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Duncan Minshull talking walking

Where My Feet Fall” is an anthology of essays on walking by 20 contemporary authors, brought  together by Duncan Minshull.  Duncan was for decades an editor and senior producer for BBC Radio, and if like Andrew Stuck you are a fan of listening to books read on the radio, then it has been Duncan who is likely to have chosen them.  “Where my feet fall” is not his first anthology of writing on walking, and Andrew is keen to establish, why he chose that topic, of all the ones he could from a lifetime career of choosing books for the radio. They meet in Paddington Recreation Ground, a popular London park close to where he lives. 18’56” 8.9MB

Published to coincide with the publication of “Where My Feet Fall” – you can join a conversation with Duncan at the Walking Writers’ Salon at 7pm BST on Tuesday 5 April – read more and book your ticket here.

Pam Rouquette talking walking

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

Andy Howlett talking walking

Andrew Stuck is in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham, in the heart of Britain’s West Midlands, walking beside the River Rea with psycho-geographer and documentary film-maker, Andy Howlett, who recently completed “Paradise Lost” an essay-film about Birmingham’s Central Library and the death of modernism. Just before the first pandemic lockdown, Andy joined forces with Pete Ashton and Fiona Cullinan to create a walking art collective called Walkspace.  Despite the lockdown, WalkSpace has grown exponentially, attracting artists, walkers and writers from across the region and support from the British Council.  Andy talks about his own enthusiasms as a documentary film maker, as well as adventures by the Walkspace collective, that have included, a mapping project involving ‘extreme noticing’, a search for the geometric centre of Birmingham and a moonlit night walk in which magic spells were cast, as part of a series called ‘Walkspace erratics’ as well as a forthcoming international exhibition on ‘parallel walking’. 28′.10″ 13.2MB

In search of the Brumphalos

Ben Clifford talking walking

Ben Clifford, was almost stranded in Melbourne at the beginning of lockdown. He returned home to Croydon on almost the last flight leaving Australia. With time on his hands, he began mapping and walking the parish boundaries of this large outer London borough. Several weeks later, having walked hundreds of miles, Ben has traced out 8 interconnected walks and called his project “Beating the Bounds”. Having walked the boundary of the London borough of Greenwich, Andrew Stuck was interested to find out what Ben had discovered. They meet on Conduit Lane, close to the start of the Vanguard Way, a long distance trail from Croydon to the south coast. 25’ 10″ 11.8 MB

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Map of Croydon walks and boundary posts created by Ben Clifford

Anna Dighero talking walking

Anna Dighero is a contemporary dancer, whose passion for walking is inspired by family walking holidays in the Italian Alps. Not to be frustrated by the restrictions of the pandemic, she sought means by which she could keep in touch with physically-distanced friends, creating audio stories that they could walk in their local neighbourhoods. Weaving her dance experience, passion for walking and newly found interest in geo-locating sound recordings. Andrew Stuck meets Anna in Battersea Park on a warm sunny evening, as lockdown eases in London, and the interview opens with Anna telling us about her dance training. 19’15″ 9.0MB

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Featured image credit: Lucas Chiha-Peng Kao

Hugh Lupton talking walking

Hugh Lupton is a storyteller, living in East Anglia, who has been walking the lanes and ways of Norfolk learning stories through walking, and sharing them across the globe. We meet on a cold and windy day in April on one of his favourite walks, beside the River Bure, and talk about how people can value place in a different way if they have a sense of the narratives that are associated with it.

View of the River Bure in Norfolk

It is not the first time that Andrew Stuck and Hugh have met. Both of them took part in the Sideways nomadic art festival, that included a walk across Belgian Flanders in 2012. 20’27″ 9.6MB

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Jonathon Stalls talking walking

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

Nick Tyler carrying a cardboard box

Nick Tyler talking walking

Nick Tyler is Chadwick Chair of Civil Engineering at University College London and is the director of PAMELA one of the largest research laboratories in the country. However, as we learn from this softly-spoken professor it is not large enough, so he is now overseeing the building of a laboratory called PEARL in Dagenham (see image below). What has all this got to do with walking you ask? As Andrew Stuck learned in this conversation recorded before the pandemic, Nick is as interested in the fine grain detail of pedestrian behaviour as he is in engineering spaces that work for people. We also get an inkling of how the 2 metre social distance might have been decided upon, once the COVID virus had struck. 29’44″ 13.9MB

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Featured image: Nick Tyler taking part in a walkshop commissioned by the Parasol Unit, London – taken by Simon Waters

Tor Falcon talking walking

Peddars Way, A Walk with Chalk” is an illustrated book by landscape artist and long time Norfolk resident, Tor Falcon. Tor became intrigued by the Peddars Way described by some as Britain’s loneliest national walking trail. It follows a Roman Road for almost 50 miles from Thetford in the Breckland to Holme-next-the Sea. So taken with walking and drawing, Tor has gone on to follow and draw every river in Norfolk, and describes how during lockdown she’s also been chasing the moon. Between pandemic lockdowns Andrew Stuck caught up with Tor.19’11” 9.0MB

Kerri Andrews talking walking

Writer and academic Kerri Andrews has recently written “Wanderers: A History of Women Walking” that challenges the male-dominated history of walking. Drawing on her own experience of hill walking and through research, she has written a compelling book that includes intriguing stories about women walkers since the early 18th century. She focused on women writers who reflected on what walking meant to them, many of whom have been overlooked or ignored.

Unlike the majority of Talking Walking interviews that are undertaken out and about on foot, the COVID pandemic has meant that this interview had to be recorded over the Internet. The interview opens with Andrew Stuck asking Kerri about her own passion for walking and how it began. 24’33” 11.5MB

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Photo: Beinn a’Bheithir near Ballachulish Credit: Ewan Tait

Paul Kelly talking walking

Paul Kelly is a researcher and lecturer in physical activity at Edinburgh University. Working with Paths for All, the Scottish charity promoting walking and cycling, he has been investigating the measures that facilitate or obstruct people walking more. Recently he has been reviewing, from a public health standpoint, the introduction of a blanket 20mph restriction on motorists across Edinburgh, comparing it with other cities. We are on a brisk walk early in February in Princes Gardens in Edinburgh, seeking quiet spaces away from the nearby railway, commuter traffic and a contractor mowing the lawns. 23’41” 11.1MB

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Peter Fiennes talking walking

Peter Fiennes, former publisher of Time Out Travel Guides, has turned his hand to writing books. Reviewers and book readers have loved his engaging and humorous prose, so it was a pleasure for Andrew Stuck to record an interview with him to talk about the travel writers that he most admires, a dozen of whom he has ‘accompanied’ in his latest bestselling book: “Footnotes: A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers”, the paperback of which will publish in August 2020 .Recorded on Clapham Common, in south London on a windy February day in 2020, pre-pandemic lockdown, when frequent jet planes and a helicopter interrupted the recording. 19’57” 9.3MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Peter Fiennes