We wanted to do an informal rule-of-six compliant Halloween walk, so Fiona grabbed a scary looking skull of the internet and laid it on top of a map of Stirchley to see how it might fit.
We'll be following the red outline as best we can on Saturday and then retiring to our garden for skyclad dancing a beer or two by the fire.
Following a shape randomly drawn on a map is an old flaneur trick, forcing you to follow routes and paths you wouldn't normally consider. Andy and I used this for our Cross City Walks project, drawing straight lines and trying to stick to them. Bill Drummond famously scralled BILL on an A-Z map of London and tried to walk it.
The thing with this is not to try and do it religiously. Not only does this often lead to barbed wire and trespass, it missed the point of the exercise which is to get off your beaten tracks and start associating areas you might be familiar with in new ways.
For example, despite living here for over a decade I've never walked that specific route down the right-hand side of the skull, from Cartland Road, down a cut-through to Newlands, then across the park to Millhaven Ave and down Hazelwell Crescent to the river. Always nice to have a first.
Of course, not everyone lives in Stirchley, so we've prepared a transparent PNG for you to overlay on your own map.
Enjoy your spooky walk!
Update:
We did the walk and had a lovely time. Fiona recorded a GPS trace so here's the skull-as-walked!
