7 July 2023
A maze of pathways scored into the hillside
Stories, only half-hidden
Of children severed from Spain, England, Western Macedonia.
Women walk the whitening circle of remembrance.
Marble slabs lie aslant.
The First Friday Walk is a Walking the Land artist collective monthly event. The brief for July 2023 was from Amanda Steer @adamandadraws ; the theme of the walk was our tracks and the traces we leave in the landscape.
Kel Portman and I walked together through the village, up and along to the cemetery.
On the evening of the FFW, Soazic Guezennzec invited us to listen to the memories of older people living in the area, and Alexandra spoke movingly about her sisters and brothers who were evacuated from the village (200 young children) in 1948 when she was a baby.
The next morning (8 July), I participated in a pilgrimage organised by Jenny Staff (see The Roll of Emplacement) in which seven women collectively walked over 19,000 steps in a circle in the town square. Each carried a stick which had white chalk on its end which drew on the ground.
I was at the Walking Arts Encounters ’23 at Psarades / Prespa in Western Macedonia, Greece.
All photographs copyright Tamsin Grainger
Walking without a donkey 