Psychogeography on holiday

We’ve had some nice weather in Essex lately; I requested it for my ‘Summer holiday’; and no-one says no to this face! I’ve been using the lovely weather to explore local landscapes in new ways.

London and Love Lane

Psychogeography has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with England’s capital city; I have long enjoyed merely walking round  a part of London, with no cause but interest.

During some temp work in London I have been engaged in some urban wandering and it has got me seeing London from a completely different angle. Leather Lane, for example, is hidden just off Holborn Circus and is profuse with leather and lots of wonderful little coffee shops. Little Essex Road is in the middle of the law quarter; I’ve never seen a road that shared so little with Essex!
 Love Lane was a road I discovered by accident wandering towards East London. When I walked it, it seemed one of the least ‘Love’ filled roads in all of London; there are no front facing businesses on the road and there were very few people using the road. The only thing that seemed vaguely love related was Shakespeare’s Garden at the end of the lane. Traditionally  road names reflected usage; you can find examples of this all over London; you would have found chickens on Poultry, pork at Swinegate and so maybe traditionally people found love, of a kind on ‘Love Lane’. A little research suggested that historically ‘Love Lane’ was a hotbed of prostitution ; today the road plays host to a City of London HIV and Chlamydia clinic. Maybe I was looking for the wrong kind of love down ‘Love Lane’?

Cambridge, Maldon, St Andrews, Ely.

In the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to get out and about in the local (and not so local) area. I have been really indulging my early Medievalist; getting my hands on modern day settlements that retain their three-road Medieval structure. 

Cambridge, Maldon and St Andrews all qualify as ‘quaint little English towns’ and are based around three main streets. Such a simple settlement pattern not only makes it easy to get home if you are a drunken fresher; but also makes it much easier to direct tourists to the church/ river/ ice cream shop (delete as appropriate). It never ceases to amaze me, that a settlement system introduced over a thousand years ago can still provide the essentials for a modern town; even if we are no longer trying to hide our swine in the back streets (or are we?).  On the subject of settlements has anyone else realised that even though Ely has a Cathedral and Cambridge does not; Ely is in Cambridgeshire, why is that?

One day I drove the car out and around north Essex. I stopped off for some proper East Saxon jam in Maldon. Maldon is the scene of a semi-famous Saxon epic poem, the Battle of Maldon (that’s the one where Byrtnoth showed some fatal ofermod – whatever that turned out to be!); its got the three-street structure and some pretty, old buildings. I later enjoyed my East Saxon roots with another Essex girl in Cambridge; but I also drove through many other evocative Saxon settlements; Essex is full of them – Tillingham, Dengie (after the Dæningas, awesome name), Althorne, Osea Island.  Driving around rural Essex you could almost be forgiven for believing no one had arrived since those vicious Vikings of 991 (who arrived during the Battle of Maldon); its thoroughly unspoilt with lots of wiggly-roads and old field boundaries.

Essex is home to one of the best places in the world; Bradwell on Sea. It has been a Roman fort, a Saxon monastic community and now a nature reserve and hamlet on the shores of the Blackwater Estuary, where it meets the North Sea. This space has been a special place for me since before I can remember. Just to sit on the beach (in snow or sunshine) and watch the Thames barges/ windmills/ birds tumble in the breeze (delete as appropriate) is magical. It is a place I feel automatically more peaceful, able to notice even the drifting bird flying on the air current and the barge passing silently past.
What is it about this landscape that is so capable of making me stop and notice passing birds, to be peaceful? Which places are special to you? What is it about that space or landscapes that makes it special? Why don’t you share your special place with someone?!

Southend; walls, barges and berries.

One of the aims of the psychogeographer is to get people (including themselves) to see familiar places in a new light. Armed with only a camera, and with a whole afternoon to spare, I set out for Old Leigh; another special coastal place. I tried to essentialise the landscape in a few key images which took my eye; the images that epitomised ‘Leigh’. I tried to frame the images naturally and resist the urge to edit my photos; instead I wanted to focus on taking good photos, first time round, like we used to before digital. You can see how I got on here.

Leigh: sea wall, coast and blackberries

Looking for images made my other senses somewhat heightened; to the sounds of spinnakers flapping in the wind and the water lapping the shore; the crunch of sand in my trainers and of salt on my lips. Experiencing the environment holistically got me thinking not only about the beauty of the environment but, as ever, different perspectives on space and ideas.  I’ve never really seen myself as an arty-creative before, but looking at textures in my environment even got me thinking about bigger ideas; looking at a bench being engulfed by a hedge I started to think about what we let engulf us; and more to the point, why? 

Bench on the seafront, Leigh

What environments do you live in or pass through every day? How do you feel about them? How might you engage with your environment in ways that help you perceive it differently? And what about your special places? What connects meaning to space to make it place? Would you share that space with someone you care about? Would you share it with the internet?

Enjoy getting out into your communities this weekend and take great photos!