Boundary Walk 13

On the 25th September we gathered at the War Memorial at Tintwistle to begin our last ‘Contouring the Boundary’ walk led by artist Alison Lloyd. After Alison gave an introduction to her practice, we were headed off and within a minute we were directly following the Peak Park boundary on a beautiful cobbled lane. Alison and I were keen to ‘mark’ the boundary with the group where suitable and we stopped at the top of Arnfield Lane to do just that. As with previous walks, everyone was given a disposable camera and encouraged to bring their own camera’s along too.

The weather was changeable, and conversation was flowing as we walked. When we reached the first farm, and just before the path began to climb upwards into fields, Alison introduced her silent walking section, with took us up to the top of the contour that joins the Pennine Way. By the crackling electricity pylons, we stopped to check our progress on the map and to locate the boundary, which was now indistinct in a large field. We noticed there was a slight indentation showing the permitted footpath. From here we dropped down into Ogden Brook, where we stopped for lunch and a chance to explore one of our found ‘cosy spaces’ along the boundary.

There then followed a busy period of experimenting with 3D printed boundary words in the brook, sound recordings of cyclists, cable release photography and many animated conversations. There was a real buzz of excitement and sharing of ideas and working together to capture unique elements of this section of the boundary. From here we returned the way we came, recording sounds of starlings on electricity wires and then marking 30 metres of the width of the drawn mark of the mapped boundary to see what that looked like in-situ.