Bath Disenchantment Walks 2016 Programme

Hi folks,

I walked out to Saltford yesterday and the tow path is really muddy with one section impassable so I propose to have a go at finding a way up to the Workhouse burial ground on Sunday. Its a recce for something I would like to explore later in the year the route from the National Trust picturesque view across the city from Widcombe fields to Odd Down.

Its a loop walk but there is a bus service back down into town from the Red Lion roundabout.

As ever meet outside 44AD Gallery 10.00 Sunday.

The walk offers some great views, spaces to imagine the enchanted city; thinking about who built it and worked it and the economic migrants it attracted we may see another enchantment, thinking about the productive and the unproductive poor we will reach the former workhouse and go looking for their unmarked graves.

I hope you can join me, come prepared for mud and a few hills! Back in town by 16.00 at the latest.

best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year on foot and on line!

Richard


A message from Richard White:
'Festive greetings, walkers!
Walkout Sundays continue into next year....walking and talking a bit further as the days lengthen.
Here is an outline plan:

In the first few walks I want to explore more on the slave trade and the legacies of slavery and empire...the focus is on the Brass MIlls on the Avon, one of which survives at Saltford. Brass goods were made here for trading in West Africa for slaves... I am interested to explore an idea about goods traded in the first leg of the triangular trade were made using the energy of the river Avon....what went down the river, what came back...attitudes to fellow humans, trade, sweat etc. I have a thought that the currency of the slave trade was manufactured along the river just outside Bath..but that maybe over egging it.

We will walk through the remains of early industrialisation, a coal field and ghosts of Bath's engineering past all now smoothed, concealed perhaps, in a romantically landscaped valley...how does it feel and what stories will start to surface....how can we tell them...

Sunday 3 Jan: Saltford loop....out on the tow path and back on the old railway line ( or back on the bus if you prefer...)

Sunday 7 Feb: No walk.  I will be travelling back from Germany from the Forced Walk: Honouring Esther we walk on the Thursday and Friday 4 and 5 Feb...why not join us...on foot or online.

Sunday 6 March: Saltford loop reversed

Sunday 3 April: Bath to Avonmouth on the River Avon Trail

As the days get longer I want to explore an idea around the memorialising and the treatment of poor people and those unable to work in Bath, in particular I want to start to develop a walking route from Chewton Mendip into Bath finishing at the Bath workhouse burial ground by the Red Lion at Odd Down. Walking, talking and the undeserving poor?

Sunday 1 May:  A walk via the ornate Victorian graveyard at Smallcombe to the unmarked graves at the Workhouse burial ground
Sunday 5 May: Bath to Chewton Mendip
Sunday 3 July: Chewton Mendip to Bath
Sunday 7 August: tbc
Sunday 4 September: tbc

The common theme in all this is enchantment/disenchantment and I really hope you would like to contribute to capturing throughts and ideas in some form or another. The walks are participatory and any information, stories, myths or rumours that you can bring to this the better. Please share! From October onwards I hope to be able to offer some of these walks more formally on the basis of what we have developed over this year of walking out!

Have a good festive week/weekend and I look forward to seeing you outside 44AD at 10.00 on Sunday 3 Jan.'