“I’m going for a walk”
“Why?”
April 2022
This website publishes a record of some walks. Why? …Why the record? But also why the walking? This page is about the second question: “why do we go for walks?”. which may help answer the first question – namely, how to justify a project (like this one) documenting those walks.
Asking what a walk is for is different from asking what walking is for (getting from A to B of course!). It may seem unnecessary (even ped-antic) to be asking this at all. But the question “why a walk?” is intriguing, because this innocently everyday activity seems rather modern. Of course, people always ‘walked’ but only recently have they ‘gone for walks’.
The scribblings below are more therapeutic than scholarly. Making them helped shape my own fragmented ideas about walks, walking, and this website. Which has been revealing – for me at least – although the resulting text is too long. But at least it is sectioned (contents links below). Also, in order to maintain focus, sources and other secondary materials of possible interest to others are rendered either as (blue) text hyperlinks or occasional popup footnotes “[fo]”.
A: The walk: a cultural practice
B: Ritual walking
C: Elective walking
D: History of elective walking
E: Why walk: a social experience
F: Why walk: valued consequences
G: Why walk: inspiration
H: Why walk: assimilating the world
I: Why walk: as experiment
J: This website
A: The walk: a ‘cultural practice’
Human anatomy shows a distinctive capacity for walking. The bipedalism of early homo erectus (coupled with pressure from erratic climate changes) equipped our ancestors with the urge to walk – “out of Africa”. In this way human hunter gatherers colonised the planet through a nomadic lifestyle. And insofar as we were nomadic in groups, collaborative journeys helped us confront the dangers of exploration – by acting together. In short, human beings are naturally pedestrian (in the nicest sense) and naturally social (in the broadest sense).
Few societies are nomadic today. Nevertheless, walking remains central to how we all live. Obviously! It gets us from ‘A’ to ‘B’. Yet this glib view of walking misses something. It misses those circumstances in which choosing to walk is not merely a question of the practical convenience for getting to ‘B’. A walk can be pursued as an end in itself. After all, often it will be circular: getting from ‘A’ to ‘A’ as it were. And what is the practicality of that? Confronted with this ‘deliberate walking’, we might say that the walk has evolved into a ‘cultural practice’. Or a range of such practices.
Talking about ‘the walk’ in ‘cultural practice’ terms may seem a little pompous but it has some value. Because it identifies human activities that are rooted in our shared history – “traditions”. Anthropologists express this simply when they say: “cultural practice is about things we do around here”. Such practices based on walking can be brought together as various walking ‘rituals’. The next section offers a few examples (although categories can overlap). When those things are out of the way, we are left with ‘elective walking’; namely the rather more interesting ‘done for its own sake’ variety.
B: Ritual walking
(1) Ceremonial rituals. The classic ceremonial march is a mannered walk. It’s a way of signalling a community’s commitments. For example, the funeral march honours departed loved ones, the Aboriginal walkabout transitions you into adulthood, the Orange March affirms historical identity. Sometimes ceremonial walking is linked to certain places, particularly if they furnish a narrative for the journey being made. ‘Stations of the Cross’ for example. Or those monastery cloisters whose designs can take the walker through a spiritual story, with no requirement to talk or explain.
(2) The pilgrimage ritual. This is a walk also: a practice that may again be associated with spiritual solace. Often such walking targets a significant destination, such as the annual pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca, or to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Lord Buddha. Christian pilgrimages may be less common, despite plenty of suggestions for them – many more practical than the gruelling Camino de Santiago. Historically, pilgrimage was often about penance. So the walking part of pilgrimage wasn’t always treasured (after all it was one part of that penance). Today, walking these former Christian routes is sometimes simply a practice borrowed – perhaps for exercising some secular tribute, as in remembrance for a loved one. Moreover, pilgrimage has also been borrowed to serve “holistic wellbeing”. And to honour historical, rather than spiritual, links – such as Celtic origins. This secular trend is evident in the routes suggested by the British Pilgrimage Trust and, elsewhere, by the idea of a micro-pilgrimage. (Although ‘virtual pilgrimages’ surely don’t count here. Online journeys are simply a metaphor of walking.) It has even been suggested that joining a vast queue for paying respects to a deceased monarch is a kind of modern pilgrimage.
(3) The expressive ritual. A walk can express strong and shared feelings. Such walking will typically be organised and structured – for instance as carnivals, military parades, Gay Pride, etc. A common purpose has been the expression of urgently-felt protest: Jarrow, ‘stop the war’ etc. A further form is the caring or concern expressed through charity walks, such as for cancer research etc. Although expressive walking can also be more intimate or personal – as in the arctic suicide: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” A more everyday example of expressive walking would be the Italian ‘Passeggiata’: individuals taking an evening stroll of greeting and chatting.
(4) Domestic rituals. A walk can be private (or ‘domestic’) and still have a ritualistic quality. Sometimes such walking may be linked to a destination (when its a chosen means of travel that isnt necessary the quickest). For example, the routine walk to school. But it can be more open ended: a clear example being ‘walking the dog’. Yes, it may be the dog that really needs the walk – but it remains something of a human ritual – even if there are plenty of ways to vary it. However, there is a form of the walk not captured within any of these examples….
C: Elective walking
The ritual walks (above) do help clarify – at least for certain special cases – what can underpin our urge to ‘go walking’. These cases are interesting because they identify a set of reasons beyond those of simply getting from A to B. Such reasons have a performance element: political, expressive, spiritual etc. However, culturally-familiar walking ‘rituals’ – while significant – remain special cases. What about other occasions when we just chose to walk: i.e., not simply to get to “B”? These are occasions when we seem to take a walk ‘for its own sake’. They can be termed ‘elective walks’. In electing to do them we make the walk an end in itself.
The elective walk has become such a familiar idea that a wealth of guidance has emerged to support it. The existence of such resources might be what stimulates elective walking. Or vice versa. That is, ready-to-hand resources may have lowered the threshold for ‘taking walks’. But, equally, a modern appetite for walking may have stimulated the production of resources that support it. Most likely, the two things are mutually influencing.
For example, there are websites that suggest and specify attractive routes (e.g., National Trails and heritage paths). Others include practical guidance for tackling the more arduous ones: for example, ‘The Great Outdoors‘. Many routes are now published for smartphones, where ease of reference may be an attraction for the more casual walker – e.g., GoJauntly and Alltrails. Their in-my-pocket simplicity may encourage more exploratory walks. Some websites go further and attempt to orchestrate the walk: going beyond documenting routes and suggesting schedules for walking them or identifying appropriate walking equipment – e.g., GMwalking, a local authority initiative in Manchester.
Although taking a walk seems to have been made easier and attractive by practical advice and technology, many are still able to resist the appeal of elective walking. A resistance that may be deeply rooted: “It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter….People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk“. [Max Beerbohm, 1918]. While this may no longer be such a widely shared view, the claim of a too-often “noble and virtuous” perspective on walking has some force. Which might suggest the question “just when did this walking-for-its-own-sake get started”? The kind of social science that might explore that concern is a modern phenomenon. On the other hand, walking has long been celebrated in writing, poetry and documentary commentary – such sources may help to unravel a history.
D: History of elective walking
At what point in the past did ‘taking a walk’ imply an acceptance of the walk as an end in itself? Any insights about this will come from the history of peoples’ writing about their walking. So it is interesting that in all of classical literature there seems to be not a single example of a walk undertaken for its own sake. Only in what historians call the ‘early modern period’ (say, 1500-1800) does written documentation of such ‘elective walking’ appear. That such a practice was slow to emerge is unsurprising. The conditions of peoples’ lives often did not afford it and conditions of the natural environment may not have always encouraged it. Yet while changes in those circumstances may account for some of the growth of elective walking, there were also influences associated with the passion and voices of certain individuals and certain social movements.
An early influencer of that kind was Thomas Coryate (d 1617): an inveterate European foot traveller who chronicled his journeys in Coryats Crudites (1611). This record became very popular for its entertaining tourist anecdotes, even though Coryate and his long walks were still regarded as a distinct oddity. (However, some sources suggest that such elective walking was much more common elsewhere in Europe.) John Taylor’s ‘penniless pilgrimage’ (1618) from London to Edinburgh illustrates a similar walking passion – although still more eccentric, as it did not seem to have Coryate’s ‘curious traveller’ or tourist motive. The cultural story of walking seems to mutate from this point. One direction builds on a public curiosity for the drama and effort of such walking, as illustrated by Coryate. Interest in this aspect of the walk grew until coming to its flourish as 19th century Pedestrianism – or competitive performance walking. Gruelling ‘footraces’ and fast heel-and-toe walking became great entertainment as well as practices for making wagers upon. Such interest survived until the end of the century – by which time more familiar spectator sports had become attractive alternatives for gamblers.
The second divergence from Coryate was in a more private and pastoral direction. Starting in Coryate’s time it seems that the spirit of the aristocrats’ Grand Tour stimulated a broader attraction for being a ‘tourist’ – a status always possible through more modest and local journeys. For example, Dr Johnson’s tour to the Hebrides with Boswell was widely read. At that same time William Gilpin had introduced the notion of the ‘picturesque’, which in his Essay on Prints (1768) he defined as “that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture“. The taking of walks – apparently to admire the picturesque – was first practiced in the crafted landscapes of distinguished country house gardens (such as Stourhead). But a more accessible model was found in the subsequent ‘Romantic’ tradition of poetry and writing – inspired in those writers’ by their personal walking encounters with landscape (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Hazlitt, de Quincey, Ben Jonson etc.).
It’s hard to say how far access to that literary tradition inspired in others the urge for elective walking [fo]. An assumption that the Romantic Movement single-handedly influenced a growth in popular walking may itself be a romantic idea. It also seems unlikely that the growth of exploratory walking by gentleman (usually) scholars and academics had much of an influence with the wider public. But other forces were surely at work. For example, the emergence of the Scouts later in this same period (1907) was probably also relevant: because it fostered a general enthusiasm for recreation outdoors. And the contained nature of boarding school existence – with its ‘crocodile walks’ for exercise – may have made elective walking a practice that migrated into (upper middle class) life. For whatever complex of reasons, the nineteenth century publication of ‘walking guides’ evidences a significant cultural development: that is, a real growth in elective walking during this period.
Moreover, its comfortable presence as a theme in fiction is also revealing. Those who chronicle the representation of walking in the novel identify Jane Austen as the breakthrough voice. Perhaps this was because Austen herself liked “walking out”: a lively mind reacting to the domestically contained nature of middle-class women’s daily life. Certainly the walk was well exercised by Austen’s fictional characters. Emma’s Mr Knightley rarely uses a carriage when given the choice of a country walk. Elizabeth Bennet thrives on such walks in Pride and Prejudice (albeit to the disapproval of family). And it is during walks that key plot details get aired in Persuasion.
All this situates the elective walk as having become a familiar cultural practice by the nineteenth century. But literature rarely reveals what kind of experience it was for those walking. Reflective fiction ought to help. So some clues might be found in Duncan Minshull’s compendium ‘Beneath my feet: writers on walking’. However, the quotes he lifts from his writers are often rather unrevealing. They suggest the walk was too often cast as merely a narrative moment, perhaps when a stranger was met, or the unexpected took place, or an occasion at which story events were moved forward. In these extracts the walk is seldom an experience itself, ripe for reflection, it’s more a carrier for plot. A particularly strong version of such a format for ‘pedestrian writing’ is Joyce’s 1922 ‘Ulysses’: richly recounting experiences that punctuate a walk around Dublin. Surely one of the great walks in fiction, it is now commemorated unlike any other literary walk through tours, maps, and video reconstructions.
A closer reflection on the act of walking itself is found in the writing of Virginal Woolf. The walks in novels like ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ have even become, of themselves, a topic for literary theorists. While in her reflective essays Woolf also describes her own walks through London at night: recounting them as a form of escape from herself, drawn to “the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow”. Such walking is used by Woolf as an activity that strives for empathy with others and their surroundings. In this way “one is not tethered to a single mind but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others”. (These thoughts suggest a significant distinction (picked up below) that recurs in writing about walking: namely, the urban versus the country walk.)
Novels and essays are telling. They help us locate the elective walk historically and culturally. But insights also should come in the form of diary reflections or, in the modern age, from walking blogs and podcasts. Rousseau was a committed eighteenth century walker but, sadly like many others, not such a chronicler of those walks. Hence this wise advice; “In thinking over the details of my life, which are lost to memory, what I most regret is that I did not keep diaries of my travels. Never did I think so much, exist so vividly, and experience so much myself – if I may use that expression – as in the journeys I have taken alone and on foot” [Confessions, 1781].
Some contemporary walkers are less reticent. Bloggs about walking are plentiful, although browsing compendia of such online writing (this one, for instance) suggests that most diarists dwell on planning, describing and celebrating routes – rather than the motives that underly walking them, or the private enlightenments that they deliver. Yet why should the blogging/podcasting walker not be reflective in those ways? Perhaps their concern is simply to share what a good time they had – while commenting on the high quality of the landscape (or townscape). To get deeper inside the idea of the walk as an end in itself – its motives, its rewards – we have to dig in other places, science, aesthetics, psychology.
E: Why walk: a social experience
Sections below this one identify the range of factors that might motivate the practice of walking for its own sake. However, each are moderated by one particular overarching factor – namely, the potentially communal nature of the walk taken. Being elective does not mean that a walk must be solitary: it may be taken with other people. And, for some, the very appeal of a walk may reside in the intention to do it with others.
Such social walking is a longstanding practice. It is most clearly associated with the Ramblers – who have a history of documenting and organising shared walks. The Slow Ways initiative develops their community tradition by publishing shared routes that contribute to a searchable network of possibilities. Over time, the rambling tradition has become specialised or differentiated. For example, by area (Inner London Ramblers, rambling in Scotland etc.). Or by inclusion concerns (e.g., Disabled Ramblers). Or inspired by other personal life circumstances (e.g., dog owners or, still more focussed, ‘men who own dogs’). Walking together can also be organised on the basis of some preferred walking ‘style’ or walking ambition. For instance, meeting up with enthusiasts for Nordic Walking. Or joining those only interested long distance walks of more nineteenth century proportions.
All these examples illustrate the potentially social character of elective walking. So communing with others might explain some of the motivation behind such walks. However, the inevitable conversation that this form of sociability affords is not for everybody. A.H. Sedgewick, the much-cited walking essayist, favours walking alone. He asserts in his ‘Walking Essays’ (1912) that: “..the attempt so often made to combine real walking with real talking is disastrous.” That may not be a modern view. Yet, arguably, simply communing with others remains unconvincing as a primary reason for the walk – after all, there are many other activities through which we can be social in this way. And there are many solitary walkers out there.
F: Why walk: Valued consequences
Discussion of this ‘why’ question about elective walking – finding the proper motive for it – can be pursued two ways: why do people take walks versus why should people take walks. Or: ‘reasons supposed’ versus ‘reasons proposed’. Although these will overlap. The reasons walkers give for what they do will often match the very ones that have been proposed to encourage them. That encouragement is typically most focussed on the perceived health benefits of regular walking. Consequently, when a walk is said to have an ‘end in itself’ that ‘end’ is likely to be the felt need to maintain good physical health. Perhaps that is why people sometimes talk of ‘my walk’ as ‘my constitutional’.
As the NHS website puts it: “Walking is simple, free and one of the easiest ways to get more active, lose weight and become healthier… A brisk 10-minute daily walk has lots of health benefits and counts towards your recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise.” (“Brisk” is about 3 miles/hour they say.) Consequently, there exists a host of online health journalists circling around questions of how walking is overlooked, superior to gyms, (versus insufficiently comprehensive), a support for dieting, and a form of nutrition etc. All this wisdom is complemented by advice on when to walk, how to walk, how far to walk, and how often. Hesitant walkers with an appetite for more closely argued and empirically-grounded evidence will also find books such as the biologist Shane O’Mara’s ‘In praise of walking’ [fo].
In short, an elective walk may rarely be ‘for its own sake’, but more often for the sake of keeping fit. Evidence suggests this is a valid and worthy reason. Most of us live in societies that are urban-contained, where our work has become sedentary, and where we prefer mechanical modes of routine travel. It is not surprising that the modern attraction to ‘taking a walk’ has evolved as counterpoint to these trends.
However, Shane O’Mara (among others) is keen to identify positive consequences of walking on mental as well as physical health. Although convincing evidence on this is scarce, because people taking regular walks probably differ from those who don’t in many other ways – and any benefits reported may actually arise from these ‘other ways’. What evidence exists on mental benefits for exercise tends to favour investment in moderate/vigorous physical activity – rather than the low intensity activity associated with walking. Also, any claims concerning mental wellbeing outcomes tend to be limited to regular practices of exercise/walking. Nevertheless, there is also some evidence for shorter term effects: that is, a single walk episode may have modest beneficial consequences – at least cognitive benefits if not the mental wellbeing ones. Moreover, research suggests these may be stronger for walking in natural environments rather than constructed ones (or indoors).
These last points underpin a theory that directly relates to the incidental side-products of walking (at least for the case of country walks): namely, ‘Attention Restoration Theory’. This claims that we concentrate better after spending time in nature (theorised as a “restorative” effect on our resources for concentration). This effect has been termed ‘soft fascination’ and is contrasted with the ‘hard fascination’ (or attention-demanding) impact from media engagement or from the relentless buzz around more everyday life. Evidently this restorative property could be a hidden ‘valued consequence’ of walks – although the breadth and depth of this effect is still debated.
When we decide to ‘take a walk’, thoughts of promoting physical and mental wellbeing as outcomes aren’t always our declared motives. Yet they are probably in the back of our minds. Not least because GPs and others may often remind us of these walking rewards. However, organisations that exist to promote walking are careful to make their advice more nuanced. For example, a charity such as Living Streets seems to avoid evangelising walking in terms of health benefits – perhaps wishing to deflect accusations of the ‘nanny state’ variety. Instead, their manifesto hints at other motives for taking that walk. Some of these are more resonant with themes taken up in the following two sections.
G: Why walk: inspiration
Walking is not only about achieving ‘valued consequences’. Value may be found during a walk as well as afterwards. One form of inspiration might arise from attending to – or interrogating – the walked environment. Such engagements are identified below as acts of ‘assimilation’ – taking in (or “assimilating”) the external environment, moment by moment. However, a more commonplace form of walking inspiration depends on rather the opposite: namely a mind that is relatively insulated from the objects and events of a walk – a mind aiming to get ‘lost in thought’ (rather than ‘animated by the world’). In such cases, it is not the specifics of a walked environment that inspire. It is the act of walking itself that somehow stimulates the imaginative engine of the walker – and if that is an experience anticipated, then it furnishes one significant explanation fo why we take walks.
In short, a walk can be an occasion for private contemplation, for stimulating greater depth of thought. Such a faith in walking was rendered practical by the Peripatetic school of philosophy: best known as Aristotle teaching his pupils while walking on the pathways of the Lyceum. That practice of thinking-while-walking has continued to be celebrated by philosophers. For example, Rebecca Solnit (in ‘Wanderlust: A History of Walking’ ) [fo] assembles an impressive list of individuals who endorse walking as a regular basis for finding their inspiration (Hegal, Kant, Bentham, Hobbes, Wittgenstein etc.).
Rousseau comments “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs” (Confessions, 1782). Similarly, the solitary walker William Hazlitt comments: “Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner – and then to thinking” (Ongoing on a Journey, 1822). Not that the open road is the obligatory catalyst: Kierkegaard sought instead the bustle of the street for inspiration and reported only being able to think deeply when immersed in the flow of distraction.
Nietzsche famously assserted: “Only thoughts that come by walking have any value”. This is a strong claim: perhaps too strong to match up with contemporary theories of cognition. Modern Psychology tends to stress the ‘situated’ nature of deep thinking. Our various life ‘situations’ offer us tools to think with. Most prominently, trusted pen-and-paper (or keyboards if you will). We write, draw, inspect, reflect, revise, and so on in cycles of private exploration. We reach for sources arranged to be at hand in our personal thinking spaces. And we may talk our thoughts through with friends and collaborators (also possible when walking of course). None of which undermines the distinctive inspiration made possible by retreating from these situations-for-thinking: e.g., by taking a walk. Productive thought needs a mixed economy of strategies and situations. Yet there is a bit of a puzzle in this: when it is ‘retreat’ that provides the psychological condition for inspiration, then surely this is also possible by “going for a lie down” (etc). And often that does do the trick. But given that such alternative retreat solutions would seem so much easier, the turn to walking must imply there is added value from mobility. Moreover, some recent research confirms this and, moreover, identifies a pace and rhythm that regular walking-thinkers reveal as optimal [fo].
The pacing-about thinker is a familiar image. However, witnessing their wandering will give few clues as to the content or orchestration of their private thoughts. One researched claim relating to the payoff of walking is that it particularly stimulates creative thought: an idea appealing to journalists. Yet it does seem there is supporting evidence. For example, a study in which: “Participants sat inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walked outside, or were rolled outside in a wheelchair. Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality analogies [stand-in for ‘creative thought’]. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity.” Readers less moved by the heavy hand of experimental psychology may seek more vivid endorsements of this link between walking and creative thinking. They might be provided by an online resource where visitors can hear or read “artists, specialists and walkers talking about how walking inspires their work and shapes our world”.
For many of us, being ‘lost in thought’ is one consequence of walking (and perhaps one motive) that we recognise – if not in ourselves, then certainly in others [fo]. However – and perhaps sadly – this state-of-distraction denies any synergy between the walker and the specific environment they move through. In fact it may render the choice of an environment to walk in rather irrelevant. The form of ‘inspiration’ illustrated here is one for thoughts that are already under incubation. And casual observation suggests it works those who adopt such a practice – although it may more often be in the form of ‘pacing about’, rather than ‘taking a walk’.
However, walking affords a different kind of contemplation .One in which inspiration arises from interrogating the walking environment itself: attending to, or “assimilating”, the environment of the present moment…
H: Why walk: assimilating the world
Prior to the nineteenth century Romantic movement, walks that got documented were in rather unremarkable places: namely, open roads (for pedestrianism) or formal gardens (for the aristocracy). In contrast, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others explored rich (and sometimes challenging) landscapes and thereby formed an intimate relationship with their walked environment. When Heinrich Heine (1825) comments “a cathedral has never been large enough for me”, he explains how his walks best provide something often termed “the sublime”.
This appetite surfaces today in those many walking blogs, within which the landscape are sometimes described or photographed with a certain sense of awe. Often it is served by newspapers – where “walking correspondents” go beyond simply mapping possible walks and attempt to share the depth of their experience with the environments of their walking. For instance Christopher Somerville in the The Times and, beyond newsprint, in various books.
A more modern ‘assimilation’ of the environment through walking invites not simply an awestruck registration of the natural world, but a more ‘lived engagement’ with it. For example, initiatives such as Land in Curiosity invite walkers to participate in a “project exploring ways of being in the world that are deeply embedded in nature, community, and self directed learning”. Such an approach urges the walker to build an active – even intense – relationship with the environment walked. But there are less vigorous approaches to finding sympathy with an environment walked. Walkers can be supported in finding their environmental engagement through restrospective conversation. For example, ‘Rescue Geography’ uses ‘walking interviews’ to assist the walker in becoming reflective about what they experience. Although in the case of that project the practical aim is “to ‘rescue’ and share local people’s understandings of an area before [its] redevelopment”. (This project also exemplifies the possibility of orienting more to urban spaces – rather than country landscapes.)
In that example, ‘rescues’ are constructed from walkers’ accounts that are gathered with the reminders of a GPS record. Yet thoughtful assimilation of the walking environment need not depend on technology prompts. It can be more simply captured through a walker’s reflective writing. The iconic example of that practice is the work of W.G. Sebald and, in particular, his novel/documentary ‘Rings of Saturn’. Such is the level of respect for Sebald that he has attracted many contemporary imitators [fo]. For instance, Phil Smith’s ‘On Walking: – And Stalking Sebald’ where disdain is expressed for simply “wandering around looking at stuff”- replacing that instead with careful recording of responses to a walk’s unexpected ‘finds’. Sonia Overall documents a similar approach while walking old pilgrim routes, and reports this in ‘Heavy Time’.
Perhaps an ‘assimilative walk’ can exist somewhere in between the positions outlined above. Somewhere in between the dramatic impact of the sublime and the active theorising of the psychogeographer. Fiona Sampson nicely illustrates how the “musing eye” can occupy this middle ground in her book ‘Starlight wood‘, where she documents “walking back to the romantic country side” within ten example journeys. Ten walks are described in ways that show how familiar landscapes can be experienced with a simple “revelatory freshness”.
These and other records of walking experience tend to focus on country landscapes. Yet only a blinkered version of the Romantic sensibility conflates ‘nature’ with ‘countryside’. Those occasions of inspiration or assimilation enjoyed on the rural walk can also be experienced in the urban environment. For example, in his ‘Life of Johnson’, James Boswell comments: “I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in walking about any town to which I am not accustomed. There is an immediate sensation of novelty; and one speculates on the way in which life is passed in it .. The minute diversities in everything are wonderful.” The modern expression of this spirit is best known through the influential writing of the urban walker, Iain Sinclair (London Orbital, London Overground, Downriver) and his various followers, such as novelist Will Self (Psychogeography) and film maker Chris Petit. Although widely influential, these walkers are very ‘London’ – they won’t be found assimilating the environments of Glasgow or Leeds. Their walking commentary is also infused with political reflections – especially a somewhat sixth-form preoccupation with the “Thatcher era”.
This corpus of psychogeography texts offers one distinctive reference point for the practice of walking in an urban landscape. Another, doubtless better known, is represented by the flaneur. (Although perhaps its rather voyeuristic reputation makes this a poor alternative.) While classically a Parisian individual, the flaneur was first defined in Germany – by Franz Hessel in ‘Walking in Berlin’ (1929). Flaneurs were conceived as city wanderers, absorbing the street life of a modern city. Baudelaire popularised a version of this figure as a nineteenth century aesthete or dandy. Later the concept was made more widely known through sociologist Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’, set in Paris. Haussman’s wide boulevard city design made Paris a perfect urban environment for casual wandering and people-watching. For contemporary appetites, this practice is gendered in a way that could be a little creepy: indeed, female versions of this figure are scarce, although the Flaneuse has been proposed.
I: Why walk: as experiment
What the ‘London walkers’ do (Iain Sinclair et al) could be understood as research (their term ‘psychogeography’ has the promise of an academic discipline and therefore does imply a research tradition). It may be stretching the meaning of “experiment” to describe their practice, but they are certainly engaged with fieldwork – on the urban landscape. And their approach is “experimental” in the everyday sense of ‘trying things out’ (and reporting what happens).
A walking format that is recurrently tried out by walker-experimenters is ‘wandering’. This practice has been inspired by the 1950s Situationist Guy Dubord and his concept of dérive – or the taking of an improvised journey through some space. Such journey-taking strives to create a disorientation in the walker: one delivering a better understanding of relationships between the constituents of some space and the emotional reactions aroused there. Within such formulae for walking, the effort of ‘assimilating’ an environment becomes a structured experiment. First, by how it cultivates the potential of a walk as unplanned. Second, by the commitment to registering and documenting the environmental synergies that the walker experiences.
Theorists of these matters position walks as potential works of art. At least in the sense exemplified by artists such as Jackson Pollock. That is, artists who challenge definitions of art in terms of craft-based products, shifting attention to the action/gesture itself, the product of which (a painting say) is just a souvenir of that action. The walk therefore becomes one of a number of creative exercises the event of which explores and documents links between actions, thoughts and the material world. Still other theorists have linked the experience of the meandering (flaneur) walker to a form of fiction writing wherein events are allowed to wander in the absence of any clear plot (e.g., André Breton’s Najda).
All of which invites some authors to reflect on how to orchestrate the ‘unplanned’ (proper “roaming”, as opposed to the “linear access” walking described on the present website). So a book like ‘Ways to Wander’ collects a range of solutions whereby the protocol for a walk can be made if-then, rule-defined in advance (e.g., keep turning right whenever the choice arises). Evidently, certain bottom-up, walk-as-art protocols need to be adopted with care – for example, a formula such as “follow a stranger” could expose unplanned vulnerabilities (well illustrated in this Christopher Nolan movie).
Models of the pedestrian as art worker are various. For example, the act of walking every street in a city can be framed as performance art. The museum of walking curates works (slightly more conventional) that have been created while walking (verse, text, painting, video etc). Such collections might include the audio recorded experience of a walk (the ‘sound walk’) – an artistic product that can be experienced both passively or as an acted-out walk re-taken. Or, another example, the tracks made on some particular walking protocol can be taken and transformed into a fresh representation such as a painting. In the hands of situationists, such efforts can – thankfully – be more playful. So, ‘performance walking’ includes such examples as large groups of people walking within the constraints of a giant elastic band. Or groups of walkers apparently on a protest but carrying placards that have nothing written on them. Performance furnishes untypical motives for walking, but such examples still illustrate the sharp end of why a walk is not often ‘an end in itself’
J: This website
The walking implied by routes documented on the present website hardly refer to projects of Pedestrianist experimentation or to ‘performed wandering’. Of course, improvisation is a possible option for users of the routes curated here, but the provision of maps and directions is at odds with the spirit of an unplanned meander.
A curated set of walks like this offers a retrospective challenge to their architect (i.e., me). A challenge to personally consider those questions raised on this page about what motivates the modern urge to take a walk. Although it may feel that such journeys do get taken ‘for their own sake’, there are surely some expectations or ambitions (lightly overlooked perhaps) that exist behind such decisions. An expectation of exercise and its healthy consequences is surely a default motive for most walking of this kind. So, let’s grant that – and put it aside. There should be other reasons.
Well, there is the communal motive: being together. But on the walks documented here, other walkers encountered were either alone (perhaps with dog) or in a pairing that often looked like an entrenched couple. Can social walking add much to whatever mutuality is available from sitting about together at home? Perhaps – yet that is most likely if the social walking incorporates one of the other two categories of walking motive considered in sections above: namely, inspiration and assimilation.
But, first, here’s a related point about encountered walkers: another experience from these walks was the scarcity of such fellow-walkers. Despite the convivial surroundings of each journey, it was unusual to meet anyone else exploring them or enjoying them. A worrying thought is that excercise remains the most common understanding of what a walk is ‘for’. And, in which case, people may now exercise less – and so rarely go for walks. Or…. that exercise has migrated into other arena (such as cycling or gym machinery) and the walk has been displaced as exercise. In which case it feels urgent to encourage a recognition that the walk offers more than a promise of physical health and fitness. In the language used here, it should be a practice of inspiration. Or an occasion for creative assimilation – of the richness lurking in every walking route,
First, regarding the walk as inspiration for thinking… The walks illustrated on this website do not match this purpose well. Because navigating a proposed route requires the walker’s attention to that route. The walks are “linear access” in form – not “roaming”. That route-following distracts from the inspiration of private contemplation. Indeed its hard to see the vision of a meandering walk (or the rule-based walk) transferring from the urban environment (for which it is most often evangalised) to the rural environment. Moreover, the textual observations accompanying the walks publishes on this site imply an expectation of walker engagement with particulars of the spaces walked through – rather than getting lost in private thoughts.
Instead, the motive implied for the present collection of such ‘walk cases’ is ‘assimilatory’. In the end, it’s about celebrating opportunities to get up close with some lived-in environment. Literally “lived in” at the chosen moments of walked encounter – houses, streets, gardens and a paraphernalia of everyday life. But also a fabric of the natural (and constructed) world that enfolds this everyday life: the local landscape (or townscape). Doing the phrenology of some place. All rather John Betjeman perhaps.
The present site hardly does such a great job supporting this ‘assimilation’ ambition. It’s rather up to you in the end. The maps and route guides are just bread-and-butter stuff helping the walking get going (during a walk I find this renders more usefully on a smartphone than on paper – and the rather minimalist design here is supposed to be more useful than I find most book-based route guides to be). But what are the text and photos supposed to achieve? For photos: they are intended to convey being in a walk, rather than looking at a walk. For text there is a continuum to occupy: at one end Pevsner’s “perambulations” and, at the other, Self and Steadman’s Psychogeography. Pevsner’s ‘what-you-will-see’ narratives are worthy, but a little dull. While Self’s first-person place reflections are a bit, well, ‘Self-indulgent’: his places tend to be crucibles for just one idea that is generously spun off. What seems to have evolved on the present site is somewhere in between. A bit of Pevsner objectivity and occasional Self/Steadman-type whimsy, One thing this text does share with Self is a lack of pretension to actually understand the archaeology, architecture or history that is occasionally referenced. Indeed Self has accurately observed about walkers like me (and him): “Real professional historians view us as insufferably bogus and travelling – if anywhere at all – right up ourselves“.
It’s not for one particular walker (i.e., me) to suggest the management or direction of an engagement-with-context: how to find ‘entertainment’ (in the broadest sense) from the textures of place. However, to consciously withdraw from one’s familiar environment and engage with somewhere unfamiliar is a precious (yet simple) opportunity. But it may not happen spontaneously: finding meaning in an unfamiliar environment calls upon strategies of forensic attention, but also a patient manner. However, the act of walking creates a pace and rhythm that is more optimal for such careful observation and reflection. Exactly what that delivers is something for each individual to discover – but perhaps the few annotated examples here can help trigger doing so.