walks

(dis)enchanted walks an evolving cycle of walks for 2018
often on the first Sunday of the month....
walking out on the enchanted City, wayfaring, walking-with,
sense-ing and discovering other stories and experiences...

Steps to Heaven........an instant requiem:
Saturday 22 Sept
walking-with memory, poetry and the Workhouse dead

A circular walk from Bath Abbey to the Bath Workhouse burial ground and back
Starting at corner of Abbey St and York St beside the Roman Baths, the site of the offices of Bath's Board of Guardians
we walked to the former Bath Union Workhouse and on to its burial ground

The walk included a premiere performance by John Payne of his cycle of Workhouse poems.
Over a slow three hour walk we made an instant requiem. Musicians greeted us at the field.
This walk continues the process of raising awareness about the Workhouse Burial Ground considering the lives and stories buried there and what that field has to tell us now.

image courtesy http://www.kypwest.org.uk/

The Union Workhouse still stands high above the city, the birthplace of many Bathonians when it was St Martin’s Hospital. Rock ‘n’ Roll hero, Eddie Cochrane (Three Steps to Heaven) died there following a car crash, Eddie has a plaque, even though his body was flown back to the US.

Over 3000 Bath residents died in poverty there when it was the Bath Workhouse, they were buried in the nearby field.. There is no memorial to them. The walk arrives at that field at about 14.00 on Saturday 22 September. Do join us, on foot or online @walknowlive #workhousewalks

The walk continues a walking-with on poverty and responsibility that began with a series of walks in the summer of 2017 in connections with the Museum of Bath at Work exhibition about the Bath Union Workhouse, researched by John Payne. All the social media trails of the walks are combined below

A Bathscape Walking Festival walk

Walkers are actively encouraged to use notebooks, mobile devices and gather sound and photographs. There will be poetry readings along the way and an invitation to write your own. Together we will try to make something respecting the dead in the Workhouse Burial Ground. This are creative walks, you can take part in many different ways and you are welcome to just walk.

Previous walks.....

A Walk for the End of Holidays...
along a once working river to the city farm

Walking with questions of poverty, memory and social justice, considering how a city buries its past.

Sunday 2 September 10.00-14.00 approx

A walk along the River Avon
as summer comes to an end.
It could be bucolic even elegiac.
Thinking about work and listening for the ghosts of workplaces that no longer exist.
We will follow the river round to the old quays and timber yards, passing former factories and the sites of huge engineering works.
Walking through erased Victorian slums.
Noticing absences and sense-ing presences....
wondering what it means for us now.
Maybe see an otter or kingfisher!
Then in a loop we will walk up to Bath's City Farm where we will stop for a rest at the cafe before returning to the city by way of the old railway line.

North quay excavations Avon Street, Bath 2016. Slums cleared for the second time.

Meet: 10.00 below Pulteney Bridge
at the bottom of the stone steps overlooking the weir.
Arrive: 12.30 (approx) Bath City Farm
Return 14.00 Bath Bus Station

East of Bath:
out of the enchanted garden looking towards ancient views

Interesting conversations and thoughtful moments, not a history walk but what we made of it.

The walkers mutinied. We came back on the boat. A strange tropical journey on the river dreaming drifting down the Amazon, the Congo...the great grey green greasey Avon. Imagining the stink of the city of Bath as we approached the bridges and darknesses of the old slaughter houses and leather works. Where dead babies once washed up at the bottom of the weir. East of Eden when the wind blows from the West was more than a place with knowledge. Here the piss settled in the night soil, here the black earth matured, soon for the gunpowder mills. Looking back at Beckford. Smelling it.

Walking with questions.....
where does the idea of east of eden take us?
Leaving the pleasure garden behind and along the canal we eventually arrive on top of Solsbury Hill.
What views will this offer looking back at the enchanted city? Down into the valley we will traverse another (dis)enchanted garden, the remains of the Suffragettes arboretum at the back of Eagle House.

A further climb did not take us back into Beckford's gaze, no return on the old straight track. We were already in his gaze., a return on the river was the only way.

Walking slowly in an enchanted landscape
walking-with time and space

A walk on footpaths in parkland, mainly on gravel tracks and a field.. One short steep descent.

We walk for part of the time very slowly listening without talking.... writing and sketching if you wish as you move.

Stops and talking/sharing space, opportunities to sketch, take photographs etc Some possibly factual information is offered, walkers shared knowledge and thoughts.
Walking-with ourselves and each other and seeing what happens as we know more....enchantment and disenchantment. Part of the walk is within Beckford's gaze.

A story of a woman's black straw hat, found by a boy on Hampton Rocks and taken to the police. The hat in one of the pictures in the exhibition set the story off. A tale of bloody linen and a broken gold watch, the linen embroidered with AH Kerry, the gold watch repaired, is auctioned off. According ton the local newspaper, a man was seen agitated walking in the area without his hat.

Two boys find a body in a cave two years later, Dismembered and decayed. A mystery. The woman is identified as a maid, who had disappeared two years before. The watch is traced, the initials on the bloodstained cloth were those of her employer in at Cheriton House, Bath. The police have lost the black straw hat.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/16728648710

Two boys playing in the old quarry caves find the body. Men decided her fate. Elsie Adeline Luke 'Wilkie' . We thought about that maid and all the other women of the enchanted city in the years before the vote. Standing where once a warm sea was home to ancient creatures, our ancestors, and slowly deposited that rock.

,,Above the holes left when the 450 million year old rock was hacked out for canals and palaces, a golf course. In 1914 it was a men only golf club, Suffragettes dug up the 'link's and left slogans on luggage tags on the flags and golf irons. Campaigning for the vote. More than a century after their action and less than a century since an equal franchise we luggage tagged the bushes alongside the golf course. Slogans of solidarity for the passer by and the curious golfer.

Collected Shadows:
a countryside walk close to the edge.

Walking out, walking-with the Collected Shadows exhibition at the Edge gallery University of Bath..
A curated short walk around the Bath countryside. We began at The Edge gallery which is showing a selection of images from the Archive of Modern Conflict. Curator Timothy Prus, who selected the images, is recorded as welcoming those who bring imagination and their own knowledge to the collection.

In that spirit we spent an afternoon walking, doing and thinking, visiting and re-visiting the images on show with different perspectives. First remember three images from the exhibition, then some time later draw the first, share, then later try to remember the second image, share the sketch book again and then finally try to remember the third.

memory mashes with what the walking-with becomes

The Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation dedicated to the collection and preservation of vernacular photographs, objects, artefacts, curiosities, and ephemera.

.Returning to the exhibition the elusive third remembered image had morphed and mixed with the experience of the walk. Notebooks bursting and imagination fired different people different exhibition. Collected shadows.

Cycles of war... still in Beckford's sight:
old wars and stolen gold

Sunday April 1 Circular Walk approx 8 miles
Bangs and whooshes, memories of blood, guts, urine and the slave trade. Dramatic views across Beckfords 'prospect'. Easter eggs on the runway where war planes took off to light up targets, some returned. A gunpowder mill owned by slaveowners. We shared thoughts on the escalation of conflict and the exercise of power in West Africa fuelled with materials produced on Bath's back door. With Bath's best Black Soil. This was no Easter egg trail, and we did not see any rabbits. No legs.

A walk immersed in layers of lives, a thankful village its wealth gained perhaps from the manufacture of the lethal product from which their sons and daughters were spared.

Knarled split trees marking ancient wells, workers clothes hanging like bodies from the scaffold, the ground not perhaps as slippery as I had feared but all the rest as tangled and slippery as could be expected! Trusting the process at least.

From almost outside Beckfords Tower east into the valley and up to a disused World War Two airfield then looping back round passing a Civil War battlefield and the place where the Brinks Mat gold was melted down. We returned to the Lansdown Park and Ride where we began. A circular story of gold, greed and body fluids!

Walking into Beckford's Gaze: considering legacies

Circular Walk approx 7 miles
A spring walk beginning on the river where once there were wool and brass mills, across the edge of the city and up to Bath's reluctant monument to slave-generated wealth, Beckford's Tower. From here he said he commanded the finest prospect in Europe. We wont be visiting this time we may glimpse a ghost of that view from below. We walk on and make our way down via Kelston Roundhill to the river.

A continuing exploration of the undersides and othersides of the enchanted city of Bath from a creative and social justice perspective. Take part on foot or onlineline @walknowlive #walknow

check out the draft route here: http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTY4MDIwMw==

**Mirror in the Bath(room) Returning the gaze of the city.**

walking where mammoths trod and dolphins swam

looking into the mirror, considering Beckford's gaze,
looking back

on the playing fields, once the city's rubbish tip once the gravel pit for the Victoria brick works that produced bricks so hard that even today they blunt the sharpest drill bit in seconds. Here before Beckford looked out was the bed of a warm river and here a dolphin lost its way or just grew old. Gravel beds hold a story of glaciers and their watery end, mammoths followed and left their teeth. And people chipped flints to perfection.

Sunday 4 Feb leaving at 10.00 a circular walk

From the river out into the country and back. Approx 7 miles. We begin and end at the old canal bridge to Weston island outside the Locksbrook Inn, formerly the much loved Dolphin. Here there were mills, we'll listen again for the ghosts.

Up the hill to explore spaces that city visitors rarely visit and discover views and open spaces enjoyed by those who generated the city's wealth. Shifting sands and other lives

Walking to reflect on all this, to sense and decipher boundaries and feel the elements. Moments to stop and talk, sketch, write, reflect; time to be with our thoughts in the sounds around us, to be bodies alive.

A moment on the hill being the eyes in the mirror.

here's the social media trail of the walk

The Underside of Bath

....a short winter walk to start the year....
From the Bath Workhouse Burial Ground.
A 6 mile walk in the underside of Bath taking in some views and a few interesting relics

A further take on the Workhouse Walks...thinking about poverty and responsibilities in a good society, Considering remembering and forgetting, decay and erosion and as we return with our visual sense restricted through the tunnels thinking and feeling what our senses sense.

Here's the route
http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTYxNjI4Ng%3D%3D

A walk sense-ing the past, the deep past in the underside of the city. We walk under spaces left by quarrying towards a city built from the stone that once filled those spaces....absence and presence.

social media trail from Viewranger

Short and longer creative performative walks along the River Avon between Bath and Bristol sensing legacies of slave-ownership.
Wayfaring in obscured histories, reflecting on flow, cycle and memory; alert for sounds, voices, tears, sweat and blood suspended in the water.
Opportunities to gather sound, and images, sketch, share talk and think.
Its not a history walk, we will make it what we make it.
Its about us

Sweet Waters: the walks

completed June 2017
as part of Bath Festival Fringe, Fringe Arts Bath and Festival of Nature

Sweet Waters: Soundings

at Saltford Brass Mill October 2017
an audio and video installation of documentation and new work working with materials gathered on the walks

Workhouse Walks:

On 23 July 1856, the boys from the Bath Workhouse, with their schoolmaster William Winkworth, completed a circular walk of 16 miles from the Workhouse around the northern fringes of Bath. These walks are an attempt to explore on foot and with our bodies that journey and to examine the themes which may emerge as we reflect on those times from these times The first walk begins at the workhouse, the last returns us. In July we walked as close as possible to the route they took in 1856. This project is developed in collaboration with Dr John Payne whose exhibition ‘Workhouse to Hospital’ at the Museum of Bath at Work closes at the end of September.

This cycle of walks completed in September, check out the Project page for developments.
New walks to be confirmed for 2018

Sweet Waters:
to Beckford's Tower & Saltford Brass Mill and back.....

A single loop for two walks, part of Sweet Waters
http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTE3MjM4
From 44AD via Beckford's Tower and Saltford Brass Mill and back along the river.

Approx 12 miles.
The triangle at the end of the triangular trade. Out of the enchanted city where slave generated plantation wealth accumulated and was invested, to the top of the hill where Beckford's Tower stands. If we disenchanted the tower what might we see or hear? ... then down the hill to the Brass Mill where goods were made to be sold for humans at the beginning of the whole sordid cycle.

Previous Walks:

Workhouse Walks to Hampton Rocks and beyond.....

A walk continuing the recce for the Workhouse Walks. From a holy well out towards Solsbury Hill and back over Bathampton Down. Spring vistas, sticky buds and views on poverty and welfare and whatever else we bring to it. Blessings perhaps?

Here is the draft route:

http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTE1MTQ0

Approx 10 miles

The full walk on which the Bath Union Workhouse Schoolmaster led his boys in the summer of 1856 is an epic 16 or 17 miles. I am doing this with writer John Payne for an exhibition he has coming up soon at the Museum of Bath at Work. I will offer a series of short experimental performative walks 5-6 miles and one long walk of the entire route in a day. The walks will explore resonancies around welfare and the land, walking as an act of free will and speculate as to why the boys were 'walked' so publicly. Performative walks of another kind.

We will retrace more or less the steps of the master, Mr Winkworth and his 'poor' boys...his diary is not so clear about the girls perhaps looks like they walked a different route. But they all rested up at Hampton Rocks.

Nature Walk

(no) sign of spring?
A walk in the park alerting our senses and tickling the memory of school days. Did you ever do a nature walk? No walking in crocodile pairs but taking the time to stop and look, listening, smelling .... tasting (perhaps). Walking in the enchanted city before spring has sprung to the place where the city constructed nature. What will we find, what will we learn?

Workhouse walk 2 parishes.
Beckford revisited

A walk from Bath city centre to Beckfords Tower over the downs into the valley for Woolley and Langridge and back up to Lansdowne. Wayfaring on routes through two parishes in the Workhouse Walks...and see what happens, what surfaces about schools and poverty and charity. Discovering an alternative route to Beckford's Tower from the centre closer to his infamous ride...and again see what happens. Sweet riches and grim poverty over the hills and and far away. No golf.

Sunday 20 November
Find another Bath: a Walk

in association with the exhibition......

wayfaring through obscured, hidden and forgotten spaces and sites
A walk sense-ing/visiting/passing through some of the locations artists responded to for the book and the exhibition.

Walkers are encouraged to visit the exhibition and join the walk with memories and response for a reflective wayfaring.
Some of the artists may take part,
Find another Bath....maybe several.

Sunday 6 November: Brass Mills

A walk out of the city along the river beginning to scope the Sweet Waters experience in detail. We will sight three brass mills from this journey down the meandering river. At Saltford the river still turns the last remaining wheel, it may be working as we pass. Listen again for the voice in the waters, echoes of the thundering hammers, sensing distant cries in the dark.. More sweetly we pass and will try to sense remember the chocolate factory sold off by an international cheese conglomerate. Sold in turn for luxury housing.

Sunday 2 October: a listening walk

A walk along the river Avon from Bath. Listening...maybe some talk. Memories surfacing. But mainly listening. Ghosts of other places. Voices from the river. In part retracing the steps of Haile Selassie. Starting to think about what sense-ing actually means. We'll pass the ruins of the slums briefly exposed and about to be cleared again. Under bridges, along old wharves. Is there an enchantment in the sounds? A year of walking done, a second one begins now. Sweet Waters project is taking shape.

A chance to draw and take pics, a slow walk. Record and share sounds from the river.

Sunday 4 September. To the Burial Grounds...
As part of FindanotherBath a further photo and drawing walk,
A walk out of the city up the downs to the old Jewish Burial Ground and the unmarked graves of Baths poor.

Join another wayfaring walk through memorials, presences and absences, gathering and sharing thoughts sounds and images.

The route includes some time at Smallcombe Cemetery, where we will listen for the ghostly strains of 'Danny Boy' then passing chapel and church for fearsome warnings in Combe Down village before a stop at the old Bath Jewish Burial Ground and concluding with a short walk along the Wansdyke to the Bath Union Workhouse burial field.

Sunday 7 August. The Plaqued and the Unplaqued
As part of Find another Bath, a photo walk.
A walk in Bath exploring plaques, memorials and absences, thinking about the Atlantic slave trade and legacies of slaveownership.
A walk wayfaring through the enchanted city, gathering views, images and sharing thoughts.

Three Free Walks. Bath Festival Fringe. Fringe Arts Bath.
On foot and on line.

...sensing the legacies of slavery and slave ownership in Bath and along the River Avon. An all day walk.

44AD…the Time Machine 4 Abbey St, Bath BA1 1NN

The Time Machine was curated by alldaybreakfast
27 May - 12 June 2016 part of Fringe Arts Bath
Selected artists, performers, writers, musicians and scientists will have a day to play in the Time Machine. Their responses will be filmed to create a concomitant, evolving and cohesive multilayered durational installation.

Walking not Drowning
Wednesday June 1 Bath

Oceans and rivers flow through and carry the stories of slaveownership and the Atlantic trade. What was made on the river Avon, what went down the rivers, what was lost at sea and what came back up this river? How is our watery present entwined in the watery presences of the trade in human lives.

Utopia/Dystopia:in conversation
Saturday May 28 Bath

Two short walks opening and closing a day of conversation on themes that correspond with the best of our aspirations and the worst of our nightmares.

Walk1:
11.00 Open the conversation, stretch minds and legs on a networked walk to The Finest View in Europe
(but it may cost you to get in!)
Out of the enchanted city, over the fields, up the hill and back again down the road.
Meet at reception, Bath School of Art and Design
Approx 3 mile walk. Return approx 13.00.

Walkers are invited to consider, share thoughts and generate resonances on some of the dystopian aspects of Bath and the people who made it - not least its ambivalent relationship with slavery.

1330 for 1400 - 1700 Lecture Theatre
Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe
Guest speakers include:
Kate Rigby, the newly appointed Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University and author of Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe;
Linda Williams, a specialist on human-animal relations, climate change and mass species extinction; and
Rachel Withers, writer and critic, focussing on art and ideas.

Walk2: Wayfaring in the Enchanted City
17.00 The conversation continues in the café, online and on foot walking through the heart of utopian Bath, approx 19.00 arriving at “Bath’s Artisan Quarter” for exhibitions and the utopian/dystopian pub, The Bell, in Walcot Street.

Walk and share on social media. Follow and contribute @walknowlive and #walknow

Meet at: Bath School of Art and Design

Bath School of Art and Design

Bath School of Art and Design
Sion Hill, Lansdown BA1 5SF

utopia:dystopia

A series of exhibitions and events inspired by the 500th anniversary of the publication of Utopia, Thomas More's reflections on the concept of an ideal society