Category: Walk Reports

Transcript of a talk given by Megan Henebury about her walking project, A Figure Walks, on November 24th 2020.

A Figure Walks: the Rea, and other rivers you can’t see, is an ongoing project applying my walking practice to a psychogeographical investigation of Birmingham’s River Rea. The expected results are an essay, a short film, and an archive – together forming a body of work that will define my BA in Fine Art.

Over the summer, I was inspired by the thinking of Donna Haraway in her 2016 book, Staying With The Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. I’d been told she wrote about pigeons – this was enough to make me seek her out. But her ideas about a new ecology concerned with interspecies kinship, making space to acknowledge intimate relationships between more than just other human beings, led me to reflect more consciously on the way I communicate with other bodies, other things, how I feel for them, gather them, accumulate them.

My walking practice is a performance, but recording it is instinctive. I have filled pockets, taken photographs, made field notes and sketches. If I don’t, I can’t say with certainty that I’ve done anything at all. Stones, birds, fungi, litter, scum accumulated in polluted corners, moss, broken birdhouses, clouds of midges, used stericups, condom wrappers, bramble, snails: these are all soggy extensions of my own unclean presence in the river’s cut, and I need to acknowledge them. I anticipated a personal reaction to the walks, to the things I have met, but I falsely believed I would be in control. The reality is different.

At the beginning of October – bringing in autumn, my favourite season – piercing boggy soil in my wading boots and clearing pathways through gnarls of bramble was a joyful escape: the honeymoon period of a new relationship between me and this wet, secret place that was both a stranger and home. But here now, in late November, I’m only halfway through. I last stepped out of the Rea as it passes under Cartland Road at the edge of Stirchley. And now that my walk has brought me closer to those long, hostile culverts that hide the river beneath the industrial grind of the inner city, the truth is that I don’t really want to go back in.

I allow heavy rains to delay walks, feigning disappointment. I injured my back on the last walk and, wrapped up warm in the glow of tramadol, I felt relieved that this too would keep me out of the water a little longer. Lockdowns under other names have prevented friends from accompanying me, and my own chronically despondent way of being means I’m reluctant to push ahead.

Forward is not my natural state. I prefer to linger in familiar spaces, long after all light and life has passed through them. I realise, to my horror, that this plateau in the project is a garish analogy for every other relationship I’ve sabotaged via refusal to work, to change, to go Forward. It may be more comfortable to hang around old, familiar shadows, but they’re cold and long dead and have nothing new to tell me.

The Rea is a river you often can’t see. It begins as a messy, chaotic network of puddles, streams and bogs before it approaches Longbridge and becomes remotely recognisable as a rivery thing. Those early streams are flowing somewhere – but on that first walk, I couldn’t find them, or couldn’t get into them, or lost patience entirely and retreated to footpaths. I can only imagine how the Rea must feel, having no other choice. So, following its lead, I cut other routes, make new mess, let the work change, listen to other bodies, and take different walks.

From the top of the Wrekin, the hill that keeps watch over much of the West Midlands, the sparkle of the River Severn a few miles south west catches my eye. It’s the longest river on this island, and a source of our tap water. I watch the late autumn sunlight shatter over its snaking course – from this distance, it looks deceptively still. I realise I am still working after all. There is an old regional saying about going all around the Wrekin. It’s a lovely, lyrical way to tell you, usually in exasperation – you are taking the long way around.

All Walkspace posts on this project are here.

During October we’re documenting Megan Henebury’s walk along the route of the River Rea, walking in the river itself as much as possible. Pete is following her with a camera and Megan will be producing a film in the new year. All Walkspace posts on this project are here.

For the fourth stretch along the Rea, Megan was joined by another wader, her friend Lin, whose effect on Megan’s mood was dramatic. They started in Kings Norton Park and by the time I joined them with my camera at Lifford Reservoir, a serious artist doing serious work had transformed into a grinning loon (doing serious work).

As Stirchley residents this was home turf, but it was still novel for me to be walking this area at such a slow pace, waiting for Megan and Lin to make their steady way through the frequently deep waters. I found myself contemplating the many paths that had been beaten through the undergrowth from the footpath to the river, seemingly with no purpose. Then it struck me – they were desire lines carved by dogs desperate to get in the water.

Dusk called the day to an end on Cartland Road. Three days later the November lockdown was announced, putting the walk on hold. Stay tuned for developments…

During October we’re documenting Megan Henebury’s walk along the route of the River Rea, walking in the river itself as much as possible. Pete is following her with a camera and Megan will be producing a film in the new year. All Walkspace posts on this project are here.

Day two of Megan’s intra-river walk started well, working through Balaam’s Wood in Rubery ending at this delightful bridge, water-falling into a surprisingly deep pool.

But then it all went a bit wrong. Megan went through a tunnel which took the river away from any and all public paths and Pete was not able to join her again. Phone battery issues multiplied the problems and we decided to call it a day around Bournville college.

For day three we were a lot more prepared, and confident that the footpath would follow the river nicely from Longbridge to Kings Norton.

The river along this section seemed more managed yet still fairly wild. We came across a number of remains of mills and places where the river had been co-opted by early industry, a history that was almost invisible from the footpaths.

We also started to see the current river management infrastructure – mysterious looking flood-prevention overflows and pumping stations around the Wychall reservoir.

And we also saw a lot of people. These paths are a beaten track, and not just by dog walkers and cyclings. The river still connects the city up.

We made it to Kings Norton Park, nearly at our home bases in Stirchley. Now we’re just waiting for a dry day that doesn’t follow heavy rain (which swells the river above Megan’s waders), something that’s become less common as we move into British Winter Time.

During October we’re documenting Megan Henebury’s walk along the route of the River Rea, walking in the river itself as much as possible. Pete is following her with a camera and Megan will be producing a film in the new year. All Walkspace posts on this project are here.

Megan started her walk on Sunday, beginning at the official source of the Rea in Waseley Hills, the watershed between the Severn and Trent catchments. The water in this humble puddle will eventually make its way to the Humber estuary, but first it has to travel through Birmingham.

The Rea consists of a number of minor streams for a kilometre or so before coalescing into the river proper. Megan chose the most visible and headed off, looking for a gap in the fence.

After battling brambles, branches and the odd barbed wire, the stream passed into suburbia corralled between houses and roads.

Although there was the occasional patch of boggy marsh.

On the whole it was slow work through overgrown brambles, though as the stream headed into Rubery it slowly became more river-like, especially around the bridges.

And very soon the tunnels under the roads became large enough to pass through.

After two hours we had made it to Balaam Wood, just shy of Rubery Great Park, where it seems the multiple Reas becomes one. Weather permitting Megan will continue from here later this week, aiming to reach Kings Norton park.