DESIRE PATHS

Real Walks to Nonreal Places: An interesting new book by Roy Bayfield. You can purchase or simply find out more about the book on the Triarchy Press website here.

WALKING CITIES

 

Event and book launch:

Wednesday 15 March 2017, 6.30–8.30pm
Free, no booking required

The launch of Walking Cities: London, edited by Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Simon King, Amy Blier-Carruthers and Roberto Bottazzi, and published by Camberwell Press.
Through bringing together a new interdisciplinary field of artists, writers, architects, musicians, human geographers and philosophers Walking Cities: London considers how urban walking informs and triggers new processes of making, thinking, researching and communicating. In particular, the book examines how the city contains narratives, knowledge and contested materialities that are best accessed through the act of walking. Ultimately, Walking Cities: London seeks to understand the wider significance of changing geographies to generate critical questions and creative perspectives for navigating the social and political impact of rapid urban change.

The launch features contributions from four of the contributors to the book: Sean Ashton, Douglas Murphy, Rosana Antoli and Peter Sheppard Skærved.

More information: http://www.theshowroom.org/events/walking-cities-london

IT’S NOT HIKING

An interesting article on Atlas Obscura about the increased interest in Long Distance Walking. You can read it here.

DEEP TOPOGRAPHY

Here is an interesting documentary I came across online called The London Perambulator. It features Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand alongside writer and researcher Nick Papadimitriou – a man whose life is dedicated to exploring and archiving the edgelands beyond the high street, the retail park and the suburban walkways.

WALK TUBE MAP

Transport bosses have unveiled the first official map showing the walking times between central London’s Tube stations. The comprehensive plan highlights the time it takes to travel on foot between almost all of the stations on London’s Underground network. It is the first official one of its kind and was released following the popularity of other unofficial versions. Walking from Leicester Square to the markets of Covent Garden takes just four minutes, but many tourists make the longer journey by Tube. People can now use the new walking Tube map to navigate London above ground, while taking in its iconic sights.

Click here to see 8 tube journeys that are quicker by foot!

CHIP WALK

To be practised in unknown cities (or areas of a city) or any place with potential for multiple chip shops.

1.Locate a chip shop.

2.Buy a bag of chips.

3.Have them wrapped ‘open’ to eat whilst walking.

4.Choose a direction to walk in.

5.Walk and eat.

6.When you locate another chip shop, repeat from step 2.

7.If you finish your chips before locating another chip shop ask passers-by to point you towards one.

8.Cease when exhausted/sated.

Best practised in a small group in order to avoid chip poisoning.
Can be adapted to other foodstuffs, depending on local ubiquity.

By walkwalkwalk

Taken from Ways to Wander by Clare Qualmann & Claire hind

WAYS TO WANDER

Ways to Wander is a fun little book compiled by Clare Qualmann & Claire Hind. Inside are 54 intriguing ideas for different ways to take a walk, produced by artists involved with the Walking Artists Network.

DOG DAYS

“If I was waiting for a supernatural revelation I would rather cross the desert. The sun stunning to my temples like a gong, the sand crunching under my feet -knowing that each step takes me a little closer to salvation-. And yet, I stop to consider the mirage of staying here where I truly belong. And, if eventually, I make out the top of palm trees, later on, below the stars and curl up next to the wells, I will dream of snakes rolled up to my legs dragging me home”.

Cheo Diez

Canícula, or Dog Days in English, is the on-going series by Spanish photographer Cheo Diez. From June to September, and only between the hours of 11:00 and 15:00, Diez makes photographs during the most blinding and scorching time of the year. Interested in the Poetry of wide open spaces and the landscape of the Spaghetti western (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon A Time in the West and For A Few More Dollars were all filmed along the coast in Almeria), he sets out to capture the sensory experience of walking in the desert around Orihuela in Alicante.

You can see more work from Cheo Diez on his blog here.

INSIDE OUT

Book Talk
Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography
Tina Richardson

Date/Time: Saturday 6th June 3.00-4.00
Venue: The White Hart, Stoke Newington, London N16 8EL

More info here.

NIGHTWALKING

Lecture
Nightwalking
Thursday 26 March 2015, 18.15 – 19.30
UCL Medawar Building, Malet Place, G01 Lankester Lecture Theatre

In this lecture, Matthew Beaumont discusses the nocturnal perambulations of poets, novelists, and thinkers such as Shakespeare, William Blake, De Quincey and Charles Dickens.

More information is available here.