We are currently in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, with a plan to walk the coastal path. On Wednesday it was a balmy 25°C as we walked at low tide on Druidstone Haven Beach, by Friday it was 8°C as we scurried between a café, a building society and a supermarket in Haverfordwest. 

However, spring has definitely sprung here: we’ve walked along paths lined with primroses and bluebells; watched a variety of birds nesting; and seen an adder in the coastal path on Wednesday, probably fooled as much as we were by the warmth. 

Before we set out, I started spring cleaning my studio but before any cleaning could take place there had to be some decluttering. I don’t know about you but it’s a bit of a pointless exercise because in the next year it will have got cluttered again, so why bother? 

I thought I would sort out all items that might help us for our Pembrokeshire trip, to start, sorting through piles of maps. I don’t know about you but I find it very hard to throw out a map…. How many paper maps does one need to keep as we have maps at our fingertips on our phones? We are going to Pembrokeshire with the intention of walking the coast path - a well way marked trail with the sea to one side…

I chose a bag into which to put maps, books and leaflets that might be linked to Pembrokeshire. I found that I had three copies of the South Pembrokeshire Ordnance Survey (OS) 1 to 25,000 ‘Explorer Map’, one copy of the North Pembrokeshire one, plus a copy of an OS map that covers the whole of Pembrokeshire.  There’s a guide book in the bag to the coastal path that comes with OS maps included.  I tore out the section for the Welsh Coast path from another book one written in the 70s about Britain’s long distance trails, that also included an OS map, that means for the area of Pembrokeshire that we are in I’ve got six maps, plus my subscription to OS digital maps on my phone. 

So far, on the days that we have walked the coastal path, we haven’t used a map at all! 

Fortunately, I am not alone in my love of maps, as you can read from the summary of the three Map Scramble events we held recently. 

Decluttering of one’s possessions, whether mental, digital or physical, is something that is undertaken by pilgrims, so last week’s On Pilgrimage episodes highly pertinent. With the assistance of AI, we are keeping a running blog of the discussion for each month's event.

On the next two Wednesdays, we’ve got a couple of events celebrating books about walking. This coming Wednesday we have a special café event on a project initiated in Berlin by one of our WALC nodes, ReRouting and an intriguing collective called the Cruising Curators.  On the following Wednesday, we have Canadian Ken Wilson on his own personal pilgrimage, “Walking the Bypass” of his provincial capital, Regina we have cheekily called labelled the event as “On the Road to Nowhere”. 

And finally, don’t forget to make submissions to our poetry on pilgrimage writing competition and our Shorelines initiative, as both come with prizes!

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