Loopy Binsey: North of Bassenthwaite
Aim of the experiment
To challenge our peak-bagging instincts (and how we translate target-driven thinking to the outdoors) during a slower, more exploratory & mindful experience of the fells.
Background
How many times can we walk around a fell without getting to the top?…Contemporary culture is driven by targets, and ends-based thinking. In other words, we focus on what we want to achieve and where we aim to get to, with far less attention paid to how we go about this. These ways of thinking not only dominate our working lives, but extend far beyond, including during recreational activities like peak-bagging and fellrunning racing. This exercise aims to challenge this, by turning our attention to the process of walking around a fell rather than on the end-point summit, encouraging us to appreciate where we are right now rather than always looking and wishing to be elsewhere (see accompanying pic - oh, but it’s so beautiful over there).
Route instructions
Click on the image above to open an interactive version of the map on Viewranger,
or you can download the GPX file of my route here. (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Route grading: Easy distance, but difficult off-path terrain (approx. 2 miles, 622 feet of ascent)
Accessibility: unfortunately this route is not accessible. See below for route adaptation ideas & virtual exercises.
Location: Binsey is the most northerly Wainwright, located NE of Bassenthwaite Lake, and 9 miles N of Keswick. Instead of following the most popular ascent route from road to summit, this walk invites you to walk around Binsey as many times as possible, in whichever direction you wish, while following the below ‘rules’!
1. Start at the layby just off the road from the north end of Bassenthwaite to Uldale at GR NY235351 (Google Maps). Pass through the gate onto the fell.
2. Once onto the open fell, you must travel uphill at all times - any downhill travel will make your attempt null and void!!
3. Please don’t climb any walls or fences en-route, and be mindful of the presence of birds in nesting season, especially if you have a dog. Take care on the western side of the fell where there are some crags.
I’ve now done the experiment twice, both anti-clockwise and clockwise, and neither time have I managed more than a single loop. So that’s the current record (on the route opposed to records)! Reckon you can beat me…and what does it imply if you want to try?!
Route adaptation for walk-from-home
Either (a) identify a local hill local with a similar profile to Binsey (round & fairly feature-less!), and conduct the experiment there. Please make sure to do prior research to avoid any hazards – cliffs, quarries etc – and take note of local access restrictions. The hill you can use can be as insignificant as the highest point in your local park.
OR (b) open google maps and find your home. Take a screenshot and draw a circle around your home which is to be the circumference of your route. The aim is to see how slowly you can walk home by travelling in circles, while always getting closer. This one might be particularly interesting for those in cities, who might not have a hill nearby. The experiment becomes an exploration of the limitations and possibilities of built-up environments. Is it even possible to walk in a circle and to avoid the most direct linear route home?
Writing & Art Ideas, & Virtual Alternatives
Writing: Since this is a thought experiment, the main activity involves recording your thoughts, feelings and sense impressions while out on the fell, using either pen and paper or a sound recorder. Try not to edit your thoughts at the time - just let them come. Back home, collate these, and use them as the starting point for a piece of writing. Feel free to also incorporate other material based on independent research, as I have in my own poem. You also might like to think about how you can replicate the circular nature of the route in its form eg my own circular conversation with Wainwright, on in a circle poem like Alec Findlay’s example here, or looping the material using mixing software, or…?
Photography / art: While you are walking, pay keen attention to your surroundings, and photograph / sketch scenes or details that catch your eye. At the same time, record your thoughts / feelings / senses as you walk, as above. Back home, the aim is to use these fieldwork findings as the basis for an artwork of art which brings together (performs) what you were thinking through what you ‘saw’. In my own wanderings, I had four key thoughts, which are performed by the images below. Alternatively, how could you present your work such as to emphasise process over product, or play around with the notion of travelling in circles? (eg through using contour lines?)
Virtual alternatives:
(1) use one of my own images below as a ‘prompt’ for a piece of writing which explores these ideas. You might like to take notes before you start out under the following headings: (a) a factual description of the image (b) how the image makes you feel (c) what’s going on and what it reminds you of (d) the contrast between your current situation and the scene you are looking at. Use this material for a circular poem as above, using the form of the circle to try and convey the sense of being ‘trapped’ at home, unable to go anywhere.
(2) read my poem several times, and note down what thoughts and memories it prompts for you. Make a drawing or painting which explores your own reactions rather than illustrates my poem (ie in order to extend my poem, rather than illustrate it).
(3) (requires a subscription to Viewranger) open the route on the Viewranger website, and click to ‘view in 3D’. Take notes as you do so as if you were actually walking the route. What do you ‘see’ / sense, think and feel…and what role does your imagination play in filling in the gaps? Use your notes to create a new piece of virtual walking writing.
My own poetry
‘This view is worthy of a greater mountain than Binsey’
- in circular conversation with Alfred Wainwright.
The day is as white as no
and the sun shines emphasis.
I make myself as busy as is possible
within the idleness of wondering –
is white the colour of purity or possibility
or emptiness or death?
Binsey is the odd man out. This gentle hill rises beyond
the circular perimeter of the Northern Fells, detached and solitary,
like a dunce set apart from the class.
There’s something about an empty page of snow
that etches bold the edges of enclosure.
I set out anticlockwise as a means of slowing time
but the tracks of the Binsey clockface
are stuck at ten to five.
Occasional boulders met on the ascent
make comfortable seats for the weary.
A barn owl hovers back and forth in hunt of heather.
The bracken writes its rhizomatic repetition in the snow.
Its outline is too smooth and gently graded to attract much attention,
and its ascent from most directions is an easy trudge lacking in excitement.
Can a metaphor be literal, if so…
I’m walking in the opposite direction
from where I wish to be and what I want to see
but then hurry lacks an inherent sense of foresight.
(The text in italics is taken from Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells: Book Three, with which this poem is in circular conversation.)
Gallery
Click on any of the images below to open them in full screen.
