‘Contouring the Boundary’ by Alison Lloyd
The walks were surveyed in advance and based on a practical understanding of the route I wrote a script for the walking event. These few paragraphs provided a structure to the walk, which I could deviate from according to the weather and the numbers and abilities of the participating walkers.
The meeting point for the start of the walk was Binn Green Car Park. From the A635 (Holmfirth Road) the National Park boundary follows a stonewall rising up from 230 m to 280 m where the boundary follows a wall that contours the base of Alderman’s Hill above Brockley Moor.
I cut and folded my worn out OS map to show the southern and northerly sections of the northwest boundary, to indicate the relationship between the two sections of the peak park boundary. I wanted to demonstrate the essentially route here heading north beyond Diggle, then bordered by the A62 to Marsden.
Walking with, alongside and across the contours below a craggy Alderman’s Hill (440 m) and onwards northwest to a footpath cross road with Oldham Way returning along a walled track (Long Lane) back to the start.
I gathered the group together in a Covid-19 distanced circle. Cora and Dave introduced their project and I gave my first set of instructions, an invitation to walk slowly and with care in silence, while observing the line of the boundary to our left. I recounted my experiences of learning to navigate safely in the hills and mountains, beginning with learning how to walk with stealth on unsteady rock-strewn ground. We learned to place our booted feet so that we didn’t dislodge gravel and pebbles.
I have concentrated on process, not always thinking about the final outcome. Site selection is important to me and finding the place/s I want to work by walking and often include in the associated text with my work, the date, time and year together with the contour or spot height. I have used micro-navigation to walk to a kink in a contour, or marked and followed a contour, photographically documenting a personal experience of walking and engaging with a site.
I developed a walking art where I used the pragmatic elements of recreational walking, such as, meticulous route planning, micro-navigation, and other measures for walking safely in remote rural locations. For example, measuring distance in time and by counting double steps. Knowing that in my case 68 double steps (pacing) on the flat equals 100 metres. I can follow a compass bearing from a known feature and know where I am in 100 or as much as 1000 metres ahead.
In prioritising the form of navigation that mainly uses the map’s contours I adopted contouring as a metaphor and personal synonym to describe my solitary walking slightly off the beaten track and without always feeling the need to go directly to the summit of a hill or mountain.
I have walked in the footsteps of other ‘walking artists’ and wrote specifically about Marie Yates, Michelle Stuart and Nancy Holt in my PhD thesis, Contouring Women Walking and Art.
It is Marie Yates that is most relevant to our experiences of creatively orientating segments of the northwest boundary of the Peak District National Park. She walked with her camera and in a similar fashion to my own way of working. Many of my photographs are records of my walking with an emphasis on the ground, the earth and the moorland grasses. I place my camera on my rucksack and using the cable release capture my movements, crouched and crawled and concentrated on recording the experience.
Location: a steep area of rough grassland, including the dilapidated grit stone boundary walls, rocky outcrops. Areas of recent tree planting and sheep trails contouring around Alderman’s Hill.
Day: the weather, fast moving clouds with a gusting wind
Procedure: (for me this is the process and methods we will use today) climbing steeply up from the main road, the path winds between small blocks of grit stone and dry clumps of grass. The camera was placed on a flat surface, rucksack, and the shutter release attached. Photographs with a shallow depth of field were made by walking backwards and forwards between the camera balanced on the rucksack and the extent of the cable. During the editing process the images that included the colourful rucksack material and the cable were selected.