Coming very soon...

There have been some delays, not surprisingly with current working conditions, at the printing stage, but the book should soon be ready. News about launch also in the pipeline. Thanks to all those who've enquired about this. I know that the many lovely British and French fans of Spirit of Place kind enough to want to continue following my work have had a long three year wait, but it's nearly over now. At the very least I hope people will enjoy the 'triumph over adversity' aspect that accounts for the long delay in finishing this book. I can still hardly believe I made it to the end.

Walking

Walking is our most natural pace. The moderate speed allows us to gain the greatest appreciation of what we pass. Early man needed to assess signs and sounds of danger and to spy out sources of food and water, all of which required a level of examination of the terrain he passed through that can only be achieved by pacing or striding. Jogging and running, cycling and horseback riding separate us from the detail of landscape by speed or height. By those methods we notice less: screeds of bluebells but not the first violets; a beautiful old stone wall but not the little heads of stoats peeping out of the cracks; a fish jumping from the river but not the tracks of otters on the bank. The detail needs time and deliberate searching by eye, and it’s the detail that raises the level of experience and a sense of connection with the other inhabitants of the earth as well as nature’s manifests.

The same is true of walking in an urban environment. We need our senses to be alert but also our movement to be slow enough to separate a blur of buildings or a flash of green space. Driving through a town in a car or riding a bike requires attention to be focused on the travel itself for safety. Stopping and starting may provide moments of observation but these are hardly leisured and the flow of traffic usually dictates the pace of passage. It’s possible to admire a street of medieval half-timbered houses, to get a sense of historic atmosphere through glimpses of architecture, but you have to walk to access the minutiae of decorative art. You also have to walk to appreciate fully the development of settlement patterns, the relationship between older and newer elements, the changing demands of society in an urban environment.

The complexity of landscape we have created can only be appreciated through the simplest of movements.

New book

Advance copies arrived - out shortly. My new collection of walks in Finistère including town, coast, country, island, circular and linear routes, features on places of special interest to walkers. Published by Red Dog Books (www.reddogbooks.com) who produced the excellent maps. Practical spiral binding. Enjoy.

Walking, noticing and leaping hares

Walked for hours today, on familiar territory but with renewed awareness, thanks to a book by Claire Thompson recently given to me by a perceptive friend. Mindfulness and the Natural World is one of the simply meaningful editions published by the Leaping Hare Press. (That name in itself is enough of a connnection for me as David Brayne's unbelievably rich painting of a leaping hare has long hung on my wall, purchased in the far off days when I had money to invest in art.) I already have The Art of Mindful Walking by Adam Ford in the same beautifully produced series - these books deserve to be better known.
What I am most grateful for today is the reminder of the difference between looking and noticing, and the concomitant quality of mindfulness as an active state. Walking with all the senses is a direct experience, complete in itself and only stifled by the process of thought. Claire Thompson's opening chapter 'We are Nature' joins up all the dots of existence and expresses my own feelings of belonging in the natural world where - as she puts it - 'I don't feel alone, I feel alive.'

Huelgoat guide

My little tourist guide to Huelgoat is out now in both English and French editions, and doing very well. It was designed to meet the requirements voiced to me by many French and British visitors over the last few years, and to provide exactly what they need for a short visit and a few varied walks. I often meet people lost in the forest because of a dearth of proper, accurate (i.e. GPSed) walking maps and am frequently asked about the history of the town, the mines, the war, etc.
I tried to respond to all this in a format that was cheap, attractive to look at and easy to handle - something that any visitor would think worth a 5 euro punt. As well as the walking maps, which at last enable people to make their own circuits, there's a good town map with facilities shown as well as sights/sites.
I'm very grateful to Red Dog Books for agreeing to publish it and my good friend Monique Le Bouhellec for her translation of my original text, and her ability to reconcile the completely different styles of the two languages for this type of production. Having a separate French edition has proved a successful gambit and one I hope to repeat next year for a different location.

hydro phobia

Today was the first outing for my superb new walking boots, which arrived yesterday after a nightmare of searching, ordering, being told that 'in stock' actually means arriving in February, or that my feet are unreasonably small and therefore not 'normally' catered for. England is clearly increasingly full of cart-horses. Thanks to the efficient and good-humoured staff at Cave and Crag (http://www.cave-crag.co.uk/ - thanks, Dave :-)) who rushed out a pair within hours of my plea, the great day is here and what a walk I had on the soupy, sloppy December moors, with dry and warm feet.

I have come back to my all-time favourite, the Hi Tec light-weight range - best on the market imo - by buying the new Altitude Ion Mask boots, excruciatingly called 'a breakthrough in surface enhancement'. Using a magnifying glass to check out details on the label of this 'quantum leap in footwear technology' I discover that the boots are not only waterproof but also hydro phobic - with the many problems water is already facing all over the world, I hope environmentalists will act quickly to nip this alarming new phenomenon in the bud.