was lucky enough to catch up
with Canadian Carolyn Affleck Youngs in London; she had co-authored the book with her now deceased husband, Derek Youngs. Carolyn took a walking holiday on the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain, where she met and eventually fell in love with Derek Youngs, himself a long time pilgrim, who walked for peace. Carolyn has quite a story of long walking of her own, but we also discuss the power of pilgrimage and she and Derek 
walking together, and how simply putting one step in front of the other, can have profound meaning to an individual as to society as a whole. Behind us is bustling Bermondsey and Bankside. We had to stop several times as the ambient noise of traffic and construction became too intrusive. 18’25” 8.7MB
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Photo credits: Darrin Steinkey & Brandon Wilson
Listen to Carolyn Affleck Youngs 20×20 Vision of walking in 2040
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Andrew Stuck was attending the Made of Walking gathering of artists at La Romieu in remote south
west France, when Andrew was surprised to meet American walking activist Wendy Landman, an executive director of WalkBoston, one of America’s longest running pedestrian advocacy groups. She is here, on an invitation from her college friend and artist Carol Mencke.
WalkBoston walk audit in action in the snow
Wendy discovers that the walking artists at Made of Walking are grappling with many of the issues that Walk Boston has encountered too. In the blazing sun, they walk along gravel paths, seeking shade, and discuss how walking and pleasurable walkable places are now seen as key elements of quality of life for increasing numbers of Americans. And how through subtle change in vocabulary, from talking about art to talking about delight – the delight of walking and of delightful places – hearts and minds of politicians can be won over to the cause of better conditions for those of us who travel on foot. 25’21” 11.9MB
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Terence Bendixson, journalist and author, is probably the longest serving campaigner for pedestrians throughout the world, and is now the President of Living Streets in the UK, the charity formerly known as the Pedestrian’s Association. He was recruited to the cause in the 1960s by Tom Foley, the Association’s co-founder, after an article he had written in the Guardian about the dominance of cars in our cities and towns. He his a strong believer in encouraging people to walk their daily errands, being aware of how street pattern and layout can influence travel behaviour and enhance or limit the experience of travel on foot. He has lived almost all his life in Chelsea, now a 
prized neighbourhood of London, our conversation takes place there one sunny morning along roads he has walked since he was eleven.26’34” 12.5MB
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